Inspiration, dreams and thoughts.

Random things that matters (to me).

[asendecka]

Good Bye 2017!

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I started 2017 playing board games and ended it doing the same. And yes, you guessed right: this was a good year for me.

TLDR; This year I learnt how to write, petted a skunk and turned into a dementor.

January means one thing: everyone’s talking about resolutions and plans for the future. As much as it’s incredibly interesting to read about other people’s plans I don’t like making similar lists myself - plans usually fail and make me feel bad about it.

What I do instead (for the fourth year in a row right now - yay consistency!) is writing down what I did or accomplished in a previous year. I like coming back to my old posts and seeing how much I progressed in 12 months. It’s incredible how much energy and motivation it gives me for the future. It feels like I can do anything!

Writing this posts also makes me realize how lucky and privileged I am. I’m really grateful for 2017. But… there’s no time to waste: let’s dive in!

January

Coding Sprints, Breaking Repositories and Interviews

2017 started very well: I spent New Year’s Eve with my friends playing board games and I borrowed a book from Ola about brush lettering. That meant I started a new year not only doing what I like (games) but also starting a new hobby.

First week of January turned out pretty busy: Django Girls Foundation ran a weekend sprint on Django Girls tools. At the time, we desperately needed to automate new workshop application process. Number of applications to organize Django Girls workshop reached a very high numbers and it was consuming more and more time of our Ambassador, Lucie. We had to act.

This is how we (thank you Baptiste, Helen, Michael, Lucie, Ania, Patrys, Tomek, Rob and Ola!) ended up spending the first weekend of the year coding.

And let me tell you one thing: 14h of programming a day was fun. Until next Monday. Next Monday I broke a whole Django Girls repository whilst rewriting git history (don’t ask). Luckily, with Ania’s copy of the repo, we managed to restore everything.

January was also a time I was busy interviewing with a couple of companies. 2016 was a tough year for me, career-wise. One of the decisions I made before the end of the year was to find a new job and to be finally able to grow professionally.

In mid-January I flew to Poland to visit my family and friends and I made a final decision about where I want to work. After I came back to London, I accepted the offer from BuzzFeed. I was excited and terrified at the same time.

Last day of January I handed over my notice.

February

Brush Lettering and Handing Over Project

I started February learning brush lettering. I fell in love with Tombow brush pens and I spent a lot of money on pens and notebooks.

After the Django Girls sprint in January we still had some unfinished tasks that prevented us to fully use the tools we’ve built. So one day me and Ola simply made a tiny Django Girls sprint to finish up all the bits that were missing. Sometimes all you need to do is to sit down and do what needs to be done :).

Meanwhile in Potato I was wrapping up everything and handing over all of my projects. I felt sad to leave friends I made there, but I couldn’t wait for new things awaiting me in BuzzFeed.

But I would lie if I told you that I wasn’t anxious at all. I had so many worries and fears: “Will BuzzFeed be as good as I hope it to be?”, “What if I’ll turn out to be rubbish and won’t keep up with a work?”, “What if people won’t like me there?”. Typical stressing out about everything.

March

New Job, Musicals, Uncial Script and Go

March started with my wild 5-days-between-jobs. I’m not very good in planning a sabbatical to be honest. 🙈

I still managed to see two musicals (my beloved Wicked and Aladdin) and hang out with my friends who visited Tomek and me for a weekend.

On my first day in BuzzFeed I was welcomed with this:

and warned about not hiring a hitman when using the company’s WiFi ;).

Day 1 is always overwhelming. I felt like I didn’t know anything about programming. So. Many. New. Things. I knew nothing. But then, day 2 at work, I made my first deploy to production and I was so happy with myself, that I had to brag about it on Twitter.

The rest of the month was a rollercoaster: on some days I felt super confused, frustrated and lost and on others I thought I finally understand things and I could figure out anything.

I quickly realised that I’m very lucky: people I worked with turned out to be incredibly helpful and ready to jump into answering any question I had immediately. Big shout out to Mark for answering tens of my questions in these first weeks 🙇‍.

After a couple of weeks I even stopped apologizing for asking questions - and if you know me well, you know that means something!

Meanwhile, while I was starting my new job, Lucie quit Django Girls. Together with Ola we decided to hold on hiring a new person for a time being and we split Lucie’s responsibilities between two of us. We continued to do so until June.

Then I visited Django Girls London and gave a lightning talk there. As I hadn’t been at any event for a while, I enjoyed this immensely.

In my spare time I was learning even more calligraphy: this month I learnt uncial script following directions from an amazing Polish book about calligraphy called Piękna litera.

I also spent some time doing a technical review of Two Scoops of Django 1.11 by my friends Audrey and Danny (if you use Django and haven’t read the book, you should check it out - it’s amazing!). After I finished reviewing, Danny wrote to me this and it totally made my day… or, to be fair: my year!

It’s probably the best compliment I ever heard. Or maybe second best after Tomek telling me I’m an integral computing machine ;).

And it’s not all for March - that month did not want me to slow down at all!

I started my third week at BuzzFeed with learning some Go. Mark came to work prepared for that occasion with a Gopher mascot, stickers and a book about Go. As you could guess, I had no choice but to start liking Go.

By the end of my third week at work I also got a task to build a new quiz format from a 3 sentence specification. With new format’s gurus (Paul and Chris) being busy working on important projects I got a licence to do whatever I wanted. I was slightly terrified, but also super excited.

April

Hanging Out With Friends, Badass Ladies and Petting Baby Meerkat

Then April came bringing loads of fun. It was full of friends visits (Baptiste and Marta ❤️), spending some time outdoors (cliffs of Dover!), having a properly British afternoon tea at Ritz (scones are the best thing ever!) and petting a baby meerkat at work.

I still can’t get over the fact that skunk is the most cuddly animal ever. And I loved how funny Oreo the Raccoon was!

On Django Girls front we were thrilled to invite new, amazing ladies to join Django Girls Support Team: Aisha, Rachell and Dayoung. They brought loads of energy and fresh views to the team. They are incredibly inspiring badass ladies!

Last weekend of April me and Tomek visited our friends in Oslo.

I’m so impressed how good my April was.

May

Meeting Quiz Masterminds and Django Girls Hiring

I did a couple of interesting tasks at work and finally started working on the new quiz format and in May the slider quiz was ready for experiments. First editors started to try it out.

There was no builder for the quiz data yet - it was totally in an experimental mode! - creating a new quiz instance was a bit of manual process at the time: I was sent a spreadsheet and I converted it into JSON, by hand.

One of the editors, Anjali, mentioned that she is learning some coding and I asked her if she wanted me to show her how she could convert her quiz into JSON data on her own. She said yes. I feel this Slack conversation was one of this serendipitous events that make your life better. Since then we had a chance to do a couple of cool things together and I’m so glad we chatted that day :).

It was a prime time for Django Girls Foundation to start thinking about hiring a new Django Girls Ambassador. We started recrutation and interviews. It was a massive effort, but we knew that the time we spend in the process will free our time in the following months. I’m still impressed how many amazing applications we received! Finally, instead of hiring one person, we decided to hire two! We still sticked to the same number of hours we could afford as a Foundation, but this time we had Claire joining us as the Ambassador and Anna, joining us as a Fundraising Coordinator.

June

The Lead Developer, New York and Roof Terrace

At the beginning of the year I promised myself to do a no-conference year in 2017. I almost sticked to this plan. I made an exception for conferences that took place in London and the first one happened in June: The Lead Developer. I really enjoyed it: loads of talks gave me a lot to think about. Make sure to check out the videos, because there is a lot of very good stuff there!

After the conference I flew to New York to BuzzFeed office and met so many people there. I had around 20 meetings that week and I was properly exhausted by the end of the trip. I’m one of these people that can be social, but they need some time alone and not speaking to anyone for a couple of days afterwards.

I felt a bit like after a conference: I came back very tired, but also very inspired. And to be fair, I should not complain, as I was having at least half of my meetings on the roof terrace with a view like this:

During this week I’ve been recruited to join BuzzFeed Hack Week organizers committee, too. Exciting!

A day after I came back from New York, Claire came over to London and we had a fun day doing Django Girls Onboarding. I still remember how good the guacamole bagel I ate that day was.

Finally, at the end of the month, Tomek’s family came to visit us in London. That was a perfect excuse to do a bit of sightseeing. We visited Windsor, Eton and Cambridge on that occasion.

July

Hack Week, Alpaca and Moving Flats

July was a super fun month. First of all: Hack Week! Whole BuzzFeed tech stopped working on their normal tasks for a week and was allowed to work on anything we wanted. I went wild and ordered so many tasty sweet stuff, so the London office had a DIY ice-cream station and delicious mini-cupcakes.

I was also tweeting that week under @buzzfeedexp Twitter account - the account that is taken over by a different person from BuzzFeed tech org for a week.

I teamed up with Paul, Anjali and Celine and we’ve built a new format together. I can’t imagine a better team, to be honest. We had so much fun! By the end of the week we had a working thing in production, and some editors writing quizzes dedicated to the format. Paul absolutely smashed a demo of our work on Friday and I was so, so proud.

Then at work we learned results of a company-wide survey. It turned out BuzzFeed tech is quite frustrated with a documentation. I decided to do something about it and with a bunch of people we started a #better-docs movement. It kind of happened organically, without a proper plan and we ended up forming a group of volunteers working actively on improving the docs - with weekly stand-ups and big plans! We are about to run our first Documentation Day in 2 weeks time for example!

Oh, and I got a plush alpaca from Paul at work. It’s good to be friends with Paul.

We also celebrated a 3rd Django Girls birthday in July. This time with a Twitter hashtag: #IAmADjangoGirl. I love this community!

But July was not only fun projects and exciting things at work. I had my fair share of stress as well. Me and Tomek got a letter from our landlord that all tenants in the building we lived in had to move out by the end of September. We had a lot of travelling planned in the next months, so we had to figure out our flat situation as soon as possible.

August

New Flat, Brush Lettering Workshop and Mentorship Program

Exactly two weeks after we got the letter from the landlord, we moved to a new flat. These were a very stressful two weeks and I feel it took me weeks to recover from the stress of moving flats so fast.

But to brighten things up: together with Ola I took part in a brush lettering workshop. OMG. It was the best thing ever. I can’t even explain how much I loved it. I spent whole weekend trying to paint letters with a real brush (brush pens seem like a toy now!) with a shaky hand. It’s so hard, but also gives you so much freedom in lettering styles! I feel this workshop is one of the highlights of my year.

I also attended my first Go conference. A keynote speaker wore a Django Girls’ “This is What a Programmer Looks Like” T-Shirt and it made my day!

This month we also published a Django Girls impact report Anna prepared and I was incredibly proud and amazed by the impact Django Girls is making in people’s life. It still blows my mind.

At work I started tech leading Video Team and became a mentor in a mentorship program. I felt challenged and super excited. I was trying to silence my inner voice telling me that I’m an imposter and I don’t deserve it.

Oh, and mentorship program was incredible! Being a mentor is one of the best things that happen to me professionally this year. I learned so much during our pair programming sessions with Laryssa and we built some fun things together.

Finally, I flew to Poland to visit my family. I decided to work full-time when being there and it turned out much harder than I thought it would be. I came back more tired than I was before flying there. But I was so grateful and happy to see my family and friends!

September

Los Angeles, Meeting Friends & Family and Italy

3 days after flying back from Poland, I boarded a plane to Los Angeles. I flew to LA BuzzFeed office for a design sprint. I spent 4 very intense days there learning loads of amazing things. We started with nothing and by the end of the week we had a prototype to show and we tested it with users.

I was also thrilled that I managed to meet with Danny and Audrey once there - they cancelled their plans to meet me and it was amazing to see them after so many years!

When I came back from LA I started to plan the work with my team. I was starting my holidays soon and I knew I would come back only 5 days before the deadline. I’m really good in planning time-off…

My family came to visit me as well, so I spent my free time acting as a tourist guide.

Finally, I was ready for my two weeks vacations and I flew to Italy.

October

Italian Road Trip, Deadlines and Dementor

Oh, Italy… I had such an amazing time there! And in such a great company. First week was dedicated to chilling in a villa with a swimming pool in the middle of Sicily. Second week was time for a road trip: we took an overnight ferry from Sicily to Naples (which was super fun!), we visited Pompeii, Amalfi Coast (it’s a paradise!), Rome, Florence and wonderful Tuscany. Last day of our trip our AirBnB host (who turned out to be a restaurator) taught us how to make a pizza from scratch and we had an incredibly fun evening with him and his family.

I wish I could stay there longer.

But work was waiting for me and once I came back it was only a couple of days before the deadline. The team did incredible job though and on Friday 13th Oct we launched this. I’m so grateful and proud.

Oh, and I also built my Halloween costume! I dressed as a Dementor from the Harry Potter books. I made a whole construction on the backpack and spent loads of hours building bones from the wire, pool noodle and masking tape… or dying a cheesecloth. But the end result was worth the effort:

As I agreed to give a keynote on PyCon Argentina I was busy working on my talk, too.

November

Thermal Baths, House Warming Parties and PyCon Argentina

November started with the best birthday weekend I could imagine. Tomek took me to thermal baths in Bath and we spent loads of time in the parks.

We finally had time to organize long overdue house-warming parties. We did three :D.

At work, I had quite a lot of things on my plate and things started to be more complicated and challenging for me on many new levels. It was hard, but I also felt I’m learning so much!

Finally, at the end of the month I flew to Cordoba and gave a talk about Code Reviews at PyCon Argentina.

I’m so impressed by the Argentinian community and how welcoming everyone was there. I feel grateful and humbled by their work.

December

So Many Meetings, Ice Skating and Bruges

And finally December came. It started for me with a one more work trip to New York. This time I did more than 40 meetings and - surprisingly - I felt less exhausted than I was during my first trip half a year before. That’s an improvement! I also enjoyed a team night out featuring hot-pot and karaoke. It was super fun!

I came back and had a lovely team outing on a ice rink! I still can’t believe how lucky I am working with such an amazing bunch of people.

On the 15th I started my holiday break by visiting Bruges for a weekend. Visiting Bruges was on my list of places to visit for a very long time (especially after seeing “In Bruges” movie) and it was a magical place to be around Christmas time.

The rest of the month was all about chilling, decorating, cookie baking and doing all the homely, Christmas-y things. I reread Harry Potter books again. I rewatched all the movies as well. We went to see a Christmas carols concert with Tomek, too. All our small traditions around this time of the year.

I finally had some time to practice brush lettering a bit more as well. And I see some progress, which makes me very happy!

To make this year even better, my friend Kasia visited us for New Year’s Eve and I could not imagine a better company to finish 2017.

To be honest I can’t believe how busy 2017 was for me. I thought 2016 was quite hectic with two conferences I co-organized. But I look at all I wrote (I wonder if anyone managed to read the whole thing!) and I see: how much things I learnt this year, how many amazing people I met and how much fun I had. It was a good year. Tiring, hectic, but very rewarding.

I wish myself 2018 to be at least as challenging and fun as 2017 was. I hope I will learn new skills next year, I’ll go outside of my comfort zone a couple of times, I’ll meet interesting and inspiring people and I’ll have loads of good time with my family and friends. I want to make 2018 a good year.

I wish you the same.

Happy New Year!

[asendecka]

My Advent Clendar 2016

One of the Christmas traditions I really like is advent calendars. Internet is so hyped about them right now. You open any random YouTube channel or blog and you will find someone with one… or ten of them. Chocolate, make-up, teas, coffees, LEGOs… you name it. You can buy any advent calendar you like. But I wanted something different. Something that will give me a warm fuzzy feeling of being at home. Something that will also make me learn something new. I love taking pictures and I really wanted to do something with photography as well. And then [Ola](https://twitter.com/olasitarska) came up with an idea of me taking pictures of people I like. And I immediatelly knew this is it! So here it is: for 25 days I was taking pictures of people I like. I’m really lucky to have so many amazing, interesting and different people around me! Enjoy!

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[asendecka]

How to implement your Code of Conduct?

I think that Django and Python community are very forward thinking and strive to be inclusive and welcoming to everyone. I am really proud of many things that happened in last years and I’m looking forward to what future brings.

However, even though there is a lot of things that our community is doing right, there is loads of things we could improve.

In last three years me and Baptiste were serving as a Code of Conduct points of contact at 5 major Python and Django conferences. And the more we are involved in this topic, the more we are aware there is so much things that do not work well yet. At DjangoCon Europe 2016 Code of Conduct played a big role and was in a spotlight. But after the conference, we felt there is still so much to do and we have to share what we’ve learnt so far.

We decided to prepare the talk about how the Code of Conduct works in practice for the DjangoCon US 2016 this year and this post sums up what we told on stage in Philadelphia. Thank you Baptiste for preparing it with me! (Please note that this blogpost should be credited not only to me, but to Baptiste who is a co-author of the content presented here).

A little bit of history

Let’s go back first to first movements to implement Code of Conduct in Python & Django community. It’s not that easy - Baptiste spent loads of time trying to figure out what was first and what influenced what. Since it is super hard to find a starting point for the whole tech industry we will focus on our community.

It seems that the crucial year for CoC was 2012. In March PyCon US implemented one, followed by DjangoCon Europe in Zurich. At the end of the year, on 21st of November, PSF enforces organisers of conferences to have CoC if they want to be sponsored by the foundation.

A few weeks later, on 9th of January DSF board voted to only fund events with a Code of Conduct as well. Next big milestone was April 2013 when Python community officially adopts Code of Conduct. Soon after that, in July, Django community do it as well.

It was good enough to be showcased as a good example of a community Code of Conduct by Ada Initiative.

Why you should even bother?

Well, first implementing Code of Conduct is not that easy. We all are familiar with Code of Conduct text, we know we should strive to be inclusive, welcoming and tolerant to each other. But we not necessarily talk what to do, when things actually happen. You might organise some event in your city, a meet up or conference. Or you have an open source project and you want others to be co-operative and focus on what is same for all of us: on passion to technology.

But then something unpleasant happen and you are there, you need to act and make sure that no more harm is done.

Or other scenario: you attend the conference and you made some stupid joke and you were reported. Now what? What you could expect? Will it end up as a Internet drama that will cost both you and reporter a job?

Not necessarily.

We will explain how it works, but first we want to give you a taste of how hard it is from Code of Conduct Response Team point of view to make everything right.

Response Team

But first - what is a Response Team? This is a group of people responsible for enforcing Code of Conduct. They receive reports and are in charge of handling them.

And if you think that being in Response Team gives a power over attendees or participants of your open source community and are worried that it will be used against them, you are wrong. It is a service to the community, requiring loads of empathy and diplomacy skills.

Working in Response Team means hours or even days of hard work. It is also hardly visible from outside and incredibly stressful. Not type of work you want to do if you want to gain power.

It’s so hard to have it right in one go

Being in Response Team means loads of responsibilities. For example, having an emergency phone with yourself 24h a day during the event in case something happens. You can imagine how stressful it is when it actually rings or just makes a text message sound.

I and Baptiste worked with amazing people in our community who are trying to make a process as smooth and reliable as possible and we have loads of tips and tricks to share. However, even though the topic is dear to our hearts, we make mistakes.

We are far from being perfect.

Not having explicit rules.

For example, in 2015 during DUTH conference, we introduced a Slack channel for attendees. It worked amazing - people where finding roommates, discussed talks, asked questions and helped each other. It was a really great place to socialise and feel that you are part of the community. However, we made two mistakes.

First of them was not being clear how long the Slack channel should live. We created it and left it open without any time constraints and people kept using it months after the conference, when we all forgot about it.

The second mistake was to not being explicit about the rules of this online space. Are private messages OK? Advertising? Posting job offers? This ended up creating conflict between two people who understood the implicit rules differently.

The moral of this story is that creating spaces for people to interact, you need to set explicit rules of what is acceptable and what is not.

Thinking about obvious

At DjangoCon Europe 2016 there was another example of something we haven’t thought through well enough. We decided to make Code of Conduct super visible and we put loads of effort to create a welcoming and safe space: we had dedicated emergency numbers, posters reminding about CoC, we mentioned about CoC in every e-mail to attendees and reminded about it at the beginning of every day. We tried to go far and beyond to do everything right, yet we ended up forgetting about something incredibly obvious.

There was no e-mail address dedicated to Code of Conduct. So you either phoned one of the emergency number - which is not perfect if you are like me and you are scared to talk with strangers in a foreign language via phone - or you tried to tweet about it - and making CoC public matter is usually not the best idea ever.

We realised the mistake by the end of the first day and corrected it, but we have no idea how we haven’t notice it’s missing quicker.

Be careful with social media

We made another mistake at this conference. We used official conference hashtag and we encouraged our attendees to use it. But we did not monitored it closely and we ended up being too quick to share and broadcast tweets from the official account.

Having the online spaces for your attendees is great, but it’s also an extra responsibility for you. You need to set explicit and clear rules.

Now we know that as a part of our Code of Conduct duties we should monitor social media and react quickly when things happen there.

It’s harder on you than you expect

Being a member of Response Team carries a great responsibility and you need to be prepared for the burden of enforcing Code of Conduct. And it is not an easy job. If you read my previous blogpost you know how emotionally drained and tired I felt after DjangoCon Europe in April.

At 2015 at Django: Under the Hood we totally underestimates how much effort and time it takes. We had tiny team of two people who had other responsibilities during the conference. We ended up dropping whatever we were doing to handle CoC things, which is not perfect if you run an event for hundreds of people and there is something else you should do at the same time, too.

Where CoC applies?

Another example of things we learnt a hard way is to be sure that we are explicit where our Code of Conduct applies. It is especially relevant if the event is followed by official party or there is a speaker’s dinner or any other place attendees interact with each other.

Again, this is a part of setting explicit boundaries: which space belongs to the conference and which doesn’t? What are the rules for each space? You should be verbal about it, especially if there is alcohol involved. Some people under the influence can lose their sense of responsibility. But you - as an organiser - are always responsible for the safety of the attendees.

Let them ask

Another example of us failing to establish explicit rules upfront was the way we handled speaker questions at DjangoCon Europe 2016. We had an unwritten “no comments, only questions” policy. The thing is we haven’t communicated it clearly and we ended up with some awkward moments and stress when we interrupted people making comments after the talk.

When we realised it, we made the policy more obvious, but we wish we were more clear about it from the very beginning.

Keep private things private

When you book a venue for the event you probably look for a main room where event will be held. You will check that bathrooms are accessible, if there is room for serving lunch. But you might not think about a private space you can use any time needed when dealing with Code of Conduct issues.

These issues can be sensitive and you should not discuss them in the hall while people walk around you.

We did this mistake: at DUTH 2015 we had to look for the space we could use and still someone interrupted us. And at DjangoCon Europe we used organisers room and there were times where other organisers, who were not part of CoC Response Team had limited access to the room.

You will never be perfect

These are some of the things we learnt last years and we try to keep track of our mistakes to not repeat them again. All these happened even though we all were extremely dedicated to do the best job possible.

And we don’t fool ourselves: we will make mistakes, we will never do everything 100% right. It’s a living, evolving process and there will always be something unexpected we are not prepared to.

Plan for failure

That is why we try to prepare ourselves for failure. We will mess up at some point. Some things will be serious, some not that much. But we need to be prepared to handle any situation, even if that means we have to put your ego in the pocket and apologise on stage. Listen to feedback carefully and be open for critics.

It’s not a big deal.

In a way some of Code of Conduct issues are not a big deal. If you made some joke that non-native speakers couldn’t understand and made them feel awkward for example - it’s a stupid joke, it’s not a big deal, right? You meant well and just made a mistake.

And in a way it’s not a big deal from offender point of view. When someone reports you, except some really serious offences, Code of Conduct is not aimed to make you feel unwelcome in the community. You don’t need to quit and never speak to anyone anymore. You are still valuable member of the community.

Or is it?

But at the same time it is a big deal. Because that tiny little inappropriate comment was a thousand one the person heard in last month and will make them quit. There is a term: death by thousand cuts and I personally experienced this tiny, little things that make you feel frustrated.

What matters from Code of Conduct Response Team point of view is an objective outcome of your actions. If your action excludes someone from our community we will act and give you necessary feedback, so you will know better in a future and will have chance to improve.

We hope that by making sure that small things are taken care of, we send a message that bad behaviour will not be tolerated. We want to make sure that people know that we deeply care and we want everyone feel welcome and appreciated and we will take their words seriously. Our main goal is to build trust, so that more people will feel fine sharing their concerns and speaking up.

CoC in practice - step by step

Ok, so what really happens when you report something to CoC Response Team? Or if someone reports you?

Let’s use some completely made up example:

Step 1: Receive a report

A report comes in by e-mail, linking to the tweet that is making fun of one of the speakers under the conference hashtag.

Step 2: Let reporter know

First thing you have to do is to let the reporter know that you received the report and you will handle the situation. This is important, because it means that you take a responsibility for handling the situation. As an organiser you probably prefer doing that yourself instead of seeing people trying to solve it on the Internet by public shaming.

It also starts a “paper trail”, which documents handling of the incident.

Step 3: Gather the team

Next, you should gather the team to talk about the incident. coordinate the response and assign tasks to everyone. Having a team reduces stress of making hard decisions and makes it less emotional and more fair.

Step 4: Gather the information and facts

Now it’s time to take the screenshot of the tweet and gather as much information as possible. We quickly determine that the tweet indeed was not appropriate and was written by one of the attendees. We found that the person posted a photo of his badge earlier and we can cross-check the name with the list of attendees.

Gathering facts early on means you don’t have to rely on your memory.

Step 5: Decide on actions

At the end of the team meeting we decided on our next actions: we will speak to the offender and ask them to delete the tweet.

You should have at least some idea in mind how to resolve the situation to minimise the damage.

Step 6: The “talk”

We find the offender during the next break and ask them discretely to join two of us in a private room.

Two members of Code of Conduct Response Team (ideally different genders or representing different perspectives) seems to be ideal for this kind of talk. One person is too little and more people is too much, too intimidating.

During the meeting we first explain to the offender what was reported and we ask them about their side of the story. This step is crucial - both parties have to have a chance to explain their point of view. It is also important to explain to the offender how their behaviour violates the Code of Conduct.

You should not expect that offender will come up with a solution how to handle situation - you should be prepared yourself and inform them what you expect them to do.

The offender is cooperative and agrees that the tweet was inappropriate and deletes it on the spot.

Step 7: Gather the team again

Now it’s time to gather the team again and inform about the outcome of the talk: that person is cooperative and will delete the tweet. We that the tweet is indeed gone.

It is important to make a final decisions together as a team and keep everyone in loop.

Step 8: Write a report

During the meeting one person starts writing an incident report, establishing timeline, facts and people involved. Writing report immediately is a key, since the more time passes the more inaccurate it will be. And it’s better to do it straight away then you have whole team to check it and fill in the gaps.

Step 9: Follow-up

We send an e-mail to the reporter with the list of actions we took. We also thank them for reporting.

Again, this establishes a “paper trail” and lets reporter know that we indeed took responsibility. This is how you build trust in your Code of Conduct.

We also send an e-mail to offender, repeating everything we talked about during the talk and writing down the agreed outcome. We let them know that the case is closed.

Step 10: Inform DSF & transparency report

Since we finished actions on site, the only remaining things to do are to inform DSF about the incident and publish the anonymised transparency report describing the incident. This should be done after the event in one go.

The DSF acts as a long-term memory to track repeated offences. Please read how DSF handle this reports here. This should be e-mailed to Code of Conduct Committee only.

A transparency reports on other hand is something publicly available. It help to demystify the work of CoC team. Here we make sure no details that would help someone to identify either a reporter or offender are available. It shows that CoC is actually working, builds trust and shows what kind of behaviours are not ok in the light of our policies.

At this point we consider the case closed.

It’s more complex than that

In a real life things can be much more complex than the given example. Please note it was very straight forward: offender identity was known and the person was cooperative and the damage was minimised by deleting the tweet.

But things could easily go much more complicated than this and Response Team faces many challenges. Very often you need to improvise and make a good call on a spot. And always you need to have one main goal in your mind: ensure people’s safety.

That is why you should prepare yourself for the worse. Make sure to have emergency numbers at hand or that there is a security staff at the venue if you need to expel somebody. The more prepared you are the better. Handling Code of Conduct issues is incredibly stressful and having “just-in-case” scenarios will save you loads of that.

The formal process

Hopefully, after reading all above (if you reached to this point - it’s a very long post!) you see that the Code of Conduct Response Team has a lot more work than it seems from outside and it’s not easy. You might end up spending whole event dealing only with it.

We know that the process we describe here is far from perfect, but still, we are very proud of actually having a process in place. It is probably on of the first ones for Django conferences and we want to make sure to share it and allow more people use it and improve it.

Having a formal process of handling CoC issues makes it so much easier to make a good call when things happens and takes some of the emotional factor out of the equation.

This is why together with Ola Sitarska we started documenting the process and we are proud to announce that we released our notes and process online so that everyone can use it and improve it.

http://www.coc-handbook.com/

It is still work in progress and there are some TODOs and rough edges, but we are slowly filling in the gaps.

Inclusivity

We’ve seen how CoC can be implemented in practice, but it’s important to keep in mind that CoC is not there for it’s own sake or as a tool of punishment or enforcement of some vague shared values.

For us it’s one of the tools in our tool belt to make our events and our community more inclusive and welcoming together with things like: making sure your venue is accessible, providing childcare, gender-neutral bathrooms, food that accommodates everyone’s diet etc..

Culture is built by the community as a whole

And being inclusive and welcoming is not only a task of the organisers or employers at your workplace. We - as a community - are building our culture together and all these things are everyone’s responsibility. Building a safe and welcoming community is a very hard task and we would love to ask every single member of this community to help with achieving that.

Even though we are far from perfect, there is loads we need to learn and improve we push the limits and set higher and better standards every single year.

We believe that Django community will never ever stop pursuing being an inclusive and awesome community we are so proud to be part of.

[asendecka]

DjangoCon Empathy Duty

A couple of days ago I came back from Budapest. I feel exhausted, even though I spent whole Monday soaking in thermal baths and catching more sun than I was exposed to in last two months.

After every conference I co-organize, I feel the same mixture of happiness and sadness, tiredness and excitement. Everything seems bitter-sweet. There is also a huge relief. It’s done, everything worked out in the end and it’s time to relax and slowly move on to another exciting project.

I already learnt how to deal with post-conference blues… and there is no reason to feel down - the organisers machine for Django Under the Hood was started and ideas for new exciting projects set in motion.

What I didn’t expected after the DjangoCon is that - apart from a big sense of achievement and doing something good - I would end up feeling emotionally drained and the time to recover will be much, much longer than usually.

But let’s first take a look what we managed to achieve this year. I'm super proud how much this amazing team managed to create.

DjangoCon Europe 2016 in a nutshell

I don’t even know where to start. There were so many amazing things about this conference.

Speakers & programme

DjangoCon Europe 2016 was a first DjangoCon in history where there was 54% female speakers. We still have loads to improve - there are other underrepresented groups who still had no sufficient exposure at DjangoCon, but we believe we are on a good track.

We made sure that programme is very diverse. Everyone could find something interesting. Topics varied from Django channels, service workers and HTTP 2.0, through microservices, translations, Java Script, debugging, mocking, Internet of Things to emojis, building Django ORM backend, GIS, security and migrations.

I'm super proud of Mikey and Erik, who stepped up and tackled very important topic of mental health. I loved that talk! If you haven't seen it - go watch it now!

On top of that - following the main theme of the conference: intersectionality - we invited people from others communities to give amazing and inspiring keynotes. Because we believe that we need to go outside our Python bubble and learn from others, too.

Mentors, scholarships and inclusivity

Thanks to help of volunteers, we could offer help in writing a proposal and then preparing the talk.

We also had a scholarship programme - together with DSF we secured 10000€ for this purpose - the record for any Django event in Europe! We also collaborated with Django Girls Budapest chapter offering free tickets for the workshop attendees.

We tried to find many different ways to include as many people as possible: we offered a childcare, prayer room, quiet room and speakers room. We started a Slack channel where attendees could meet each other, find a roommate or just talk about the conference. We made sure there is a clear etiquette stated there, too.

Following the example of DjangoCon Cardiff we invited stenographers, who flew from UK to do live captioning for us. It was not only a way to include people with hearing impariment, but it was important thing for people who are not native English speakers.

It’s all about details

We had many small things that were meant to make a life of attendees easier and nicer: in each bathroom we had a basket containing various things: toothbrushes, deodorants, toothpastes, antibacterial gels, tampons, painkillers and so on. We had posters: “Yay! You made it!” and “You look nice today”. Small things, but they make a difference.

We also had a posters about bathrooms:

Credit: @codingrixx Credit: Dori Czapari

We prepared special badge, too: cassette that contained a podcast created by people from Django & Python community. Instead of t-shirts, we decided to have something perfectly gender neutral: socks.

We prepared a booklet with some amazing things inside: regex crossword or cookie recipe by Adrienne. We had pins with our official emoji (🎷) and temporary tattoos.

We tried to organise the party in such a way that everyone could feel welcome and safe. We made sure there are non-alcoholic drinks available, there is a space for people who does not feel well with bigger gatherings and had a board games upstairs. We also had a jazz concert during the party.

Thanks to Opbeat, DjangoCon had also a live streaming, allowing many people to join the conference remotely. It also made it possible to watch the talks on other floors in conference venue avoiding a crowd in a main room.

Code of Conduct

And finally I’m reaching the Code of Conduct, which pretty much defines this year's DjangoCon for me.

Almost all the things listed above are a logical result of our Code of Conduct. Because it is not only a try-except clause for any unpleasant things that happen during the conference.

Code of Conduct is about care. It’s about an effort we put to make people feel welcome. Effort that we belive should always be included when organizing a community event. It’s covering your back if you forgot your toothpaste or you have a headache. It’s making sure you feel safe and welcome. That you feel included.

Code of Conduct is there, so you could speak freely, without worrying that someone will make fun of you, because you ask newbie question. It’s about respecting each other. No matter if you just started coding a day before or you are an expert in the field - we want you to to be part of the community.

Ups and down

I must admit - even though it’s not the first conference I was a part of the Code of Conduct team (or CoC Active Response Ensurers - CARE) - this year’s DjangoCon was the hardest one for me. Me, Ola, Rob and Baptiste literally spent at least half of the conference dealing with Code of Conduct issues. It was hard, emotionally draining and stressful (hello shaky hands!).

Process

After Django Under the Hood 2015, Ola drafted a Code of Conduct process based on the experiences from the conference. At DjangoCon we used it as a base for our actions - a formal process that helped us do better job when dealing with different situations. It also made sure we were treating all the issues with the same care and fairness.

Code of Conduct was everywhere. There were posters about it - even in the elevator. We reminded about Code of Conduct in e-mails and opening/closing talks. Accepting it was necessary to buy the ticket for the conference.

We had two Code of Conduct phones and dedicated [email protected] email address. We also monitored #djangocon hashtag on Twitter.

Basically, we tried every single thing we could think of to make it easy to reach us in case something was not right.

Difficulty

Even though it was the first time we followed a formal process, we had to improvise many times - every issue was different and had something unexpected we had to deal with. There were oversights on our account and we made sure to publicly apologise for them.

I’m really glad our team contained four people - I have no idea how we would survive it and stay sane with only two of us. It’s too big responsibility and huge amount of stress.

I missed loads of conference fun sitting in organisers room discussing next steps and trying to figure out the way to handle each situation. But I think it’s ok. Because I believe the work we did matters.

I don’t think there is any more awkward and uncomfortable role you could have during the conference than being in Code of Conduct team. But I also think it’s something that is essential for the feeling of inclusion and safety we tried to achieve at DjangoCon. We had the creditability of DjangoCon and the Django community on our shoulders and I hope we did not let anyone down.

Improvement

We noticed that a number of Code of Conduct reports slowly goes up with ever event we organize. Even though that means an extra work for us, it also shows that people start to feel more comfortable to react and report things that are not right. That is a huge step forward to achieve a supporting and welcoming community. I am grateful for every single report and trust people put on us.

Now it’s time to take all the new things we learnt and add them to our process. It will make it easier on us next time we will need to deal with something similar. We believe we are on a good track.

Recovery

In general if I have to sum up what I was doing most of the time at DjangoCon, I would say that I was on Empathy Duty. It was incredibly exhausting and hard and I feel I need a time off from it for a day or two.

I already knew that being mentally tired is harder on me than physical fatigue. But now I discovered that empathy-tiredness created the most exhausted version of me.

If you organize the conference and you will be in a Code of Conduct team, my advice for you is to make sure you are well rested, you have loads of energy, you are not burned out or overwhelmed by anything - you will need all your empathy and stamina.

Make sure to not take any other important responsiblities, because you should be ready to drop everything you are doing to go and handle Code of Conduct reports.

And finally, make sure to give yourself time to recover after the event. Your mental health and wellbeing is very important. And remember: you are making a positive difference! Be proud of that!

[asendecka]

Women Who Inspire Me: Part 1

A couple of days ago it was an International Women's Day and my Twitter feed was full of amazing stories and loads of positivity. I totally love to read about women who made a difference in the world and it always makes me more motivated and happy. But if I want to be frank with you, I had to confess that my enthusiasm after reading something in the internet or watching yet another TEDx last only for a while.

Though, there are women who made a big difference in my life and made me the person I am now. And it’s not a surprise that these women - women who inspire, motivate and give me strength - are those who I know personally.

Today I want to tell you about one of the first women who was my role model and taught me that you could do big things, even when facing problems that are far beyond anything you could imagine.

Today I would love you to meet my great grandmother: Elżbieta (or as I called her: grandma Ela).

Time Machine and Clocks That Are Always Fast

I was lucky enough to grow up living with her for 14 years under the same roof and then she was still a big part of my life for many more years until she died in the age of 97.

Imagine how lucky I was: in the morning I was learning about Piłsudski (a famous Polish politician and statesman from between the World War I and II) at History class and then I was coming home to hear all the jokes about Piłsudski my great grandma still remembered. It was like having your private time machine!

When we lived together, almost every night our great grandmother used to come to our room when me and my siblings switched off the light. She usually had a clock in her hand to set the right time. She hated being late so she owned many clocks and she always set time for each of them to show time later than it was. The result was that she never knew what a real time was (every single one was showing a different time) and she was coming to set her clock (with 5 or 10 minute offset obviously!).

I think the clock was only an excuse to come. Almost every single time she stayed longer with us, telling us stories: historical, biblical or - our favourite ones - from her own life: before, during and after the World War II.

Facing Unimaginable

During the war she was deported to Siberia against her will with my grandfather who was four at the time. She was wearing a summer dress and thought she is going home (at the beginning of the war she fled to her brother in Volyn, but it turned out she is not safe there). Instead she was placed in the train in Kostopil and 2 weeks later she ended up in Perm where she had to change to steamboat and was deported further to Maykor. She was more than three thousand kilometers from home. It took her 6 years to be able to come back.

Her stories were amazing. We closed our eyes and tried to imagine endless steppe full of flowers. Or scary taiga with deadly low temperatures and loads of snow.

I remember her tips how to avoid losing your ears or nose because of frostbite: if it turns white, you should use snow to warm your body (and you should not grab it with hands unless you want your nose or ear to stay in your hand!). I remember her telling us that death by freezing is the gentlest way possible - you stop feeling cold at some point and just slowly go to sleep. Stories of scary moments when she was about to be shot being accused that she is a spy or when she had to escape at night, being warned by her hostess that her husband is out to fetch some neighbors to come and kill them. Or - after the war was over - when she illegally travelled back with her family to Poland without passports (because they were officially treated as people without any citizenship). She was brave enough to put herself in a spotlight to save her family from the control.

When I lived with her she had her own separate fridge that was always full. I was kind of scared by it, since loads of old food was there - she never throw away any food. I even remember some literally rusted can of something that was at least 30 years old. And super old mints were amazing!

This food-saving obsession is not a surprise after many years she was hungry. While being on Siberia even when everyone was almost starving she was able to save food for worse times - little by little, just in case something even more horrible happens.

I also remember a story when they were lucky to get some bloodand they made blood pancakes which - she claimed to be amazing.

Making Something Good For Others

She was always very active and she could not do nothing. In Siberia she learnt the language and she started to help others. She organised school and kindergarten for both Polish and Russian children in Raskatovo and she was tirelessly helping people and always making sure that everyone is treated equally.

Me and my siblings were so sure that she has magical powers, since she used to do fortunetelling from Tarot cards while being in Siberia and she seemed to be very good at it. As young teenagers me and my sister tried to convince her to teach it to us, but she refused saying that after coming back from Siberia she was not doing that anymore.

And this is just a small drop of the stories. We loved the ones before the war the most - they were cheerful, but also frightening: like the one about her stalker who wanted to kill her when he learnt she is engaged.

But there was so much more than these stories in my great grandma. I saw her every day and I leanrt from her.

The person I knew was an energetic lady with a big sense of humour and loads of charisma. She was never soft with kids, but she cared about us a lot. We used to come to her after school asking for something sweet and she always found something. But she also made sure it's not free sweets: she asked us to do our homework first. And of course - we had to share it with each other.

I remember being happy reading an article in a local newspaper about her: she was in her eighties at the time and she was still working. She was retired but she worked as a volunteer speech therapist and in a special needs school. I remember kids coming to our house, because she was tutoring them.

Learning Empathy

When I look back at my childhood I think that my great grandma was one of people who taught me empathy.

Every time me and my siblings fought with each other my grandma was there explaining us other person's emotions and how we should be nice and supportive to each other. I remember her coming to us from time to time convincing us: “You should clean up your room. Your mom will come back tired from work and she will be so happy if she sees that you cleaned the room.”.

I remember her being proud of my mom when she finished university with Master degree (which is not easy with three small kids at home). I also remember her from the tough side - when she faced people who wanted to get rid of her from the flat we rented.

I wish I am as strong as she was. She knew what she wanted and she stayed with her decisions even when other people were not happy with it. Maybe one day I will be half as good in that as she was?

Always Young

One day she was telling my brother a war story and she could not remember a surname of one of the generals involved. She was so worried! After a longer moment when she realised that she forgot the name she said to my brother very, very concerned: “Mateuszku, I fear that maybe I am starting to get old” (she was in her nineties!).

Till her death (she was 97) she remained independent - she lived alone and refused to get any help. Her health was getting worse and it seemed that she could not live by herself anymore and we were all very concerned.

One day she phoned my mom asking about everyone: what are my brother’s plans for future (he was finishing high school), how I and my sister are doing at the university? It seemed that she checked that everyone is alright. She died next week - she just went to sleep, being able to say goodbye to everyone.

I think I am very lucky she was part of my life for such a long time. I learned from her a lot and now I see how much influence she had on me, my sister and my brother. I wish I have half of the charisma and determination she had. I wish I’m as strong as she was. And I always wonder what would happen if she was born 100 years later? She was born in 1910 when women had no voting rights and had really not too many options. Along the way so many things limited her: society, war, men - she was able to survive all of these and make the best out of any situation. What would she be able to achieve if she had all the things I had when I grew up? I will never know, but I know it would be something amazing.

How about you?

Who is the woman who made a positive difference in your life?

I am lucky enough to have a book that describes family story during the war. The book is written by my grandfather cousin - Andrzej Cisek - who was deported to Siberia as a very small kid with my great grandmother and my grandfather. I remember my great grandmother writing long, long letters to Andrzej when he was writing this book. Unfortunately, it is only in Polish.

[asendecka]

I’m 2016-ready!

Yes, it’s this time of the year: new year’s resolutions and plans. Reading all the retrospectives of my friends, seeing how much progress they made and what they plan to do I decided that it’s about time to write my own. I was thinking about it since Christmas, but I was not sure if I want to do this or not. Today I felt that I want to - even though it will be pretty personal - share with you what 2015 was for me. It is long post and I suspect not very interesting for anyone who is not me, but it is important for me to write it all down. Because I’m proud. Proud of myself.

2015 retrospective

It was a hard year for me. Extremely interesting, challenging and exciting, but nevertheless - hard.

Beginning of the year

I started last year being almost burned out with non existent self-confidence. After very, very tough end of the year, where I was working 10-12h a day and weekends I felt frustrated, bored and hopeless. I reached the point where work made me cry, I was waking up feeling sick I have to code.

I also did not feel good health-wise. I stopped doing sports (because of work, travels and many more). I tried to eat good, but failed. I already were regular in doctor practice. At registration desk people knew my name, my health issues and asked how Tomek is doing. Around that time, I heard from my endocrinologist, that I should not expect any miracles - I will never be as healthy and fit as I used to be, I could only work hard to not make things worse. Not a very positive thing to hear from the doctor.

On top of that we had some serious issues with running one of our Django Girls workshops I co-organized. Everything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong. I remember a bunch of sleepless nights when I felt sick of stress. There were also other DG related issues that drained me emotionally and hurt me deeply. I’m happy Ola was there for me, so I didn’t have to deal with all these things alone.

I was desperate to change something.

So I did.

Start a change

In the beginning of January the decision was made: me and Tomek are moving to London. Soon after that I applied to Potato. We started packing our stuff - we had just one and half a month to sort everything out, pack our stuff and move to London. I was excited and scared. But it was also a little bit cathartic for me: just leave everything behind and start anew.

In March we moved to London and started a flat hunt. I did not have any real break between jobs. I finished one, helped with DG London and Django Sprint and immediately flew to New York for a trip we planned before any of our crazy London plans happened. At the very first day of the holiday we learnt that someone stole our motorbike and we felt sad about it. We decided to spend the rest of our remaining savings (moving to London is quite a costy adventure) and buy another motorbike.

I came back and started working in Potato. Meanwhile I was trying to sort out all documents, self-employment things and trying to close my company in Poland - which is incredibly hard and stressful when you are unable to go there in person and all appointments in consulate need to be arranged one and half a month in advance. And believe me: in Poland the worst thing that could happen is not having troubles with the police, but with the tax office. I closed it finally in July (and I started the process in March!).

New job, new challenges

Also around this time Daniele convinced me I should finally start to speak at conferences. I submitted my talk proposal for DjangoCon Europe. I have never spoken at any event before - not even at Pykonik meeting where I knew most of the people. I was stressed as hell.

I also felt sad I decided not to go at PyCon US, especially that I was organizing Django Girls workshop there and could not see the end result. But my friends prepared a surprise for me: I was delighted seeing that they brought me there anyway: as a cardboard printout. It was sweet and I loved that so much. Although I’m not that happy that cardboard-Ola was left in the car trunk at the airport. What a waste!

Next months seemed to me like a big blur of things. I was trying to find my place in Potato and discovering that people actually like the code I write.

Things with Django Girls started to go even faster. We decided to start a Django Girls Foundation, we expanded the Support team. And the more we grew, the more people started to have their ideas what we should do or not. Things start to be emotionally draining and frustrating and haunted me for next months.

I prepared my DjangoCon talk feeling more and more stressed. Workload with Django Girls was also consistently growing, too. I started to feel bad every time I looked at my e-mail. The only retreat I had was motorbike trips with Tomek - my Instagram is full of pictures from them. I still did not feel at home in London, although I enjoyed it very much. I felt like being continuously on the trip.

I started neglecting many, many things at this point. On the other hand I found some amazing people and mentors at work. People told me I’m doing great and I started to rediscover why I love to code again.

Becoming a speaker

I learnt that Daniele wants me to give my DjangoCon Europe talk as a keynote. I also learnt that me and Ola will have keynote at EuroPython. Stress.

In May I flew to Warsaw for PyWaw Summit. I gave there my DjangoCon talk (shorter version) - I planned it as a rehearsal of my keynote. A day before the talk I was a mess. I could not imagine what I would do without support of friends who listened to my talk practice at 2am in the morning.

I woke up early, feeling super sick and convinced I have a flu or something. I was scared as hell. The only thing that made me survive the morning was listening to some crazy, funny Jerzy Bożyk (Kraków’s jazz singer) song I discovered a day before. What was my surprise, when I went on stage and felt amazing. Organizers were very attentive and professional and I felt great. I was much less stressed on stage then during my 2am practice with friends. I discovered I actually like to be on stage. When I’m prepared and I practiced my talk a number of times.

A week later I had my DjangoCon keynote. I was less stressed and it went well. I also felt that things are less hectic with Django Girls. There were less e-mails for a number of days and it made me relax a lot. Soon I discovered that the reason for this was that I set up some gmail filters and I simply did not see the incoming e-mails, because they landed in a separate folder. I kind of think that universe wanted me to finally make a break.

More and more pressure

At DjangoCon we setup the Django Girls Foundation. Also the idea of hiring someone to work for Django Girls was born there.

DjangoCon Europe had well-being sessions. I went to one and discovered that I’m a clinical perfectionist and it affects my career. I decided I want to do something with it. I still struggle with it a lot.

Then preparations for EuroPython keynote happened. Meanwhile we were in Berlin and we had Tomek’s and my family visiting. Ola was away, so we had very little time to practice and prepare the talk together. When we finally did at Ola’s place, her cat decided to jump out from the window… (first floor, so nothing happened, but we were joking it’s kind of worrying what effect our talk have on audience).

Between March (or maybe even earlier) and July I started to feel pressure. I felt like everyone expects me to have the same skillset and do exactly the same things like Ola. I just moved to new place, was doing a lot of things together, I was the “Ola 2” at work and with so many things going on I started to feel I have to to the same things to be on the same level. I noticed people are putting us into one category with label “Olas”. I felt that I don’t know who I am and what I really want to do. I always compared myself and in my eyes I always was worse in everything. It took me some time to realize that this is actually harmful for me. Wise words of advice and talking it through with Ola made me realize that I am not the only one feeling pressure. And it’s great to have such a wonderful friends! I love them!

Soon we started hiring process for Awesomeness Ambassador. We received almost 70 applications. Honestly, most of them were incredibly strong and the task was really hard. We had many, many interviews. Things were going slowly but surely forward.

EuroPython

I was much less stressed about keynoting EuroPython than before PyWaw Summit. I was worried if people would like our crazy idea for a talk, but apparently they did. A lot. During the talk we announced our plans to write a book.

During the keynote I felt great on stage. Surprisingly talking to people at the Django Girls booth was much harder than standing on the stage and giving a talk. I wish I could take this magic self-confidence that I gain when I look at the audience to the real life. I never, ever suspected that speaking on stage have something that magical. It felt like I’m a different person.

I felt very tired at EuroPython though. I felt anxious a number of times. One day I stayed in my hotel room just to avoid speaking with anyone. I felt guilty about it. But in general it was amazing to be there and meet so many great people. We also had a Django Girls Birthday party which was incredible.

And… a couple of hours before my flight to Spain for EuroPython I bought a camera. Tomek convinced me it’s about time to do it. I always feel I shouldn’t spend a lot of money for something just for myself. That it would be a waste. But it wasn’t. I started my adventure on the “other side of lens”. And enjoying the process very much.

Recovering

August was finally stay-at-home month filled with interviews for Awesomeness Ambassador and some DUTH things. In September I flew to Poland and it was refreshing to meet my family and friends.

And during this visit I decided to make something with myself. I finally had time to sit down and think about what’s going on with me. I knew I’m not coping very well - so many things, incredibly exciting but also stressful happened that it reflected in my health and body. In 6 months I gained 10kg (I’m quite short so this is a lot for me), it happened so fast that I noticed stretch marks on my body.

For three years now I’m diagnosed with under active thyroid. Quite common thing, nothing lethal, but pretty annoying. It significantly lowers the comfort of your life. I felt that I already tried everything: there was time in my life I was training 5 times a week 1 - 2.5h a day, being on diet. I had a diet catering for a couple of months. I went to so many doctors… and I heard that I should not expect miracles, I could only work hard to not make things worse. But there was no explanation for my thyroid problems and I felt and still feel that treating the symptom cannot do me any good.

In September in Poland I decided to give it a shot and try something new for the last time. I found a nutritionist with a good record of helping people with thyroid problems. I went there and I believe it or not, since that moment the comfort of my life increased dramatically.

My regular endocrinologist had no time for appointment for me (you need to register a couple of weeks in advance), but the nutritionist I visited magically found me a doctor I could visit the very same day. I also remember what she said that day: “You don’t have Hashimoto disease? It should be easy then. In 6 months you will be fit and healthy”. It was the very first time when someone told me: “It’s gonna be alright. You can do it”. Now I even managed to lower my medicine dosage a bit!

In next 3 months I lost 9kg. I sleep better now, too. And good things started to happen so quickly to me.

Karma

At PyCon UK in Coventry I met Carrie Anne who runs an amazing YouTube channel “Geek Gurl Diaries”. She encouraged me to start my own channel - something that was just an idea, nothing I considered very seriously so far. And I decided to go for it - I bought a mic and started my “Coding is for girls” series.

I discovered that I love taking photos and editing movies. And that it’s possible to make a decent animation in Keynote. I felt that I’m a creator again. I felt: “yes, this is a real me”.

In November, just before going to Amsterdam for DUTH that I co-organized, I was proposed to become full-time in Potato. I was in a very demanding project, I worked a lot but comparing to the working a lot in 2014, it felt so much different. People checked a number of times if I’m not overdoing it. If I’m getting enough sleep and rest. Health and well-being always put first. Team spirit was amazing and I finally felt that I truly belong. I felt appreciated and useful. And I happily accepted becoming full-time. And a next day I was asked if I want to go to the company offsite, too. So a day after coming back from DUTH (which was incredible! You should check my daily vlog about it), I went to the surprise trip with Potato. To Thailand. And I felt like the luckiest person on Earth.

Looking forward to 2016

I honestly wrote just a bunch of things that happened this year, there were other happy and not that happy events along the way, but it’s already too long and too personal to speak about everything here. I am incredibly proud of myself - I learnt a lot this year. I totally went outside of my comfort zone a number of times. I fought with feeling lost and tried to find out what I want to do. I desperately tried to build up my self-confidence, struggling sometimes, but improving every single month. Fighting to stay healthy and for the first time in 3 years I feel that I finally are winning.

This year also taught me that:

Even if you try your best, there will be people who will think you are not doing enough. People who will blame you for many things, even though you gave them a lot of your time and energy. I’m a really sensitive, understanding and empathetic person and yet this year I was driven crazy by some people to the extend I decided to mute or bloc them on Twitter and filter their emails.

When I felt bad with myself: physically and mentally, I had really little energy to take care of my friends and family. I’m still in awe how Tomek survived a couple of months with me in such a bad shape. He always was there for me and still is. I literally did not feel well enough to call my parents or my good friends and I’m trying to catch up with them now.

it will sound naive, but apparently eating right and taking care of my body made me stronger and feeling better mentally. Since I was little I know the Greek phrase “Kalos kagathos” (beautiful and good). It makes sense now more than ever to me.

what we think others expect us to do might be totally untrue. I felt that people are expecting me to do everything what Ola does. That they treat us as one Ola-blob and no matter what I’ll do nobody will notice. I was wrong. Recently I heard from the one of the smartest people I know, that me and Ola are so wonderfully different and everybody sees it. Now I look forward to the next months, because I feel I will bring so many incredible things to life together with Ola next year.

I need to build my self-confidence much more. Lack of self-confidence affected me so many times this year. It is ongoing battle, but I know I will win it.

What about next year then? Isn’t it time for a list of things I want to do next year?

I have some plans, but this year I don’t really care if I’ll stick to them or not. I don’t care. What I want instead is to:

do things that make me happy.

be lazy. Yes, making this one big incredibly hard thing will be super awesome when I finally finish it… but maybe I could spend my time doing something much nicer, where I will enjoy the process and will have similar feel of achievement in the end?

be much more strict about people I spend time with. I refuse to sacrifice my well-being just for the sake of making someone else feel better. It’s not my job to make others happy. Only you yourself could do that. And I want to make myself happy first.

block contact with people who emotionally drain me and make me feel bad. I’m helpful, understanding person, but I already have enough experience dealing with energetic vampires in my life. No more of those.

build my confidence by trying more and more new things.

make sure I take care of myself and appreciate things I have. I’m extremely lucky person, with a number of amazing skills. Feeling down that in some particular thing I’m not better than everyone else does not serve me well.

Not sure if anyone reached this point of the post. It’s long and personal. But I feel I want it to have it here. I hope I will look back at it next year and will proudly state how much I improved. I am incredibly proud of myself for surviving 2015 and learning so many things. And I know I will have a wonderful time next year, too. I will struggle and there will be downs, but in the end of a day I will be a better person.

Have a wonderful new year!

[asendecka]

Work, laugh and play in a park

It's less than two months me living in London (with a one week New York trip inbetween) and I'm extremely happy I decided to move here.

Not everything is perfect. After more than a month trials I still have no internet connection in my flat and I am pretty convinced my flat is cursed! And Tomek's motorbike was stolen and we learned it first day of our New York trip... But apart from that everything seems to fall into place.

Work

Three weeks ago I started working for Potato. It is extremely cool so far. I am no longer stressed about work. Time flies extremely fast and I realised that I feel irritated when I can't stay longer and work just a little bit more...

The most exciting thing is that I work with Ola. It is amazing! I have unlimitted access to Ola's enthusiasm any time I need it! This makes me super happy!

Conferences

I was planning to cut travelling a little bit this year. I did not attended PyCon US because of that. It broke my heart that I can't be there and see how Django Girls workshop went there, even though I was organizing the event.

To cheer me up Ola and Baptiste made a cardboard cutout of me. That was so unexpected and incredible! I love the pictures and that they actually invented hastag just for it! <3

It seems that my cardboard clone is visiting Warsaw right now!

Talks

It seems that - apart from PyCon US - I will be attending loads of conferences anyway. And I am extremely excited about them, because I will give talks! First-time-in-my-life!

I'm afraid of public speaking and I was avoiding it for a very, very long time. But after a first step was done something amazing happened - in next months I'm talking on three big conferences and on two of them (DjangoCon EU and EuroPython) I am having a keynote!

How exciting is that :)?

So if you attend EuroPython, Django Con EU or PyWaw Summit, make sure to say hi and cheer me up, when I will be super stressed about giving a talk!

Parks

I am in love with London's parks! I live near Regent's Park and I can't be happier! My Instagram is flooded with pictures of flowers and trees. I enjoy being close to nature! I always lived in a big cities and far away from parks and woods. Now it is like living in a dream!

Today Tomek bought a new motorbike. I can't wait to make first trips. And I just realised that France, Belgium and Netherlands are so close to London! I am sure I will finally visit Bruges this summer (on motorbike!).

Spring this year is extremely happy for me! I hope all of you have equally lovely! <3

[asendecka]

Moving on - changes!

It is less than two months of 2015 and I already did progress with my plans for this year! I'm super proud of myself and I feel like I woke up from some kind of dream - nice and cosy dream of daily routine and things I know and like, but a kind of boring one, too.

Find a new place to live

First big decision I did is about moving to London. My partner got a job there and I said to myself - oh well, why not? Kraków has serious problems with air pollution in winter and I thought about moving somewhere anyway. So four weeks ago the decision was made! We're moving!

Take as little things as possible

Next decision was to take as little things as possible. I wrote a simple app over a weekend to give away as many things I own as possible. The plan is to take a suitcase or two - as much as we can carry on our own. Plus Tomek's motorbike :). But that will be transported for us later.

Since we want to move quickly, we have just 2 weeks more to do everything. That is not too much time, but once decision is made there is no point in waiting too long.

Be open for challenges

I promised myself to work on my self-confidence and face new things without a fear. What's a result? I agreed to give my first ever talk on technical conference. I still have time to prepare and I'm super scared, but I will deliver!

Two weeks ago I was also asked to join Django team, which made me super happy and super scared at the same time. I was asking myself: do I deserve it? I had seriuos problems to see myself as person who earned it. But then so many people approached me and said: Ola, stop worrying about irrevelant things and accept you do a good job!. I really needed it. I will use an energy I spend on worrying on making awesome things instead!

Change your job

I think I slowly started to reach the moment I felt a burnout. Why at work I cannot focus anymore? Why everything seems not as interesting as half a year ago? And when I do some open source work or my side project I am full of energy? Why Mondays are so sad? What have changed in last months?

Well, the answer is: I am bored and I need something new to avoid burnout. So even though it was super painful for me, I decided I need a new job! I am super excited to learn new things and meet new people. The only sad part is leaving the nice company and lovely people I will miss so much!

Do sports

I do sports 3 times a week lately. For 1 - 2h. My doctor advised me to do 4 times a week, so I am still not there, but I already feel much better now. If I am not doing any sports, I immediately feel depressed (thank you thyroid :(!).

The only thing that suffers is my sleep schedule. If you work full time, try to spend 1-2h at gym, keep up with all projects you are involved with and prepare your move out from the country it is not surprising that 5-6h of sleep is a standard.

I wonder where will I be next month. I have no flat, no plans, pile of things to give away... but I am excited and I am looking forward what future brings.

It feels a little bit like spring.

[asendecka]

Support Django - why I got involved.

Half a year ago I became a member of Django Software Foundation. At first I was a little bit stressed, since all Django decision-makers and Django team members are there (even though I know many of them personally).

When I was asked to join, I was worried that I will be overwhelmed by administrative part of foundation. Quickly I realised that DSF is nothing to be afraid off. It's a bunch of people who want to do something good for Django and want to make sure Django grows.

With awesome Django Fellowship program running and many Django Girls events going on, DSF is spending much more money than in previous years. There was a call for volunteers inside DSF some time ago and I applied to help with fundraising. I have never done something on that scale before. But I am willing to learn something new. What a challenge! I am super excited about it!

Near Christmas I wanted to sum up what DSF did in 2014 and... I was happy looking at numbers :). I didn't realize how much DSF is doing! And in 2015 there will be much, much more awesomeness going on - I know that!

One of the most important things to me is DSF diversity work. Especially in context of Django Girls.

DSF is sponsoring many DG events. And although it might seem easy to find sponsors for the workshops, unfortunately it's not always true. It is not so hard when you know people and you attend conferences, like me or Ola do. But if you are a fresh Django Girls alumni or a local organizer, it's much, much harder. And DSF and PSF are a natural starting point when looking for sponsors. That is why, I want to make sure DSF will have enough money to support it whenever it's needed.

That is my very selfish goal :). But it makes me motivated!

Another thing is Django Fellowship program. A couple of days ago we started a campaign for next 3 months of Django Fellows work. It is funded in 85% right now and I hope that we will reach 100% soon!

Even when working on fundraising app for djangoproject.com page I was amazed how great it is to have Django Fellows looking at your commits and pull requests! The feedback is immediate! The same goes with Django code.

I remember how frustrating for me was receiving an e-mail about the ticket I contributed to like 6 months ago and having no idea what it was all about. With Django Fellowship it will not happen again. I will have feedback sooner. I think Django Fellowship is one of the most awesome things that could possibly happen to Django!

I know, I'm pretty boring with talking over and over again about DSF fundraising. But it really matters to me.

If Django is important to you, too and you haven't donated yet - go to Django fundraising page and donate. It could be $1, $10, $20 or $1000. It doesn't matter. Any kind of help is needed and appreciated!

And... I am waiting impatiently to see the heart on the page complete! I promised I would use confetti emoji in my tweet announcing that!

[asendecka]

What I wish myself in 2015

There is something magical about New Year. I remember reading somewhere that New Year's Eve is a saddest day of the whole year, when people realise that they did not managed to stick to too many of their New Year's resolutions from last year. I don't think this way at all. I like New Years Eve and celebrating it with friends. Even though this year I was sick and could not celebrate it properly, I still look at 2015 with hope. Ok, next iteration of my life begins! To make this year even better than last one, I should sum up what worked well and what did not in 2014, right? ## What worked? * **travelling!** - I visited Cardiff, Warsaw, Oslo, France, Mazury, Berlin, Utrecht, Budapest, London, Oxford, Amsterdam, Łódź and Bieszczady! That's a lot! I even started to feel kind of tired about travelling so much. * **meeting wonderful people** - every time I traveled somewhere it was connected to people: conference, workshop, simply spending time with friends. When not travelling me and Tomek had guests at our place very often and we had great time showing Kraków to friends. People were important part of my year and I am grateful for that. * **working with great people** - in 2014 I was able to work and build awesome things with amazing people. It was incredible and I learned a lot. It's hard to name all of you, but I need to at least name Tomek Paczkowski for supporting me in everything I do and pushing me to be better me and Ola Sitarska for this half a year. Ola - your biggest talent is making people excited and I am so happy we can build things together! Thank you! * **doing something good for others** - starting Django Girls made me finally feel that I am giving something good to others and it makes me very happy! I always liked doing things for others, but I have never done something so big. * **improving as a person** - I always was a introvert type of person. I let others do talking and once I felt secure enough I started to talk. Last year taught me so much! I am more open, more cheerful and I am less afraid to speak to people I don't know. And smile to them! I still struggle with my self-confidence, but I see at least a small progress here, too. Unfortunately, it's never so bright and beautiful as it seems. There is a other side of the equation. ## What did not work? * **health issues** - I am still struggling to stay healthy, but it is not easy. I really care and I visit doctors a lot, doing blood checks every two months, making effort to be as healthy as I can, but I think last half a year was pretty bad. And with more travelling I had a longer break in my sports routine. No sport means very poor frame of mind. * **too much stress** - I don't remember more stressful year than 2014. I worked too much, had too little time to sleep or relax and I worried too much about everything. Even if I decided to take a day off one normal email or a phone call could make me stressed. I usually overthink everything. * **having not enough time for my family and friends** - I met so many people this year, but I think I should have spent more time with my loved ones. I think that I can do both if I manage to deal with stress better. Last year I had weeks when I wanted to see nobody, worked and worked and felt miserable. * **cannot let it go** - I still wonder why I feel bad when I do something else when others are working. Even if I work on something else and literally have no time to do anything else. * **too many sleepless nights** - stress is the one to blame again here. Insomnia is not the coolest thing in the world.

What I wish myself in a new year?

think about yourself and your loved ones first. Work is less important. Work will not hug you and will not support you when you have a bad day.

find time for a good sleep and relax. Not once a year. Try to find some time every single day.

do sports - but only the ones you love! Dance, swim and play with others.

don't feel worse than everybody around you. Sure - there are people who are better than you in certain things, but you are good enough and you should focus on being better you.

learn - make sure to try new things very often.

if you are not happy or frustrated - change something in your life, instead of doing the same thing over and over again. You are afraid of changes, but you need them.

do something awesome this year! Something you cannot name yet. Something exciting!

2015 - here I come! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

[asendecka]

I am my worst enemy

Today I discovered, that I am my worst enemy. I'm stressing out about everything, inventing my own problems. And that affects the way I code.

Past days I was thinking about quitting programming. I found my code disgusting, I felt I work not efficient enough and no matter how much I try, everything's wrong.

I was trying to prove myself and everybody else that I can meet all deadlines. I put enormous amount of time and energy to finish all tasks. I worked at weekends, I worked 10-12h a day and it went slowly. I pushed myself too hard. My productivity was low, but I couldn't take a break.

In the end we met the deadline, but it was close. My level of frustration was super high. And we scheduled a talk to discuss all things that went wrong last weeks. I was stressing out even more. I couldn't sleep (ok. I slept 2h), I couldn't eat. I was super stressed and miserable past two days. I was convinced I am the worst programmer in the world. I started reading forums where programmers complained about being not good enough, couldn't find a job, etc..

And during the "what-went-wrong" talk today I learned - among other things - that the problem is that I am not believing enough in my code. I am not believing enough that I am right. That I am not critical enough about code wrote by others (because everybody writes better code than me, right?).

How can I be a good programmer if I can be critical only about code I write? My impostor syndrom affects a whole team! I always thought that it is only my problem. That I can hide the fact I do not believe in myself. But I can't. I should use my knowledge and experience and share it with my colleagues. Because if I'm not doing that, they have to do everything from scratch. But instead I am so embarrassed about everything I wrote so far, that I focus on not being caught on some mistake that will prove to the whole world that I am a bad programmer.

I noticed that the quality of my code reflects what I'm currently thinking about myself as a programmer. I'm more sloppy when I think badly about my programming skills. And when I'm positive and things are going well - it feels like flying!

I have a lot to think about now. Because me - only me - is on my way to be a good programmer. I'm not as stupid as I think. But because I cannot believe in myself, because I can't give myself a break and simply let it go, I won't be as good as I could be.

I hope I can change that!

[asendecka]

What being a programmer means to me? It means to be a creator. It is reaching out to the sky and trying to grab something there: and idea, inspiration, an answer. Sometimes it is very frustrating, but sometimes it is like catching a star! <3

I love this photo from Django Girls Kraków. I am so happy we had Bartek and Lidka capturing these moments!

[asendecka]

I haven't been born knowing how to write a good code

One of my biggest problems in my professional life is not being ashamed of the code I wrote.

Do you recognise the pattern:

You write something, publish it, it works. After some time you go back to the code and you see that it's not the best thing you ever wrote. But well, you have no time to rewrite. Rewriting is boring. And actually this thing is not so important after all. You leave it like that.

And then. Somebody comes and looks at the code. Criticise. And you feel ashamed. You start to defend and belittle yourself. You know, that the code is not perfect, you could write it ten times better now. And you see how horrible and stupid you are.

I felt this way today. There was no bad intension from the person who commented the code. But it made me shaky and sad. All good things I started to think about myself after last crazy week organising and coaching at Django Girls vanished so quickly! How is that even possible?

Well, I think I have homework to do. If I want to make a change in the community and be a real role model to all those awesome women I met during Django Girls workshop, I had to stop thinking about my work the way I do.

I should stop feeling ashamed every time I look at something I wrote. Yes, it could be better. I could rewrite it million of times and make it perfect. But the real question is: is it worth it? Should I spend my precious time to master every single bit of a code I wrote since I was born? I am too lazy for that. Yet, I am still scared when a person I don't know comments and points me out problems I already see.

It is pretty hard to give a break and just accept that to learn how to code, you need to write a hell of a bad code. I always wanted to be perfect. But I'm not. And I'll never be.

I refuse to feel bad every time somebody criticise me.

I heard a wise words today: it is ok that code is not perfect. This is a problem with legacy code. It does not define me as a programmer.

Thank you for that advice <3! I'll do my best and believe in myself!

[asendecka]

Hello world!

I finally bought my own domain! Yay! About time. Unfortunately, it's not something I hoped for (.com is taken), but it is good enough for me :).

Don't expect me to write too regularly. I tend to have ups and downs when it comes to writing. But I think it is the moment, I really need some little corner of the Internet just for my random ideas and thoughts.

A lot of things have happened for last two years when it comes to my professional growth. I feel confident enough to start posting here. Not confident enough to start having highly technical talks on the conferences, though. I hope that the blog will help me with fighting my fears and building a better myself.

Thanks for being here!