I’m going to try something new. For this upcoming quarter, so until the end of the year, I’m going to put aside Thursday afternoons (Europe) to be online, doing my maintenance, a kind of office hour, offering a support group to existing maintainers, and offering mentoring to new or prospective maintainers in the Django ecosystem. (More details to follow as I come up with them.)
If it goes well, we can carry on beyond the new year.
I feel like I’ve been banging this drum for a long time but, there’s a gap between making your first open source contributions, and then going on to pick up the role of a package maintainer. Part of this is economic: unpaid labour being what it is, the prevalence of white men as open source maintainers is simply a reflection of privilege.
Part though is that we don’t have the right support structures. I’m not sure that I know what they are, but I’d like to see if being available to give advice and mentoring can help that at all. So, if you’re a PyLady or a Django Girl (or a member of any other underrepresented group) in the Django community, and making that step to maintenance is something that you’ve considered, do reach out.
Update: The Being an open source maintainer discussion group is set up now. Do come say hello!