Who Am I?
@iqbalabd
● Iqbal Abdullah
● Day job is running Xoxzo Inc, a
cloud telephony platform based
in Tokyo
● Involved in PyCons since 2010,
and helped found PyCon JP and
PyCon MY
● Travels around meeting other
PyCon organizers and especially
interested in the APAC region

Saying Thank You
Appreciating the emotional labour:
OSS and community work

We don’t talk about it enough

Understand and acknowledge:
“Open up your phone, your social media, your news, your
medical records, your bank: They are all using free and
public code”

Some human numbers
★ On average we live to
80 years old or 700,800
hours
★ We sleep one third of
that, or 233,600 hours
★ If we retire at 60
years of age, we spent
151,840 hours at work
or study.
★ 58,400 hours (2 hours a
day) for food/shower
★ We end up having around
9.3 years of “free
time” before retiring,
or 11% of our lifetime
to do “other stuff”
★ This is where OSS magic
and community work
comes from

Understand and acknowledge:
Time is finite, we are mortal, and another mortal
person is writing that code.

Burnout is a real problem
★ Remember the 2014 heartbleed bug? It was introduced in
2011 but only found in 2014.
★ One underpaid and overworked person was responsible for
the safety of one billion websites on the internet
★ We need to start by being aware of the problem and not
take it for granted

The many ways of saying thank you: Individuals
★ Say it by email or send flowers
★ Use the software and give constructive feedback
★ Improve the documentation
★ Make pull requests
★ Help new users
★ Organize meetups
★ Become a volunteer for PyCon

The many ways of saying thank you: Companies
★ If you’re making money, donate
★ If you’re making much money, pay people to maintain
projects
★ If you’re making much, much, much money, do all of the
above
★ Tell the world that you’re donating, and to what projects

https://blog.xoxzo.com

Python projects to donate to
★ Django Software Foundation (DSF)
★ PyPI, the Python Packaging Index
★ Sphinx, the documentation tool
★ Read The Docs
★ httpie
★ Pandas
★ ...

If you maintain OSS,
Consider setting up a way to donate, or at least a way for
the public to acknowledge you and say thank you.

But it’s not only about money. It’s more complex.
We need to collectively own this problem first.

Thank You
For a wonderful PyCon TH