Announcing the Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize
Malcolm Tredinnick joined the Django project as a core developer in early 2006. He was deeply involved in many part of Django - most notably, the ORM, but many other internals bear his fingerprints. Django’s support for unicode, and autoescaping in templates can both be almost entirely attributed to Malcolm.
But his contributions weren't just code. He was also a prolific communicator. He logged thousands of messages in django-users, helping people learn Django, sharing his expertise freely and openly. He also logged thousands of messages in django-developers, helping shape the framework we all use today.
And if that wasn't enough, Django wasn’t the only community that Malcolm was part of. Malcolm was also a contributor to GNOME, and served on the GNOME Foundation board. He was also an active participant in the Australian chess community, mentoring young players.
On March 17 this year, Malcolm suffered a brain aneurysm and passed away. Malcolm's death was a shock to everyone who knew him. To say that we miss him is an understatement.
With Malcolm’s memory in mind, the Django Software Foundation is proud to announce that with this blessing of his family, we will be establishing an award in Malcolm’s name.
The award will be a monetary prize, awarded annually, to the person who best exemplifies the spirit of Malcolm’s work - someone who welcomes, supports and nurtures newcomers; freely gives feedback and assistance to others, and helps to grow the community. The hope is that the recipient of the award will use the award stipend as a contribution to travel to a community event -- a DjangoCon, a PyCon, a sprint -- and continue in Malcolm’s footsteps.
At this time, the DSF is making a twofold call.
Firstly, we’re making a call for donations to the fund that will back the award. We need people in the community to donate money so that the DSF is in a position to grant this award on an annual basis. If you wish to contribute financially to the prize fund, you can donate via PayPal, or get in touch if you'd like a different option (like a direct bank transfer).
Secondly, we’re calling for nominees for the inaugural recipient of the award. The DSF board will accept nominations from anyone in the community. The board will narrow that list down to a short list, and put that short list to the DSF membership for a final vote. If you would like to nominate someone as the inaugural winner of the award, get in touch.
The DSF board aims to make an announcement of the first recipient of this award in early October. We hope you'll join us in lighting a candle in Malcolm’s memory.
UPDATE: 10:45 PM - provided link to PayPal donation page.
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