437: This Time It’s Love (with Jay Miller)

This Time It’s Love (with Jay Miller)

Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:00]

Christina: You are listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, and I’m joined as always by Jeff Severance, Gonzo. And this week we have back one of our favorite guests, Mr. J Miller. Jay, welcome back to the pod.

Jay: What’s up? What’s up? Glad to, glad to be back. Glad to, to be here with the crew. I think I’ve been, now, I’ve been on the show with every variation

Christina: was going to say, I was going to say, you’ve, you’ve been on, like, every iteration you’ve been on with just like, like, uh, like, like, like Jeff and, and, and Brett. You’ve been on just with me and, and, and, and Brett and now with, with, uh, Mia and Jeff. So yes, you’ve done like the full, like, you know, uh, yeah.

Jeff: Due for a solo, solo episode, Jay.

Christina: Yeah. Oh, honestly, honestly, that that, honestly.

Jay: have a guess.

Christina: I was going to say, that would actually be hilarious if we’re like, okay, we can’t do it for hire this week. So we’re gonna have, uh, uh, Brian and Jeff, uh, no, Brian and Jay take it. Right? That would be, that would be like a

Jeff: That’s good. Yeah.

Jay: I can [00:01:00] see this happening.

Jeff: Well, it’s good to see everybody.

Christina: yes.

Jeff: Um, so Brett is out, uh, this week. Hello Brett. Um, wherever you are, specifically in the editing window right now, probably as you listen to this.

Linux Teaser and Framework Desktop

Jeff: Um, but yeah, Jay, it’s awesome to have you back and, um, I, I’m just gonna like spoil it for everybody and we’re not gonna start here, but I’m gonna talk about Linux and, and I don’t care who knows it,

Christina: Hell yes.

Jeff: but that’s just, that’s just a teaser.

That’s just to keep people listening.

Christina: Excellent. Excellent. Um, well, well, this is fun. I, I’m excited about this because I bought a, uh, a framework desktop a few months

Jeff: Oh,

Christina: and, and, well, well, more than a few months ago, but, but it arrived I guess like a month and a half ago. And, uh, it’s super, super fun. So I’m very excited to know. I didn’t know going into this, I, I didn’t look at the document beforehand, so I didn’t realize we were gonna be talking about Linux, but this is exciting for me.

Jeff: man.

Jay: I, I, I mean, I have some Linux stuff going on.

Jeff: I’ve got some Linux.

Jay: yeah, not as much as y’all. I [00:02:00] mean, but

Jeff: So,

Jay: a Linux box back there.

Christina: Hell

Jay’s Plant Obsession

Jeff: Jay, Jay, greet the, the listeners who have been waiting for the next Jay Miller episode tells how you’re doing.

Jay: Oh, I’m, I’m doing good. Um, I’ve, I’ve dealt with some, some title changes that don’t really mean anything, so we can just skip ’em. And I am. I’m just out here. We were, we were talking about this before the show started. Uh, I’m getting ready for a very, uh, stressful trip to Lavia next week. Um, now is not the time to be traveling like out of the country and trying to get back in

Jeff: You’re fleeing

Jay: def Well, I mean, you know, the, to be honest, YouTube video somewhere, Picon 2025, I sat on a panel and it was like, what do you tell folks who are wanting to come to like picon us in 2025 or getting ready for 2026?

And I’m like, to be honest, just don’t, like, I [00:03:00] wouldn’t tell you to miss out on all the fun, but also I can’t promise your safety, so Yeah, just don’t, so I’m, I’m rolling those dice, but, uh. Not much has really changed for me. It’s still working, still doing the same stuff, still talking. Um, I’ve become an obsessed plant person in the last year.

Um, so that’s fun. I think my camera has like five plants over there, and then there’s three more on the other side of the camera, and then I’ve got like another seven or eight downstairs.

Jeff: So it follows that you’ve become someone who can keep plants alive. Not that you couldn’t before, but I’m just thinking when people have plants, they think, oh, you’re a good person. You can keep them alive.

Jay: I mean, one could argue I bought so many because I keep killing them, but, you know, it’s, I’m trying, I’m, I’m trying to keep ’em going.

Jeff: What made you a plant person? Like what’s tell, I mean, that’s a thing.

Jay: Um, I mean, I’ve always liked plants. I, I noticed sometime earlier in the year, I don’t remember when it was, [00:04:00] honestly, that I was spending a lot of time like in my office and. It just felt horrible. Like it felt very drab and like I kept watching these like how to like spice up your, your office space and all this stuff.

And one of the things they talked about was like, get some greenery in there, like get a plant. Usually they say like, get a fake plant, but you know, there’s some benefits to also getting real plants. And I got one, I’ve had plants for a couple of years, but they were all like, I had like two plants downstairs.

I barely water them and they’re okay with that. But like I just started getting more and more and then all of a sudden I like blink and I’ve got like a monster behind me that’s, you know, doing its best. It’s living its best life. I saved it from the Home Depot, so, you know, it’s, it’s probably happier to be here than there.

Jeff: awesome, awesome. You know, I meant to say this at the beginning.

Meeting in Person for the First Time

Jeff: This is a hard pivot, but Christina, this is the first time we’ve been on the pod together since we [00:05:00] met in person for the first time ever,

Christina: I know, which has been months, which was so amazing. I was so happy to meet your beautiful family and, uh, your, your wife who’s amazing and, and your two sons, and like, that was so fun. Like that was such a great, I was,

Jeff: had lunch.

Christina: we, did we had lunch? Did you guys have a, have fun the rest of your time in Seattle?

Jeff: We had a good time in Seattle. We had a good time in war ravaged Portland, and we had a great time on the Oregon coast. Yes, it was awesome. Yes. But yeah, it was so, it was so weird because I mean, Jesus, you and I for what, three years now, have known each other through these little video boxes.

Christina: No, I mean that, well, it was finally, it was like, oh yes, good. Finally like a name, like to, you know, it, not a name for the face, but you know what I mean? Like a, like a face, like to, to the person that I’ve seen their face, but like now I really get to get to know it, which was really, really cool.

Jeff: awesome. So fun. I can’t believe that we have not recorded together since then.

Christina: I know. I know.

Jay: the last time I saw all of y’all. I think I haven’t, I still haven’t seen you in person, Jeff. That’s okay. I’ve got an event in Cleveland you [00:06:00] can come to, um, later this year. We’ll talk

Jeff: me, okay,

Jay: Well, actually I can’t talk about that. It hasn’t been announced yet, but spoiler alert, there’s an event in Cleveland that I’ll be at doing things.

Um, you should come. Um, but, uh, Christina and I met at scale. Right. And then, uh, I was just looking at scale to go back next year. So like a small world. And then Brett and I met, wow, that was probably like six. Was that before COVID? I can’t remember if the wood, the Woodstock, or Max stock that we went to was before or after COVID. I’m confused now.

Jeff: luck figuring that

Jay: been that long. It’s been at, it is been at least five years. Probably six or seven.

Jeff: Brett and I have only been in person three times, which is also crazy ’cause not only have we been doing this podcast, but we were working together for a while before that and I met him after being a guest on Systematic, like way, way, way, way long ago.

So anyway,[00:07:00]

Jay: This is the first company that I’ve worked for in tech where I’ve actually met all of my teammates. And that was, that was after like several rounds of layoffs and now it’s like, hey, some have, most have gone and now there’s like one person I haven’t met in person yet, but who knows? Actually I don’t even, I don’t have a team anymore.

It’s kind of weird, but again, like we’re not talking about that right now. Um,

Jeff: Jay, I have something. And it wasn’t something I initially put on our list to talk about. ’cause you have a couple of recent posts. I just want like, at least for you to touch on.

Conference Presentation Pet Peeves

Jeff: But you said you’re going to Latvia to talk to people about how to prepare for talks and I was just at a conference in which like whenever I met a conference, all my fucking pet peeves about conference presentations come up and I get like Larry David angry. Um, but I just want to, I really want you to talk about what you’re gonna talk about to prepare for talking.

Jay: Okay, so I’m, I’m giving two talks at, uh, Postgres Comp Europe. Uh, one is called [00:08:00] like, don’t Leak, PII, to ai. Um, those that love acronyms, we’ll get that like, Hey, it’s a lot of good best security practices. Like, don’t give this thing that you shouldn’t fully trust, like unfettered access to your entire database.

Duh. But you know, there’s some, there’s some more niche niche tips in there. But then, uh, I got asked by two former colleagues to do. Uh, to, for us all to team up and basically give this talk that is about what we call the speakers corner. Um, companies tend to have ’em, speakers, corners, speakers bureaus, speakers, whatever former KGB affiliated organization that we won’t call.

And then, like effectively the goal is to get a bunch of people in a room and let someone rehearse a talk. And it’s great specifically for folks like you, Jeff, who are, you know, might be a little pedantic, might want. Specific slides a certain way or you know, hey, you could just ink out a little bit more value from your talk if you [00:09:00] just did this.

This gives you a place to call home where you can, you can do that at the behest and, uh, consent of the people presenting, uh, whether it’s a upcoming post. I actually did this for my keynote, um, that I did at Picon US last year. Um, and we wound up raising like 20 grand. And one of the biggest benefits that I can like tie directly to that is someone in my speaker’s rehearsal said, yo, this is lacking the big call to action.

Like, you’re missing the donate slide. Like add, add the donate button, big text, give it lots of space. Let people do the thing where they lift, they, you know, lift the phone up to take pictures and like. Sure it works. So, uh, we’re just gonna talk about that. Whether you’re an experienced speaker or you’re giving your first conference talk, there’s something to benefit from these things.

So, yeah, we’re just gonna dive into that a little bit

Jeff: that’s awesome. In Lavia,

Jay: in la in, in Lavia. Yes. [00:10:00] Step one was indeed find lavia on a map. Step two was like, figure out how to get there. Step three was prepare slides.

Jeff: Nice. Oh, I’m remember that checklist. Next time I’m doing talks in Latvia. Um, uh, okay. So let me ask both of you and, and I can give one example just to get us started, but shit that drives you crazy, uh, about presentations at conferences, besides how unnatural it is to be at a conference in the first place as a human.

It’s like being on an airplane. It’s like we weren’t supposed to be here like this. Um, this is so small, it drives me crazy and I have done it, but I haven’t done it in a long time, which is when someone starts in a room and they believe they are the person that doesn’t need the microphone and they say, Hey, I talk really loud.

Can everyone hear me? And of course the people who can’t hear you are not raising their hand to be like, no, this sucks for me. But everyone who’s like, oh sure. And then you go ahead and you can’t hear anybody. That’s a huge pet peeve of mine.

Christina: Yeah, well this is especially true now that like a lot of these things are, are recorded, you know, or, or sometimes live [00:11:00] streamed, right? Like, like, um, although that’s changing a little bit now, places are like getting really weird where being like, oh no, we’re in person only we, we, we’ve completely forgotten that Zoom exists.

And it’s like, really, guys? Really? Um, but I so it, it was annoying for, for those folks, but also if there’s any sort of recording, but, um, even more so like I, I’m with you, like a, people can’t hear you. They won’t say it, but like, if people have questions and then you don’t repeat the question, you know, for everybody who can out, who, who’s out there, it’s like, that’s, that’s very frustrating to me.

I’m like, okay, I’m not saying you need to pass a microphone out because that can take a lot of time, but at the very least, you should repeat what the question that the person asked is before you answer it.

Jeff: Yes.

Jay: good for the recording. I mean, specifically for the recording, if it is recorded, like I don’t, I don’t hear what dude said. I don’t wanna rewind, so

Jeff: Yeah.

Christina: Well, exactly. Well, it’s good for that, but it’s also even just in person, depending on how big the room is, I might be able to hear you, but that doesn’t mean that somebody on the other side of the room can

Jeff: Also, I should say, I mean, related to this, [00:12:00] in this two day conference, the only one that was like even moderately accessible, meaning in this case it had live captioning, was the one about digital accessibility. That’s the other thing. It’s like a little, little shitty, but Jay, what? What do you got?

Jay: I don’t, I think, I think the biggest one for me is, I mean, it’s, it’s the classic like. I’m gonna read to you exactly what, like this is for code conferences. If you’ve got a hundred lines of text, like a hundred lines, like code lines on your slides, don’t, don’t read it. Like

Jeff: please.

Jay: you can point to samples.

Like I do that a lot. Like I will have like a large wall of text there and I’m like, look, I know this is scary. The scariness is for effect, but we’re gonna break this down in a way that we can understand. And then you bring in the boxes, you bring in the highlighters, you bring in like the little laser pointer thing.

You talk to those specific points and you keep it moving. But like, if you’re gonna tell me like, well, the first thing you do in Python is install your dependence. Like, we know, we know, I’m sorry. And if we don’t know, [00:13:00] again, that’s when you raise your hand and you ask the question and, and then they repeat that question.

And we, we remind ourselves that there are people of all different experience levels, but. I, I want, I want dynamic slides. I want slides that are doing something. I don’t want to sit there and look at text on white background with no images, no graphs, no charts, no dates, like nothing but just straight up text because I will fall asleep

Christina: Right.

Jeff: Right.

Jay: So like we don’t want that.

Jeff: I will snore. That’s a great point. That’s a great point. Um, I was, I was at a session, this conference was for nonprofits. I don’t work for a nonprofit, but we, we serve a lot of them. Kind of wanted to just know in this moment, like what people were talking about and afraid of and wondering and all this stuff.

Right. It’s obviously a crazy time to be a nonprofit. Um, although nonprofit can mean all sorts of things, but we’re all thinking of the same kind of nonprofits probably. And so they had [00:14:00] the very first session, the very first day was about what do the federal funding cuts mean for you. The Descript of it sounded like they were really gonna hit on the really important stuff.

The room was packed. I mean, there were probably 200 people there who were clearly there to just like. Be in a room together and figure this thing out. And the first 20 minutes of the hour long presentation was about the Johnson Amendment, which is just the amendment that kind of names that you can’t as a nonprofit, um, endorse political candidates.

So a little history about that. Then they did about 10 minutes on the government shutdown in which they. Said nothing that was relevant to these people in the room. And then they finally got into it after the lady showed pictures of her baby, which is another pet peeve of mine, because not everybody here has children.

Not everybody here likes children. Not everybody here can have children, even if they want to have children. So let’s not show eight pictures of your baby, um, when you’re already giving a shitty presentation. So this, this led, this led to my other, other, other pet peeve, which is when the time ran out, they had four slides left.

And what was the [00:15:00] last slide? Questions and answers. And this was a room where no doubt people needed to talk. Right? And they ran out the clock talking about stuff that was totally not, I mean, it’s the kind of thing where like when you can tell a talk’s not getting where it needs to go, you can almost feel it in your stomach, right?

Where you’re like, come on, get to the thing. Anyway, that was, that’s another one is like, and don’t cut it off when your last slide and then do this to the last slide. Question and answer. Say sorry, what didn’t have any time. That’s another one for me. Especially when people are hurting or scared. Right?

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think time management is, is, is a, a big challenge for a lot of speakers. I definitely have had those experiences where I’m too early or I, or, or I go too long and yeah, you just,

Jeff: all the things I’m talking about.

Christina: Oh yeah. No, I was gonna say I have too, but, uh, uh, we definitely have. But, but yeah, but that’s one of those things you gotta just like keep it in mind.

I mean, and this is also why, at least for me, I, I can’t speak for anybody else, but like for me, like the one time that I ever like, was really off time-wise, that was like a really good indicator that was like, oh, I haven’t rehearsed enough. [00:16:00] This talk is not actually, like, I, I’ve actually, I’ve fucked up because I got like, you know, big ego brain, like, oh, I don’t need to

Jeff: I got this

Christina: this.

And you’re like, no, I don’t. I don’t. I actually had a talk in India, um, this, uh, this year, this was funny. I had timed it and I knew that I was on time. And then when I did my rehearsal, there were some issues getting the computer set up, and I knew that the time was still going, like for their thing. And so I was manually like subtracting, you know, however many minutes from it.

And then I get off the stage and they told me, they’re like, no, you went too long. You were w we’d accounted for it for the new time and you were this many minutes over. And I was like, okay. I really don’t think that I was. But fine. And so I cut a demo, um, from the talk and whatnot. Anyway, long story short, I wound up ending three minutes early, so like,

Jeff: like, yeah,

Christina: know, but, but, but they, but they drilled it into me so much because this was one where they were gonna be like, we’re gonna cut you off.

You know, we’re, we’re gonna start flashing big lights if you go too long. [00:17:00] Right? And, and, and I wanted to be respectful of that. I knew that there were a lot of people after me and I, I didn’t wanna, you know, keep people from their lunch or from anything else. Um, but it was one of those funny things. ’cause I was like, okay, but I’ve actually been practicing this.

This is a really long talk and I’ve already had to cut a lot of things out of I, and I, I thought that I had the timing. I did actually have the timing, but yeah.

Jay: Not, not to move this into a, a, the career conversation of, of how we give proper talks, but like there, there is this part of me that wonders very much so when it comes to presenting your, like I, I know people who are so prepared and like they’ve over rehearsed their talk. Like you, you can tell they are reading from like a mental script that they have.

And like that is, I mean, some people dig that, some people really love that. I think that there is something to, like, I’ve seen talks as a performance where like there’s music involved and people come on [00:18:00] stage and interrupt the talk intentionally to do a thing and it’s all like, it’s a bit, and to me there is a level of rehearsal about that that takes away from the moment of. People have kind of come in here to hear your expertise and that if you have prepared the talk that like that deep, just make it a YouTube video. At this point, like I feel like there has to be a little bit of, I don’t, I don’t know what the word is, but I would call it like organicness

Christina: Yeah, qua, there’s, there’s, yeah, yeah. There, there has to be a little bit of unpredictability, right? Like, like, so, so something makes me feel like it’s live, right? Like, I mean, honestly, this has been my problem with, with Apple’s, um, conferences and, and like events for the last few years, like since COVID, is that we always knew it was scripted and that they were reading off scripts, but there was, there were live demos, and there were, there were kind of these senses that like, okay, they are rehearsed to the nines and it is impressive, but this is like a live person doing this in front of me.

And now it’s like, no, this is, this is a video. Right? And, and that’s fine. It’s just, you know, that’s, that’s not [00:19:00] the same thing. Which, which to your point, yeah. If, if it’s gonna be so perfectly rehearsed down to the millisecond, maybe, maybe I, I don’t, I don’t know,

Jay: Like make, make it a video. Hey, play the video

Jeff: Well, and if it’s rehearsed that tightly, if you have some, all of a sudden it’s one of those sessions where everybody’s raising their hand, even though there’s a time at the end, which good for them. ’cause they probably predict that they’re, you’ve gotta be able to like, adapt. And if it’s that tight, you just end up kind of like, you know, being a little stuck,

Jay: Yeah. But I, I recognize that that’s, you know, that might be what people need to be comfort, you know, comfortable getting up on stage and presenting. Like, I, the more I prepare, the less comfortable I feel because it’s like, I’m trying to remember what I’m saying versus I know the, I know the context.

Like I know the content, I know the flow. I can speak to the flow. If I’m trying to think about the exact ways to say it, I’m going to wind up messing up. Whereas if I’m like, all right, well, I know that. Slide two is [00:20:00] me talking about this thing and I have approximately 30 seconds, like I will feel the 30 seconds of this slide talking about it or talking to it.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, I will say this though, I would rather someone, like if it were up to me, like I would rather see somebody who was super over-prepared and maybe even like robotic than someone who is not prepared. Right. Um, like, like, like I, I I’m with you. I think like it’s a better talk if it can be more organic.

I think organic is a, is a good word for it. Um, but, but I also, like, if I had to choose, I would rather take the person who is overly polished to the point that you’re like, is, is, is this a video? Um, versus, you know, the person who’s just trying to kind of, to muddle through it. And, and I’ve been in both of those situations, right?

I’ve both been the person who has probably given the same talk a million times and, and it’s very practiced versus person who’s like, oh, I’m actually completely doing this for the first time in person. And you can tell, you know.

Jay: us. Usually my third, third version of the talk is the [00:21:00] best one. Like some, most of the time you don’t get to the third one, but like the third version, I’m like, in my bag. I’m like, cool, I could do this blindfolded. It’s almost like Linux, you know? The third time you’ve spun it up, it’s, you might know what you’re doing.

Speaking of Linux.

Christina: gonna say listen to that segue. Listen to that segue. Um, actually though, but, but before we do that, I was gonna say, do we need to have a sponsor break?

Sponsor Break: Shopify

Jeff: Yeah, we should probably have a sponsor break. Um, and, and I’m, I’m happy to be, um, our sponsor break for today. Our sponsor today is Shopify. Look at Overtired. We’ve tried to sell merch before. It was a long time ago, but it seemed like, you know, you gotta figure everything out on your own.

You gotta do design marketing. Gotta figure out the sales platforms, like the whole deal. Um, it can be super overwhelming. We, we try to keep it simple, um, but every day, uh, can introduce a new decision that needs an answer. And when you’re starting off with something new, it seems like your to-do list keeps growing every day with new tasks.

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Supporting Python Devs in Latin America

Jeff: Now, before we go into Linux, um, I want you, Jay, to update us on Black Python devs. You had a post about supporting, um, Python devs in Latin America, and I would love for you to just like talk about that. And there’s also a call to action, if I’m not mistaken,

Jay: there better

Jeff: can give some money.

Jay: so yes. Um, so it’s been, yeah, it’s been a couple of years. Uh, black Python [00:24:00] devs is in its second year as a nonprofit, third year of existence, which is wild and like. We operate on about 20 to $30,000 a year, and that allows us to sponsor about 20 to 25 conferences. It looks like that’s what we’re tracking for.

Uh, and these are conferences, these are user groups meetups, um, across the u uh, different parts of the us. Uh, several in Africa. And this year I bitched and moaned about like, Hey, how come we we’re not sponsoring anyone in like the, in like Latin America and South America? Like, you know, I don’t know how people think about like, colorism in other countries, but you have several Caribbean islands.

You have several like, like places like Brazil, um, the last country I believe to like abolish slavery in the Americas. Um, yeah, there race is, is [00:25:00] a complicated thing. Um, so. Finally, we had a couple of people from Columbia reach out to us and we started sponsoring some places in um, Columbia, which was super awesome.

And then shortly while I was in the, the throes of trying to figure out this problem, we also had a, a friend of mine who now lives in Montreal but is heavily invested in the Dominican saying like, Hey, look, I understand that like in America, and I guess for people who don’t fully know, in America, there is actually this strange like black.

Black-ish doesn’t identify as black unless someone who’s not black is identifying them. Like there is this weird context around blackness that happens and it, it tends to happen a lot around like, uh, Puerto Rico, like Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. Um, it’s why our president wants a nice American Super Bowl, although the halftime show is presented by someone from Puerto Rico, which is [00:26:00] America.

Yes. Um, these, these things are weird. So all of that to say, I’ve been thinking a ton about like, what, what is next? And a lot of that is just doubling down on what we’re doing in the us, doubling down what we’re doing, um, in Latin America and specifically Latin America. So this is my call to action, like, so everybody, everybody take a, a pin out, open a keyboard, do something like if you know of an event in Latin America and anywhere where there could be.

People who are we? We’ll even say indigenous, native, indigenous to that location. Um, so we’re talking about like Mayan ancestry, Aztec ancestry. Uh, we’re talking about people who were brought over to Latin America or their, at least their ancestors were brought over during slavery or the slave trade. Um, let [00:27:00] me know if there is some type of tech event happening and we are happy to support it.

Now granted, we don’t have a ton of money, um, but we do have some, and it’s what we’ve learned is having some is better than like. Not giving it to people. So like, let’s, let’s make that happen. And our goal is we’re gonna, right now we only have two events that we sponsor in Latin America. My goal is to triple that by 2027.

Um, I think we can do significantly better than that, but all of my advisors are like, you can’t keep making these lofty goals. Eventually you won’t hit one. Um, and I’m just like, shut up. You can’t tell me what to do. So again, at least six, I’m gonna say seven by 2027. And, uh, yeah, we’re, otherwise we’re doing great.

I’ve learned how to give other people responsibility and just trust that they do it. And it works like 95% of the time. And the five.

Jeff: success rate.

Jay: [00:28:00] Yeah, the 5% that it doesn’t work. Usually it’s my fault anyway. So like it’s, I, I’ve like delegated a task and then like something’s sitting in my inbox and I didn’t send it to them and I’m like, oh my bad.

I am the screw up here. Um, can we please try and fix this quickly?

Jeff: what does, what does sponsorship look like? Is it donating to the organizing costs? Is it sponsoring someone to attend?

Jay: um, usually we leave that to whatever the conference needs. Uh, the first few years we were very, very like, Hey, we’re gonna sponsor getting people to the, like, to the event. And what we learned was that injecting 30 or 50 people into an event that was designed to hold a certain number of people only causes more problems.

It increases all of the other budgets. Um, so instead now we just look at the prospectus, we donate, you know, at whatever sponsorship level we can. And I tell people my barrier to entry is like. If [00:29:00] you’re looking at the event and you’re like, I know at least two black people that could get to this event, like, it qualifies.

We, we’ll figure it out. We’ll work with their community to figure out how to make it like the best possible sponsorship that we can. But ultimately it’s, it’s gonna be, Hey, what needs do y’all have? Here’s some money. Like, address those needs. And I guess the way that we keep from, I guess, Nigerian printing, which I, I don’t like that phrase.

’cause now we actually do sponsor a significant number of events in Nigeria. So it’s like,

Jeff: Yeah.

Jay: it’s like, oh, we, we actually do sponsor a lot of those events, but our community members also attend those events. So usually if we’re sponsoring an event, we’re also showing up, we’re inviting people from the local area to join and get started.

So it’s, I, I tell people like, if you’ve ever wanted to donate to like a large number of diverse events, donate to us. You know, if we look at the whole Red Cross, like oh 0.3% of your donation goes to [00:30:00] bottled water, like 76% currently of your donation funds immediately go right back out into the community.

So like, if you really want your money to, to get to the community in like a impactful way, like black python devs.com, hit the support button, you can set up recurring donations. I tell everybody recurring donations are so much more important than big number on screen. Like I can plan a budget around $5 a month.

Jeff: You can plan. Oh my

Jay: Yes, take, take your $500 and just split it up in like $5 a month intervals. And then you’ll have given us like nearly, not as much, but that’s fine. Like we can plan around it, double it, make it 50, whatever.

Jeff: That’s such a great point, man. I didn’t really, I mean, I see the recurring stuff and I get it as soon as you say it, but like makes a lot

Christina: I had never thought about that either. And now, now I feel like kind of bad ’cause like I’m gonna have to shift like my giving patterns. ’cause usually what I do is that like I will give in, in the month of [00:31:00] October, because that’s usually when there’s like a big giving drive, like a, you know, a past companies that I’ve worked at or, um, on like giving Tuesday or, or, or whatever, you know, if, if there will be like a, a, an additional match that the companies will offer.

So I’ll usually try to do like my big, you know, donations like during those months, once a year. But, um, what I, what I should be doing, I guess, is looking about seeing if I can somehow get credit for that and, and donate, you know, on a, on a recurring level, um, or maybe make a. You know, maybe, maybe split it in two.

Right. Give like, if I, if there’s an extra match, give the bigger amount, like on giving Tuesday that gets like the double match or whatever, and then take the other half and, and say, okay, I’m gonna have that recurring over the course of the, of the year. ’cause that’s, that’s a great point. I never thought about that.

Jay: That’s been like, the biggest challenge for us was, again, we, we raised so much money the first year that we were like, okay, cool, we’re up. And then we knew that that money wasn’t coming around the second year. ’cause like [00:32:00] there was no big keynote, there was no big funding event. There was no like, congratulations we’re a nonprofit and getting featured and like the new stack and all this other stuff.

So we basically had to be overly conservative about how much money we could give out because we had no idea how much money was going to come back. And I think we’re still probably more conservative in how we we give than like we need to be. We could probably give a little bit more, but the, the challenge with that is we’re still very much in the infancy of like.

Hey, I didn’t know this community existed. There’s also like, people have questions about like, well, hey, how do I know my money is going to a certain event? Or like, you know, how much of my money is going to the US versus like Africa? And I don’t know why that matters, but people ask. And a lot of this stuff is, I mean, it’s hard for us to tell, you know, a couple of years ago the Python Software Foundation was like, yo, we have plenty of money to sponsor your events.

Come [00:33:00] get us. And then like the next year they’re like, we have to cut off sponsorships because we’ve given way more than we budgeted for, and way more than we expected. And like, my goal is to not ever have to do that. So in order for us to, to really budget effectively, it, we, we look at like what’s the bare minimum that we bring in, which is now about $500 a month.

And what goes out, which is also about $500 a month. Which I’m like, okay, cool. So like we can basically just. Give out what we’re getting in and then let that interest build up and let things just happen. And then when we have something that’s a little bit bigger, we wind up running these small campaigns for it, we’ll raise a little bit of money and then from there it’s like, okay, cool.

We now, we now have a little bit extra to support this big event. Like something like a pi ladies comp, um, that’s happening. So like we have to, like, I don’t budget this much in my own personal [00:34:00] finances and it’s so frustrating at times, but we’re, we’re extremely meticulous about like, like we are cheap.

Like our, um, our North American executor, the guy who runs North America, um, he likes to go down to Mexico just for vacation every year. And he came back with like $400 worth of shirts and stickers and stuff. And he was like, cool, I’ve covered our merch budget for the rest of the year. And I was like. We have a Canva account, like you don’t, like we can just drop ship to like, whatever you need.

And he is like, no, no, no, no, no. This is much cheaper. It’s fine. Um, so it’s, it’s been fun, uh, working with different people and seeing how different people like do things. But yeah, again, get out there, donate and also like take that advice that I gave you and give it to like other small nonprofits and stuff.

They, they might, they get really excited by big numbers. Trust me, I get excited by big numbers, but I’m more excited when I can go. I know that we can sponsor [00:35:00] this event because we’ve budgeted for this much going out based on what we’re bringing in every.

Jeff: That’s amazing. It seems like too, the way you’re set up, very simple. You could scale up if you scaled up. If all of a sudden you’re like, holy shit, somebody just gave us 10,000 more dollars

Jay: Yeah, well a a lot of that goes into like 10,000 more dollars. What does that allow us to do? And, you know, I had a, a great conversation we’re for those that dunno, we’re a part of the OME Foundation. Another linuxy thing, uh, we’ll, we’ll keep tying it back in, um, but it’s coming. But, uh, one of the conversations we had with, with them was, this was never meant to be a permanent, like, fiscal sponsorship agreement.

Like basically they are our bank account, they’re our insurance, they’re our lawyers, they’re our advisors. Like they teach us how to be a nonprofit. Um, but then they don’t have any say in, you know, how we operate outside of, Hey, you can’t give money this way because that’s illegal. Um, so other than that, they’re like, just letting us do [00:36:00] our thing.

But. Eventually we are planning on becoming our own nonprofit that’s in the works. Eventually I’m going to also step down and someone who like knows how to run nonprofits will come in and do that thing, or I’ll pursue that full-time. I don’t know. But we have to save up for that to happen. Hire, putting a lawyer on retainer is not cheap.

Getting, getting insurance because you’re, you’re like, nonprofit is called Black Python devs. And people want to ask about, well, what about white Python devs? And I’m like, they’re invited too, I guess. Like, cool. Like I’m, I am

Jeff: all devs matter, Jay,

Jay: I am dreading and planning for the lawsuit to eventually happen and like just having that money saved up and ready to go, like it sucks because that’s money that could go out into the community, but it’s money that we’re going to have to spend

Christina: No. Well, right. Well, no, that’s the thing, right? Is like you’re being, you’re thinking about this in a smart way. You’re like, it [00:37:00] sounds like yo