Steering Council meeting, 24 Feb 2025

Agenda

• Contributor experience around new features

Contributor experience around new features

• Need to determine concrete next steps
• Categorize the pain points of user experience.
  • Visibility is a problem. Either a library created has little visibility, or the creator spends a large amount of time marketing their library.
• Tagging is a possibility for Forum sorting.
• Making a Github tracker to in some way track features. Give structure to help users. Potentially a wizard. Also Github issue templating can be used.
• Using bots, especially for things like duplicates.
• Work on setting correct expectations. Especially around CoC, but also in other things.
• Should we allow people to open draft PRs
  • Potentially problematic for Fellows or active developers
  • Try to slow people down and get community input on large ideas before huge amount of work is put into it.
  • People may be more likely to be logged into GitHub, so they might see more feedback and interaction based on it being Github rather than Trac.
• How do we allow people to track the bits of Django that they’re interested in?
• Personas for contribution (Note, people can fall into multiple categories)
  • Have a particular itch
    • I want one thing changed and I’ll be happy
    • Uses Django for work
  • I want credit / recognition
    • I want to be involved so I can put it on the resume?
    • Tend to be new to OSS
  • Regular OSS contributor
    • Could be involved in several projects
    • May have a particular area of focus
    • Might use frameworks other than Django regularly, but might not.
  • Django Library Maintainer- could be combined with above
    • Going to be coming back with bugs and issues.
    • More interested in keeping Django Running.
  • Django evangelist
    • Convinced their company to use Django
    • May be willing to fund a new feature
  • Django Subject Matter Expert
    • People who are regularly contributing
    • Can be relied on as a subject matter expert
  • Translator/ Helper
    • They want to help with someone else’s project.
    • They might have a particular interest like translation.
  • Linux Distro maintainer
    • Need help understanding this role
  • Content creator?
    • Author, podcaster, tutorial creator, video creator, tiktoker
    • Would need to update materials on changes
    • People who are talking about relevant software
    • They actually have motivation for Django to not have major changes.
    • Should readers be informed about what version it works for? Sometimes nothing changes with a new version and the tutorial is still applicable, sometimes it’s not.
  • Business owner/employee
    • They also do not want Django to change.
    • Every change, they have to pay time or money whenever there is a significant update.
  • Djangonaut / GSoC Mentee
    • Needs definition
  • Educator
    • Needs definition
  • Fellows
    • Needs definition

Action items

• Applying for funding from the German Sovereign Tech Fund. Jacob will try to find his past application. Emma pointed out Sarah Boyce has offered help (via her local meetup) in reapplying.
• Tim: Attempt creating a proposal for initial feature ideas