Date : 2020-09-26 12:51:00+07:00
Author : Sigit Dewanto
"Connect - Collab - Contribute", that is the theme that I proposed for PyCon Indonesia (PyCon ID) this year. It turns out that the theme was also the one that got the most votes from my fellow committee members. As the consequence, I get the task to write an article explaining the theme. Let’s discuss it one by one.
PyCon is a place where Python enthusiasts get together. I call them enthusiasts because usually PyCon is held at the weekend, but those people are still excited to get together and discuss Python. Those Pythonistas come all the way from various places, some of them even come from abroad. The topics presented by the speakers also vary: web development, data engineering, data science, hardware, computer security, general Python programming techniques, etc. All participants from various places and also various presentation topics are being connected in PyCon.
In today’s COVID-19 pandemic situation, most PyCons are being held online, including PyCon ID. Certainly, the experience will not be the same compared to meeting physically. However, we don’t have other choices. Perhaps, there is a silver lining in this online setup: there will be more participants from all over Indonesia and other countries.
At the beginning of this year, there was a "competition" between Python community organizers from Bandung and Yogyakarta chapters to fight over PyCon ID 2020 location. However, as all of us know now, everything changed when the coronavirus attacked. Nevertheless, there is a silver lining: the "competition" between Bandung and Yogyakarta chapters is now becoming a collaboration to organize PyCon ID as an online event. Not only from those two cities, there are also members of the Python community from Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makasar that become committee members too.
I then realized that this spirit of remote collaboration has existed in the open source world since the beginning, Python ecosystem is not an exception. Most of open source software developers collaborate remotely, they rarely meet each other in person.
Just like collaboration, the concept of contribution in the organization of PyCon also has some parallels with the open source software development. In the open source ecosystem, there are three main roles: user, contributor, and maintainer. Most people in the open source ecosystem are users. A fraction of them also become contributors. Contributors are those who contribute to the development of an open source software, including but not limited to fixing bugs, implementing new features, writing documentation, etc.
On the other hand, maintainers are contributors who are responsible for the vision and quality of the open source software. Every maintainer is a contributor, but a contributor is not always a maintainer. Sometimes, a contributor is being "promoted" to maintainer by the other maintainers if he or she has given many contributions to the related open source project.
This is similar to the organization of PyCon ID. In PyCon ID, there are also three main roles: participant, speaker, and organizer. Some of the PyCon ID 2020 organizers were also organizers of the previous PyCon ID. There are also some participants and speakers from previous PyCon ID that now become organizers. There are also some committee members who previously never participated in PyCon at all. However, they have proved their contribution in the events organized by the regional Python community.
The organization of PyCon ID has the same "gotong-royong" spirit in the development of open source software. PyCon ID is an event organized by volunteers from the community and presented for the community too. Hopefully, PyCon ID 2020 can be a means of connection and collaboration for Pythonistas in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, let's contribute together to maintain and develop the Python ecosystem.