To the 2021 ChiPy Board,
I’m writing this open letter as I depart from my current roles as active ChiPy Organizer and Board Chair. I first joined the organization in 2014 after moving to Chicago, within the year I became an organizer. Over the last 6 years, I grew more and more involved with the Mentorship program, governance improvements, and other activities, ultimately culminating in this last year spent as Chair. In that time we’ve done so many things it’s easy to be proud of:
- Code of Conduct modernization to focus on safe and inclusive spaces
- Bylaws to improve fairness and organizational resilience
- Our first two[!] organizer-wide elections, promoting transparency, access, and shared ownership
- Huge increase in volume of programming (due in large part to the heroic work of Aly Sivji)
- Growth and many years of the ChiPy Mentorship program leading us into the current Buddy Mentorship program
- A successful COVID-times transition to virtual programming, expanding impact
- Improved technological, organizational, and financial processes
- Countless pilot programs (successful and not) and process improvements
There are more, to be sure, but these ones leapt right out of the memory banks. The Board should be proud of these accomplishments and more. It’s good to be proud, because it hasn’t always been easy. We’ve had some really tough situations over the years; it is genuinely hard to manage a community as strong as ChiPy’s. It’s hard even when things go according to plan. But through it all the board continued to grow, innovate, and improve.
I want to call on you to remain focused on that improvement, focused on enabling and performing the services of ChiPy. This endeavor has been successful because we care about it. We care about ChiPy because it is us. It is us as we are first time learners, trying to figure out what a REPL is. It is us trying to make our first app, or break into a new career. It is us as we try to hone our craft and build amazing code. We all care for ChiPy because we care for our friends — old and new — who make it up. We care because by performing that service we become better for our work.
I have met some of the finest folks I know through ChiPy (especially fellow organizers). I wish I could name them without having to stop somewhere, so I’ll just share the best example, Tanya Schlusser. Everyone speaks of Tanya as I do: a wonderful, kind, generous person. Tanya had been an organizer and strove to improve on the organization in the early twenty-teens. She stepped back from ChiPy and work as care requirements for her mother increased, but she stayed a supporter of Pyladies and ChiPy when she could (ChiPy was only one of her groups).
She was instrumental as an editor, consultant, and advocate as we started their Code of Conduct revisions. She was enthusiastic to start a lunch learning program after her mother’s death. And when Tanya passed we were devastated. We held a memorial at ChiPy to help us process the immense loss we all felt. Pyladies started a scholarship to continue helping support PyLadies just as she had done. All of these things helped us cope with losing someone who touched our lives so much. Tanya may be the best example of someone I met through ChiPy who forever changed my life. And while ChiPy didn’t make her, she helped make it. She said it best: “the purpose of any career is to contribute to society with the talents one has been given.”
It’s contributions like Tanya’s and others before her that make ChiPy a wonderful place for Chicagoans to find knowledge, growth, opportunities, and community centered around a wonderful, broader Python ecosystem. I ask you, newest ChiPy Board, to keep up that work. Make ChiPy better than it is today. Find ways to impact people, to raise up those who need a lift. Care about each other and be ever-better gardeners to our verdant community. My season of gardening is over, but if I can return I hope you’ll keep a set of gloves ready.
And for all the other Chicago Pythonistas out there: there has never been a better time to be proud of ChiPy. This group is going to do great things if we can keep working together. If you are looking for a time to get involved, now is the time. I promise you won’t be disappointed. These are good folks doing good work. Get to know them; help them by getting involved.
All my best,
Ray Berg
For more information about the Chicago Python User Group (ChiPy) head to chipy.org