[Zope-dev] A note on the PyCon Program committee.

[Martijn Faassen]

Chris McDonough wrote:
[snip]
> Another way to avoid this in the future besides joining the committee would be 
> for notable members of the Zope community to reach out on a regular (daily) 
> basis to other Python-using communities.  Offer them well-documented software, 
> visit their sprints and conferences, try their alphas, join their IRC channels, 
> participate in their maillists and so on.  It's harder to do intercommunity 
> politics daily in this way as opposed to "facing off" yearly, but it will have 
> a higher, more lasting payoff.

I'm very much in agreement on this. Blogging is another way to reach 
out. Reach out and interact.

It's indeed hard work to do this right. I am sitting on a few pieces of 
software that are either interesting to non-Zope people or in fact 
directly usable, but I haven't had the time yet to blog about them. I 
intend to start blogging on a more regular basis again soon.

> It's "who you know", not "what you know" unfortunately, even in open source, as 
> much as we like to believe in meritocracy.

That's true too. I'm a natural noise-maker, and I discovered that while 
as a result of this I embarrass myself in public on a regular basis, it 
also means a lot of people know who I am. That's a good thing.

Regards,

Martijn