EuroPython 2020: Help us build the next edition!
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Lemburg, Marc-Andre
We need help with organizing and running EuroPython 2020. In this session, we will explain how the EuroPython workgroup model works and where you could help.
 Thank you very much for coming. This talk is about organizing the next year's EuroPython conference. And so I wanted to give you a short overview of how we do these things, how it works, and then basically we can do questions and answers, discuss a few things. So what is the EPS? The EPS is the organization behind EuroPython. It was founded in 2004 in Goetheborg. It's supposed to provide the legal framework for running these conferences. It managed initially just the EuroPython location selection process for many, many years. So basically the EuroPython Society did not really organize the conference itself, but it had the local organizers basically do all the organizations, run the conference, and so on. And just selected which local team could actually run the conference for a number of years or for just a single year. Then starting in 2014, we tried to change that model to basically move more of the organization to the EPS because we found that the size of the conference was becoming essentially unmanageable for local teams. There was too much money involved, there was too much risk involved for people, so the local organizers didn't want to have the responsibility anymore for running the conference of this size. Because the budget that we have is around 600,000, 650,000 euros a year right now, and of course that's quite a sizable number, and it's not easy to handle for a smaller, let's say a regional, national, non-profit organization. So in 2015, we then came up with the idea to reorganize everything to not only do the selection process, but to actually then run the conference ourselves. What else does the EPS do? It provides support for the Python community that we have in Europe. So we try to do something very similar to what the PSF does internationally, but on a European scale. So we try to help other conferences in Europe with, for example, grants. We also try to help them with experience that we have. We can help a bit with the organization or with communication, for example, pushing out messages about things that other organizers do in Europe and then helping them gain more traction. We also protect the IP behind Europe, so we've registered the trademark in Europe, and we're currently in process of registering it in the US as well. We have the logo, which is not officially trademarked, but it is our trademark. And of course we have a number of social accounts that we use to send out messages, and those social accounts are being used a lot, followed a lot, so we have good channels. So how did we envision to make this work? We wanted to have a way to build smaller groups that can then manage a separate task that we have to do. So we have a longer number of groups that do certain things. To give you an example, we have a program work group that deals with the program selection, the talk selection process. We have a marketing and design work group that deals with most of the design things that we have to do. We have a finance work group that deals with the finances and so on. The EPS always takes a complete financial risk now, so we have to make sure that we have enough money in the bank. And on the other hand, we can also then, because we are an organization that has been around for quite a while, we can enter contracts and people actually trust us to be able to take that risk. So for us, it's not that hard to enter contracts with venues, for example. And then of course, we have professional accounting for everything so that we make sure that all the bookkeeping is done right, the auditing is done right, that we pay our taxes correctly in Sweden and so on. For the conferences in the various countries, what we do is we usually get a local accountant to help us with this. So we had one in the UK, for example, last year. We have one right now in Switzerland to help us with the VAT and all the accounting that needs to be done and also the registration processes. And this we're going to continue to do going forward. Normally what happens is that we have to register in the country where we do the conference for VAT, even if it's in the EU, at least in some places we have to do that, because the regulation says that if you sell tickets to conferences, those tickets have to be VAT taxed at the location where you do the conference, not at the location where the organization is registered. So how does the EPS work? We have a board, we have these work groups, and then we have the members. And of course, we actually consider the Euro-Python attendees to be part of the EPS as well, because we like to get feedback from everyone for all the attendees that come to Euro-Python and then want to use that feedback to make it a better conference. Because essentially the Euro-Python is not a conference that the EPS, let's say, owns in the sense that the EPS makes it happen, but it's something that we do for everyone. So everyone, all the attendees are actually part of this, the effort that we do here. But let's have a look at the conference development. The whole thing started in 2002 in Charleroi in Belgium, where we started with 240 attendees. That was the very first event. It was very, the organization was a bit hectic. It was the first time, so lots of opinions, lots of discussions and so on. It took a while, almost did not happen, but then in the end three people then basically built an executive committee and then they made it happen eventually to basically work around all these discussions that we always had. Then later on you see it's been growing a lot. In Berlin we had, I think, 1200, it's not on this slide. Then the numbers went down a bit because, of course, Berlin is very central in Europe, so it's easy to get there for everyone. The numbers went down a bit when we went to other places that were a bit harder to reach. But now in Basel you see we're back to the 1200 again. Let's have a look at how Europe has ideally should be organized. I'm saying this deliberately because we've never managed to make this happen like this. But this is how it should be, how it would work really well. We start off the RFP process. Do you know what an RFP process is? RFP is a commercial process of how you do, let's say you want to search for vendors, you create a document that basically has all the things that you want from a vendor and then you send that document around to different vendors and they can enter bids into the process. It's a whole process that has multiple steps. The nice thing about it is that the vendors compete against each other to show you get better prices. This is one nice effect. Another nice effect is that we have to ask fewer questions because we can put into that document lots of questions that we have, get information from the vendors that we would, vendors in this case being the conference venues, that we would like to get upfront in order to make the decision. Before we always had to ask the questions then directly to the conference venues and that was always very time consuming. So now it's more like a pull. It's not so much a push operation that we have to do. We've done that for Edinburgh. The first time we've again done this for Basel. It worked really well. We have to improve it a bit because it's still too much work. But once we have this more polished and I think this is an excellent process to do the selection. Then once you have the selection done, ideally in October, then you work on all the other bits that you need, like designing a logo for example that you want to have for the conference, preparing the website, maybe adding some information to it. You start with the pre-launch website. Once you've selected everything, the pre-launch website is more intended to do marketing for you. So get the word out about the fact that your president is happening again, where it's going to happen. And then January would be a good month to start, to actually start the main website, to get everything going. And then in February, you can then start CFP and the ticket sales. Maybe then by March you know how the schedule looks like and then you have a bit of time until June to order all the material that you need to buy. This is done in June and not earlier because you always have to make it so that the material that you order gets delivered in a certain time frame before the conference. Usually you get one week or maybe two weeks before the conference from the venue to be able to send material there. So all these shipments that you do need to be timed into that window. And then July would then be the conference. So that's the ideal time frame. How does the workgroup structure work? This is a bit theoretical at the moment because actually we do have these chairs in the workgroups. So the normal structure would be that you have one or two chairs. Then you have workgroup members, you do voting, then you have voting members and non-voting members. In reality, the voting actually doesn't really happen a lot. We had that in the early days but then we basically decided the various things that we had to decide on more or less in a way that everyone agreed on it. Another problem that we faced was many inactive members. So we had lots of signups for workgroups and then it turned out that only very few of those workgroup members actually did something. This is something that it affects us. So this is not good. Let me just remove this. Let me just switch off telegram for this session. I had that in the previous talk as well. Okay, sorry. So like I said, this is a bit like static. What actually happens is that you usually have a few people who do a lot and you have some people who do a bit and then you have a number of people who don't do anything much and the problem there is that if you publish the list of members in these workgroups, it looks to others as if there were lots and lots of people in that workgroup. So no need to apply for that workgroup, which is of course not really helpful if you actually do need more help. So this needs to be managed in a bit more effective way. So this is the list of workgroups that we currently have. We have an admin workgroup, a finance workgroup, a sponsors workgroup, a communications workgroup that deals with all the communications, support workgroup that does the help desk and all the onsite support that we have. Financial aid is responsible for running the whole financial aid program that we have. Marketing design does all the logos and designs and backgrounds, deals with designers and so on. Program workgroup does the selection, web workgroup deals with the website. Then we used to have an onsite team, but we found out we can actually do without an onsite team. We just need a few people onsite who can maybe go to the venue and do some venue visits, ask some questions, maybe shoot some photos and then send them to other people. We have a media team, which is currently just Anderson and myself, and then we have a code of contact workgroup, which is a bit special because you cannot apply for that workgroup. You actually have to be assigned to that workgroup. And then how do we work together? We have mailing lists, but more recently we added telegram groups to this and now most of the communication happens over telegram, which is actually, it's a nice thing because it's more direct. It feels more interactive. You feel more in touch with the workgroup. The downside is that some messages get lost in telegram, so you don't necessarily, if you haven't read the telegram messages for a long while, then you sometimes miss things. We have Google Docs for most of the information that we need to share with people. We used to have a wiki, the wiki basically crashed, I think, a year, one and a half years ago. And I'm currently in the process of copying the information that we have in that wiki over to Google Docs to make it more accessible again and easier to edit for everyone. And essentially the way that the sharing works of these workgroups is that the share should be responsible for whatever the workgroup has to do ultimately. So essentially, let's say the media workgroup is then responsible to get the video recording working and if that doesn't work, then the share has to be, is accountable for this. They need to feel that they're responsible for something. They cannot just walk away and not tell anyone. So this is important. Right. Any questions? Yes? Jaakub? They are related in the sense that both have similar, let's say similar missions. They both want to help the Python community. The PSF does this on a global scale. The PSF also holds the IP rights to Python, the programming language itself and also to a couple of trademarks. The European Python Society and the PSF also runs a conference, PyConUS, it's a conference that they run. We run EuroPython. We don't own the IP rights to anything that has to do with Python, the programming language, but we do own the IP rights for EuroPython. So no other conference can call itself EuroPython. And so we are similar. The PSF is a lot bigger in terms of number of members, in terms of the volumes that they, the volumes in terms of money that they push around. Their budget is a lot larger. The conference at PyConUS generates millions each year. And it's a really big operation. So both organizations have the same mission, but there's no relation between... There is a friendly relationship between the two organizations. So the PSF used to give out grants to EuroPython for the conference for many, many years. We've come to a size now that we think that this is not really something that we should do anymore. We should not ask for grants anymore because we generate our own revenue. Instead what we're currently doing is we're taking that revenue that we generate and also the profit that we make in these conferences and then give that profit out as a form of grants to other conferences. If we were to take grant money from the PSF, we would essentially be just redistributing the PSF money to other local organizations, which is not really the point. I mean, they can just then go directly to the PSF. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah. How do the work groups work in a way that... How autonomous are they relative to... I don't know... Board, chairman... Can you repeat? How autonomous are the work groups? In the way of decision making? Can they make decisions that are best suited or they have to go through the board or board or something or chair... Well the chairs in the work groups, can they take decisions and make decisions for the work group for the conference or they need to have an approval vote or something like go through a board or something like that? Like I said, we don't do much voting. What we do try to do though is that we try to... We want to make the communication work between the work groups and the board because essentially the board is on top of all these work groups and has to coordinate everything. Ideally we would also like to have the chairs of the work groups be board members simply because that simplifies the whole communication setup. This year we had the case where Alexander who is the chair of the program work group was not a member of the board and that created some issues because he didn't know about some things that we had discussed at the board level and that he wasn't aware of so we, for going forward, we'll have to fix that and have to find some way to make the chairs, all the chairs aware of what the board discusses. So right now you cannot become a board member during the organization of your Python? No. The board members have to be voted in by the General Assembly which is the... The next talk. The next talk, right? The General Assembly and the EPS is the main kind of... I don't know how you call it. It's the main body of the organization. So they have the complete power to decide anything and they need to also vote in the board, several other positions like checkers, auditors and so on and ultimately the General Assembly can change anything they like. The General Assembly can also change the bylaws which is something the board cannot do directly. So that's the separation between the board. The board is responsible for the day-to-day operations. The General Assembly is responsible for the directions of the EPS where it moves, which direction it wants to take. Of course the way it works is that most of the time the board does the propositions to the General Assembly and then the General Assembly discusses those and then votes on them. And who can be part of the General Assembly? Anyone? Anyone in the EPS? Any EPS member can be... Basically can be... Has both rights in the General Assembly. General Assembly is where you get together, so the next talk essentially, where you get together and then you vote on these things. How can one help actually? How do I know if I can help in a work group or not? If you have a specific area where you'd like to help, then you need to let us know. We have a sign-up form for this, but I must admit the sign-up process currently doesn't really work that well. Not so much because we don't want to have anyone onboarded to the work groups, but more because the whole sign-up process is a bit onerous. And this is something that we need to improve going forward. We do have some work groups which are very popular, like the Program Work Group, for example. But the Program Work Group actually doesn't always want more people because they have a decent size already. So it's not necessarily a work group that needs more volunteers, but we have other work groups which are desperate in need for more volunteers. Like people, for example, the Media Work Group, dealing with the selecting video, recording, arranging all that, or another work group that needs more help is Support Work Group. The Support Work Group usually has a lot to do in the few months before the conference and then of course at the conference because that's what they mostly do. So they have to manage the help desk. So that group needs more help. We have a couple of others, like the... we have an Administration Work Group which we have to basically consolidate these things a bit. The original design of these work groups was basically taking all the different tasks that we have in the EPS, taking them a bit apart and then separating them out into these work groups. I think we overdid it a bit and maybe we should just fold multiple work groups into just one work group. Because at the end of the day what happens is that the Admin Work Group and the Finance Work Group and at this point also the Media Work Group is both you just and us and myself and that's not really the point. So we want to spread that load a bit more. Also another comment on the... Actually I don't know if I have enough time yet. I don't know, five minutes, yeah. Another comment, the board is very active. So the board members are actually the most active people in the whole organization. Except maybe for Alexander who's not on the board, he also did a lot. But these are the people who do most of the work. So in terms of signing up for a work group I think, well, we have to discuss, we have to see how we can make the process better to get people into the work groups. At this point it's probably better to not use the sign up form but instead just either talk to the work group chairs that you know of those work groups or just write to the board and then we can just... We can say, okay, we need more help in this area and then maybe you can help there. Okay, thanks. More questions? No? So right after this talk we're going to have the general assembly of the EPS. This is not a secret kind of operation anyone can basically attend. I'd just like to ask to simplify the voting for everyone who is an EPS member to sit in the front rows and then everyone else to sit for the back. We have to create a list of all the people from the EPS who are present and then we can go to the next talk. The general assembly is generally a very boring operation. Thank you.
 Thank you very much for coming.  This talk is about organizing the next year's EuroPython conference.  And so I wanted to give you a short overview of how we do these things, how it works, and  then basically we can do questions and answers, discuss a few things.  So what is the EPS?  The EPS is the organization behind EuroPython.  It was founded in 2004 in Goetheborg.  It's supposed to provide the legal framework for running these conferences.  It managed initially just the EuroPython location selection process for many, many years.  So basically the EuroPython Society did not really organize the conference itself, but  it had the local organizers basically do all the organizations, run the conference, and  so on.  And just selected which local team could actually run the conference for a number of years or  for just a single year.  Then starting in 2014, we tried to change that model to basically move more of the organization  to the EPS because we found that the size of the conference was becoming essentially unmanageable  for local teams.  There was too much money involved, there was too much risk involved for people, so the  local organizers didn't want to have the responsibility anymore for running the conference  of this size.  Because the budget that we have is around 600,000, 650,000 euros a year right now, and  of course that's quite a sizable number, and it's not easy to handle for a smaller, let's  say a regional, national, non-profit organization.  So in 2015, we then came up with the idea to reorganize everything to not only do the  selection process, but to actually then run the conference ourselves.  What else does the EPS do?  It provides support for the Python community that we have in Europe.  So we try to do something very similar to what the PSF does internationally, but on  a European scale.  So we try to help other conferences in Europe with, for example, grants.  We also try to help them with experience that we have.  We can help a bit with the organization or with communication, for example, pushing out  messages about things that other organizers do in Europe and then helping them gain more  traction.  We also protect the IP behind Europe, so we've registered the trademark in Europe, and we're  currently in process of registering it in the US as well.  We have the logo, which is not officially trademarked, but it is our trademark.  And of course we have a number of social accounts that we use to send out messages, and those  social accounts are being used a lot, followed a lot, so we have good channels.  So how did we envision to make this work?  We wanted to have a way to build smaller groups that can then manage a separate task that  we have to do.  So we have a longer number of groups that do certain things.  To give you an example, we have a program work group that deals with the program selection,  the talk selection process.  We have a marketing and design work group that deals with most of the design things  that we have to do.  We have a finance work group that deals with the finances and so on.  The EPS always takes a complete financial risk now, so we have to make sure that we  have enough money in the bank.  And on the other hand, we can also then, because we are an organization that has been around  for quite a while, we can enter contracts and people actually trust us to be able to  take that risk.  So for us, it's not that hard to enter contracts with venues, for example.  And then of course, we have professional accounting for everything so that we make sure that all  the bookkeeping is done right, the auditing is done right, that we pay our taxes correctly  in Sweden and so on.  For the conferences in the various countries, what we do is we usually get a local accountant  to help us with this.  So we had one in the UK, for example, last year.  We have one right now in Switzerland to help us with the VAT and all the accounting that  needs to be done and also the registration processes.  And this we're going to continue to do going forward.  Normally what happens is that we have to register in the country where we do the conference  for VAT, even if it's in the EU, at least in some places we have to do that, because  the regulation says that if you sell tickets to conferences, those tickets have to be VAT  taxed at the location where you do the conference, not at the location where the organization  is registered.  So how does the EPS work?  We have a board, we have these work groups, and then we have the members.  And of course, we actually consider the Euro-Python attendees to be part of the EPS as well, because  we like to get feedback from everyone for all the attendees that come to Euro-Python  and then want to use that feedback to make it a better conference.  Because essentially the Euro-Python is not a conference that the EPS, let's say, owns  in the sense that the EPS makes it happen, but it's something that we do for everyone.  So everyone, all the attendees are actually part of this, the effort that we do here.  But let's have a look at the conference development.  The whole thing started in 2002 in Charleroi in Belgium, where we started with 240 attendees.  That was the very first event.  It was very, the organization was a bit hectic.  It was the first time, so lots of opinions, lots of discussions and so on.  It took a while, almost did not happen, but then in the end three people then basically  built an executive committee and then they made it happen eventually to basically work  around all these discussions that we always had.  Then later on you see it's been growing a lot.  In Berlin we had, I think, 1200, it's not on this slide.  Then the numbers went down a bit because, of course, Berlin is very central in Europe,  so it's easy to get there for everyone.  The numbers went down a bit when we went to other places that were a bit harder to reach.  But now in Basel you see we're back to the 1200 again.  Let's have a look at how Europe has ideally should be organized.  I'm saying this deliberately because we've never managed to make this happen like this.  But this is how it should be, how it would work really well.  We start off the RFP process.  Do you know what an RFP process is?  RFP is a commercial process of how you do, let's say you want to search for vendors,  you create a document that basically has all the things that you want from a vendor and  then you send that document around to different vendors and they can enter bids into the process.  It's a whole process that has multiple steps.  The nice thing about it is that the vendors compete against each other to show you get  better prices.  This is one nice effect.  Another nice effect is that we have to ask fewer questions because we can put into that  document lots of questions that we have, get information from the vendors that we would,  vendors in this case being the conference venues, that we would like to get upfront in  order to make the decision.  Before we always had to ask the questions then directly to the conference venues and  that was always very time consuming.  So now it's more like a pull.  It's not so much a push operation that we have to do.  We've done that for Edinburgh.  The first time we've again done this for Basel.  It worked really well.  We have to improve it a bit because it's still too much work.  But once we have this more polished and I think this is an excellent process to do the  selection.  Then once you have the selection done, ideally in October, then you work on all the other  bits that you need, like designing a logo for example that you want to have for the  conference, preparing the website, maybe adding some information to it.  You start with the pre-launch website.  Once you've selected everything, the pre-launch website is more intended to do marketing for  you.  So get the word out about the fact that your president is happening again, where it's going  to happen.  And then January would be a good month to start, to actually start the main website,  to get everything going.  And then in February, you can then start CFP and the ticket sales.  Maybe then by March you know how the schedule looks like and then you have a bit of time  until June to order all the material that you need to buy.  This is done in June and not earlier because you always have to make it so that the material  that you order gets delivered in a certain time frame before the conference.  Usually you get one week or maybe two weeks before the conference from the venue to be  able to send material there.  So all these shipments that you do need to be timed into that window.  And then July would then be the conference.  So that's the ideal time frame.  How does the workgroup structure work?  This is a bit theoretical at the moment because actually we do have these chairs in the workgroups.  So the normal structure would be that you have one or two chairs.  Then you have workgroup members, you do voting, then you have voting members and non-voting  members.  In reality, the voting actually doesn't really happen a lot.  We had that in the early days but then we basically decided the various things that  we had to decide on more or less in a way that everyone agreed on it.  Another problem that we faced was many inactive members.  So we had lots of signups for workgroups and then it turned out that only very few of those  workgroup members actually did something.  This is something that it affects us.  So this is not good.  Let me just remove this.  Let me just switch off telegram for this session.  I had that in the previous talk as well.  Okay, sorry.  So like I said, this is a bit like static.  What actually happens is that you usually have a few people who do a lot and you have  some people who do a bit and then you have a number of people who don't do anything much  and the problem there is that if you publish the list of members in these workgroups, it  looks to others as if there were lots and lots of people in that workgroup.  So no need to apply for that workgroup, which is of course not really helpful if you actually  do need more help.  So this needs to be managed in a bit more effective way.  So this is the list of workgroups that we currently have.  We have an admin workgroup, a finance workgroup, a sponsors workgroup, a communications workgroup  that deals with all the communications, support workgroup that does the help desk and all  the onsite support that we have.  Financial aid is responsible for running the whole financial aid program that we have.  Marketing design does all the logos and designs and backgrounds, deals with designers and  so on.  Program workgroup does the selection, web workgroup deals with the website.  Then we used to have an onsite team, but we found out we can actually do without an onsite  team.  We just need a few people onsite who can maybe go to the venue and do some venue visits,  ask some questions, maybe shoot some photos and then send them to other people.  We have a media team, which is currently just Anderson and myself, and then we have a code  of contact workgroup, which is a bit special because you cannot apply for that workgroup.  You actually have to be assigned to that workgroup.  And then how do we work together?  We have mailing lists, but more recently we added telegram groups to this and now most  of the communication happens over telegram, which is actually, it's a nice thing because  it's more direct.  It feels more interactive.  You feel more in touch with the workgroup.  The downside is that some messages get lost in telegram, so you don't necessarily, if  you haven't read the telegram messages for a long while, then you sometimes miss things.  We have Google Docs for most of the information that we need to share with people.  We used to have a wiki, the wiki basically crashed, I think, a year, one and a half years  ago.  And I'm currently in the process of copying the information that we have in that wiki  over to Google Docs to make it more accessible again and easier to edit for everyone.  And essentially the way that the sharing works of these workgroups is that the share should  be responsible for whatever the workgroup has to do ultimately.  So essentially, let's say the media workgroup is then responsible to get the video recording  working and if that doesn't work, then the share has to be, is accountable for this.  They need to feel that they're responsible for something.  They cannot just walk away and not tell anyone.  So this is important.  Right.  Any questions?  Yes?  Jaakub?  They are related in the sense that both have similar, let's say similar missions.  They both want to help the Python community.  The PSF does this on a global scale.  The PSF also holds the IP rights to Python, the programming language itself and also to  a couple of trademarks.  The European Python Society and the PSF also runs a conference, PyConUS, it's a conference  that they run.  We run EuroPython.  We don't own the IP rights to anything that has to do with Python, the programming language,  but we do own the IP rights for EuroPython.  So no other conference can call itself EuroPython.  And so we are similar.  The PSF is a lot bigger in terms of number of members, in terms of the volumes that they,  the volumes in terms of money that they push around.  Their budget is a lot larger.  The conference at PyConUS generates millions each year.  And it's a really big operation.  So both organizations have the same mission, but there's no relation between...  There is a friendly relationship between the two organizations.  So the PSF used to give out grants to EuroPython for the conference for many, many years.  We've come to a size now that we think that this is not really something that we should  do anymore.  We should not ask for grants anymore because we generate our own revenue.  Instead what we're currently doing is we're taking that revenue that we generate and also  the profit that we make in these conferences and then give that profit out as a form of  grants to other conferences.  If we were to take grant money from the PSF, we would essentially be just redistributing  the PSF money to other local organizations, which is not really the point.  I mean, they can just then go directly to the PSF.  Thank you.  Any other questions?  Yeah.  How do the work groups work in a way that...  How autonomous are they relative to...  I don't know...  Board, chairman...  Can you repeat?  How autonomous are the work groups?  In the way of decision making?  Can they make decisions that are best suited or they have to go through the board or board  or something or chair...  Well the chairs in the work groups, can they take decisions and make decisions for the  work group for the conference or they need to have an approval vote or something like  go through a board or something like that?  Like I said, we don't do much voting.  What we do try to do though is that we try to...  We want to make the communication work between the work groups and the board because essentially  the board is on top of all these work groups and has to coordinate everything.  Ideally we would also like to have the chairs of the work groups be board members simply  because that simplifies the whole communication setup.  This year we had the case where Alexander who is the chair of the program work group  was not a member of the board and that created some issues because he didn't know about some  things that we had discussed at the board level and that he wasn't aware of so we,  for going forward, we'll have to fix that and have to find some way to make the chairs,  all the chairs aware of what the board discusses.  So right now you cannot become a board member during the organization of your Python?  No.  The board members have to be voted in by the General Assembly which is the...  The next talk.  The next talk, right?  The General Assembly and the EPS is the main kind of...  I don't know how you call it.  It's the main body of the organization.  So they have the complete power to decide anything and they need to also vote in the  board, several other positions like checkers, auditors and so on and ultimately the General  Assembly can change anything they like.  The General Assembly can also change the bylaws which is something the board cannot do directly.  So that's the separation between the board.  The board is responsible for the day-to-day operations.  The General Assembly is responsible for the directions of the EPS where it moves, which  direction it wants to take.  Of course the way it works is that most of the time the board does the propositions to  the General Assembly and then the General Assembly discusses those and then votes on  them.  And who can be part of the General Assembly?  Anyone?  Anyone in the EPS?  Any EPS member can be...  Basically can be...  Has both rights in the General Assembly.  General Assembly is where you get together, so the next talk essentially, where you get  together and then you vote on these things.  How can one help actually?  How do I know if I can help in a work group or not?  If you have a specific area where you'd like to help, then you need to let us know.  We have a sign-up form for this, but I must admit the sign-up process currently doesn't  really work that well.  Not so much because we don't want to have anyone onboarded to the work groups, but more  because the whole sign-up process is a bit onerous.  And this is something that we need to improve going forward.  We do have some work groups which are very popular, like the Program Work Group, for  example.  But the Program Work Group actually doesn't always want more people because they have  a decent size already.  So it's not necessarily a work group that needs more volunteers, but we have other work  groups which are desperate in need for more volunteers.  Like people, for example, the Media Work Group, dealing with the selecting video, recording,  arranging all that, or another work group that needs more help is Support Work Group.  The Support Work Group usually has a lot to do in the few months before the conference  and then of course at the conference because that's what they mostly do.  So they have to manage the help desk.  So that group needs more help.  We have a couple of others, like the... we have an Administration Work Group which we  have to basically consolidate these things a bit.  The original design of these work groups was basically taking all the different tasks that  we have in the EPS, taking them a bit apart and then separating them out into these work  groups.  I think we overdid it a bit and maybe we should just fold multiple work groups into just one  work group.  Because at the end of the day what happens is that the Admin Work Group and the Finance  Work Group and at this point also the Media Work Group is both you just and us and myself  and that's not really the point.  So we want to spread that load a bit more.  Also another comment on the...  Actually I don't know if I have enough time yet.  I don't know, five minutes, yeah.  Another comment, the board is very active.  So the board members are actually the most active people in the whole organization.  Except maybe for Alexander who's not on the board, he also did a lot.  But these are the people who do most of the work.  So in terms of signing up for a work group I think, well, we have to discuss, we have  to see how we can make the process better to get people into the work groups.  At this point it's probably better to not use the sign up form but instead just either  talk to the work group chairs that you know of those work groups or just write to the  board and then we can just...  We can say, okay, we need more help in this area and then maybe you can help there.  Okay, thanks.  More questions?  No?  So right after this talk we're going to have the general assembly of the EPS.  This is not a secret kind of operation anyone can basically attend.  I'd just like to ask to simplify the voting for everyone who is an EPS member to sit in  the front rows and then everyone else to sit for the back.  We have to create a list of all the people from the EPS who are present and then we can  go to the next talk.  The general assembly is generally a very boring operation.  Thank you.
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