👏 List of EPS board candidates for the board vote at this year's General Assembly
Published: 2021-09-23 18:36:31

At this year’s EuroPython Society General Assembly (GA), planned for October, we will vote in a new board of the [EuroPython Society](https://www.europython-society.org/) for the term 2021/2022.

## List of Board Candidates
The [EPS bylaws](https://www.europython-society.org/bylaws) require one chair, one vice chair and 2 - 7 board members. The following candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order by surname).

We will be updating this list in the days before the GA. Please send in any nominations or self-nominations to board@europython.eu.

Please note that our bylaws do not restrict nominations to people on this list. It is even possible to self-nominate or nominate other candidates at the GA itself. However, in the interest of giving members a better chance to review the candidate list, we’d like to encourage all nominations to be made before the GA.

The following fine folks have expressed their desire to run as a group for the next EPS board elections: Patrick Arminio, Prof. Martin Christen, Nicolás Demarchi, Raquel Dou, Anders Hammarquist, Cheukting Ho, Francesco Pierfederici and Silvia Uberti. They have a good track record of working well together and share a common vision for the betterment of the EPS via strengthening ties to the larger Python community. They will present their plans and vision during the GA.

Marc-André Lemburg, who has been serving on the EPS board since 2012 and as its chair since 2017 is not running for the board again, as already announced in last year’s GA. He’s looking forward to enjoying the conference from the attendee perspective again.

### Patrick Arminio
#### Software Developer / Python Italia Chair

Patrick started his journey with the Python community at PyCon Italia 2 in 2008. After many years of helping run PyCon Italia (and other conferences) as a volunteer he became the Chair of Python Italia in 2017.

He has also been nominated as a PSF Fellow for his contribution to conferences and also open source software.

He currently works as a Software Engineer in London.

### Prof. Martin Christen
#### Teaching Python / using Python for research projects

Martin Christen is a professor of Geoinformatics and Computer Graphics at the Institute of Geomatics at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). His main research interests are geospatial Virtual- and Augmented Reality, 3D geoinformation, and interactive 3D maps.

Martin is very active in the Python community. He teaches various Python-related courses and uses Python in many research projects. He organizes the PyBasel meetup - the local Python User Group Northwestern Switzerland. He also organizes the yearly GeoPython conference. He is also a board member of the Python Software Verband e.V.

I would be glad to help with EuroPython, to be part of a great team that makes the next edition of EuroPython even better. I’m looking forward to a great physical/hybrid conference in Dublin.

### Artur Czepiel
#### Software developer

Artur started writing in Python around 2008, originally using it mostly to implement backends for websites and later expanding to other areas.

He joined the EuroPython team in 2017 after watching a talk about the state of the conference software at the time. Then contributed patches, joined various work groups and helped with EuroPython 2018 and 2019 editions.

For the 2019 conference, he also joined the board where he helped with due diligence in the RFP process, but kept the focus on web/infra including major updates to the website software, and supporting other workgroups. Other than Europython, he's co-organising two local Python meetups in Kraków, Poland where he's based. He was also part of the team behind Remote Python Pizza, and provided minor software updates to other conferences.

I would like to join the EPS board again, with my main focus being (again) infrastructure. I've learned a lot, both during the 2019 term and since then, and I believe that for the 2022 conference we can improve the conference setup even more. My main focus will be the ease of organisation and ultimately making the conference experience better for everyone.

### Nicolás Demarchi
#### Pythonista / Software Engineer

Nicolás is a self-taught software engineer working professionally for more than 15 years. After participating on some Linux User Groups and the Mozilla community, Nicolás joined the Python community around 2012, fell in love with it and never left. He is a founder and has been a board member of the Python Argentina NGO since 2016. In the PyAr community, as an organizer, he participated several events and conferences as organizer and/or speaker, ranging from Python Days in various cities, PyCamp and the Python Argentina national conference, being a core organizer in the 2018 one in Buenos Aires (an open and free conference with ~1500 attendees). Since 2014 Nicolás has been maintaining the Python Argentina infrastructure that supports the mailing list, webpages, etc.  He was (still helping a bit) the host of the Buenos Aires Python Meetup. In June 2019, Nicolás moved to Amsterdam and he is currently living and working there.  A few months after the move, he joined the organization of the Python Amsterdam meetup and he is working with a small team to build the local community: py.amsterdam. He also joined the https://pycamp.es/ team trying to replicate the Pycamp Argentina experience in Europe. In 2020 he volunteered in the Media Workgroup of Europython 2020 online as a core organizer.
He joined the EPS board in 2021 and helped to organize Europython2021-online.

I would like to continue in the EPS board because I think Europython is the event connecting all European communities and therefore the right place to invest my time. In addition, I believe I can learn a lot as a volunteer. For 2022 I want to work for the whole European Python community to have a better relation with EPS and to work on other smaller/local events apart from EuroPython.

### Raquel Dou
#### Linguist / Python enthusiast

Raquel first met Python in 2013, during her MSc studies in Evolution of Language and Cognition, where she used Python to model the evolution of a simple communication system over time. She operates a small business providing language and technical services, in which Python is one of her primary tools.

She first attended EuroPython when it took place at her doorstep (Edinburgh) in 2018, and was an onsite volunteer. Since then she remained closely engaged in the EPS, as well as the organisation and execution of the conferences. She has been serving on the EPS board since 2019, working closely with the brilliant teams which delivered the two recent EuroPython Online editions. In 2021, besides leading the two amazing Sponsor and Support teams, she was also heavily involved in the conference lineup and speaker management.

During these 3 years, she has experienced warmth, openness, creativity and desire to do good in every aspect of her engagement with the Python community which proudly serves. For the next edition, she hopes to finally meet in Dublin every one of the volunteers she has worked so closely with for years. She shares a community building vision with the amazing EuroPython team and would love to continue in this exhilarating journey with them to take the Society to new heights.

### Anders Hammarquist
#### Pythonista / Consultant / Software architect

Anders is running his own Python consultancy business, AB Struse, since 2019 and is currently mostly involved with using Python in industrial automation. He has been using Python since 1995, and fosters its use in at least four companies.

He helped organize EuroPython 2004 and 2005, and has attended and given talks at several EuroPythons since then. He has handled the Swedish financials of the EuroPython Society since 2016 and has served as board member since 2017.

### Cheuk Ting Ho
#### Pythonista / Developer Advocate / Data Scientist

After spending 5 years researching theoretical physics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Cheuk has transferred her analytical and logical skills in natural science and built a career in data science. Cheuk has been a Data Scientist before working in a team of developers building a revolutionary graph database.

Cheuk constantly contributes to the community by giving AI and deep learning workshops and organizing sprints for open source projects, at the same time contributing to open source projects including Pandas, Keras, Scikit-learn, Dateutil and maintaining open-source libraries. On top of speaking at conferences, Cheuk has joined the organizing team of EuroPython as a member of the programming workgroup since 2019 and was hosting the lightning talk in the same year.

Last year, Cheuk joined the EuroPython Society Board and was nominated to be the Python Software Foundation fellow. Cheuk has been leading the Financial Aid team to provide accessible tickets for people around the world to join EuroPython. Cheuk has also started a speaker mentorship program and organize workshops for new speakers. Believing in the benefit the society has with diversity and inclusion, Cheuk would like to continue bringing new faces to the society and keep connecting people in it. In 2021, hopefully we will meet again in person and Cheuk would like to make sure that EuroPython is accessible to everyone both online and in-person.

### Francesco Pierfederici
#### Pythonic Beer Brewer and Drinker

The year 2000 was the year that Python saved Francesco from Perl and Java. He worked on a large variety of projects over the last 20 odd years all involving Python, mostly in scientific environments.

He is currently driving a 30m telescope with Python at IRAM (https://www.iram-institute.org). In his free time, he is trying to optimise his beer brewing with a host of sensors and micro controllers running MicroPython and still failing at that.

He has been volunteering with and in the EuroPython community since the conference in Rimini in 2017 and has helped with the website since 2019.

Why serve on the EPS board for a second year? Francesco loves the EuroPython conference and its volunteers, organisers and attendees. He would love the opportunity to give back to this community and to the Python community in general. A community that has given him so much.

### Silvia Uberti
#### Sysadmin / IT Consultant

She is a Sysadmin with a degree in Network Security, really passionate about technology, traveling and her piano.

She’s an advocate for women in STEM disciplines and supports inclusiveness of underrepresented people in tech communities.

She fell in love with Python and its warm community during PyCon Italia in 2014 and became a member of EuroPython Sponsor Workgroup in 2017.

She enjoys working in it a lot and wants to help more!

## Chair / Vice-Chair Nominations
Raquel Dou is running for the chair position and Artur Czepiel for the vice chair position.

## What does the EPS Board do ?
The EPS board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society, including running the EuroPython conference events. It is allowed to enter contracts for the society and handle any issues that have not been otherwise regulated in the bylaws or by the General Assembly. Most business is handled on the board’s Telegram group or by email on the board mailing list. Board meetings are usually run as conference calls.

It is important to note that the EPS board is an active board, i.e. the board members are expected to put in a significant amount of time and effort towards the goals of the EPS and for running the EuroPython conference. This usually means 200+ hours work over a period of one year, with most of this being needed in the last six months before the conference. Many board members put in even more work to make sure that the EuroPython conferences become a success.

Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups in order to facilitate good communication and quick decision making. They should be passionate about EuroPython, the Python community and working in a team of volunteers.

Enjoy,
EuroPython Society
https://www.europython-society.org/