Published on 04 March 2026
I arrived in Wellington with fresh eyes and a spring in my step, back in 2024. I almost immediately signed up and gave a talk at Kiwi Pycon 2025, where I also volunteered a bit and helped out setting things up. The community seemed amazing - a great group of pythonistas who worked on furthering the language and building a lasting, fun community here in Pōneke Wellington. Some of my friends from the before times were also at the conference - most notably, Chris Neuegebauer and Deb Nicholson, my former boss at the OSI and now the president of the Python Software Foundation.
When elections for PythonNZ occurred, I decided to run. Somehow, disturbingly, I was elected. So, from 2024 until today, I was on the PythonNZ committee. While I was there, we dealt with the normal rigamarole for these sorts of nonprofits - making a new constitution, dealing with finances, having long committee meetings where people talked over each other. It wasn’t always fun, but it was rewarding. I learned a lot.
We also planned and hosted Kiwi Pycon 2025, which was an entire conference in itself. Together with help from Chelsea Finnie and Devi Ganesan, we produced the first academic proceedings and academic track the conference had ever had - small, but a good start. I gave a talk. I got an arbovirus. I missed half the conference. What I saw was still great.
The time commitment balooned to a year and a half, due to changes in our constitution and how we decided to do the fiscal years going forward. So, today, at the AGM, I rolled off of the committee. I am now strangely noe a member of any nonprofit boards – wait, no, I am now on the EC for the PGSA. Good lord. Well, it’s one down, anyway.
I was grateful for the help and support I encountered being on this board, and for the friendship and care of those involved. We didn’t always agree - it’s a board - but it was well worth the effort.
During my tenure, I attended not a single Wellington meetup. I wish I could say this was intentional, but the truth is that I live just far away that driving into Wellington is difficult, and because someone in my house is immunocompromised, we mask everywhere. Going into a meetup at night is never on my list of things I want to do. It’s difficult. I wish masking were easier, but it’s not for me.
PythonNZ isn’t just about the meetups - Kiwi Pycon is great, by itself. It’s also about the wider community and the Discord and so on. I felt honoured to have been voted in and to have been able to serve.
Now to take a much needed nap before I work on my thesis.
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