According to the PSF website,
“The PSF Community Service Awards are a formal way for the PSF Board of Directors to offer recognition of work which, in its opinion, significantly improves the Foundation's fulfillment of its mission and benefits the broader Python community.”
If you scroll down to August 2025, you will read that I was awarded for
“contribution to the international Python community through leadership of PyCons in Portugal, speaking regularly at PyCons throughout the world, and contributing to the leadership of the Python community in Europe.”
I was literally taken by surprise when I got the award. Nominations for the award are made confidentially and no one had told me anything (as that's the point), so I didn't know I was being considered for a Community Service Award.
If that's your cup of tea, you can read a small anecdote regarding how I got the news that I was getting the award on LinkedIn:
(Also on BlueSky and X/Twitter.)
Receiving this award made me inexplicably happy. I attended my first in-person Python conference in 2022 (EuroPython 2022) and since then my involvement with the community has grown exponentially. By the time I attended my first in-person EuroPython I had already been writing about and teaching Python for a few years but attending EuroPython was objectively a life-changing experience.
Attending Python conferences in person meant that I was connecting with the human beings that power the language and it led me to the realisation that there is a community around the Python language. I had heard about this “Python community” and I had heard Brett Cannon's “I came for the [Python] language but I stayed for the community.”, but the truth is that none of this makes any sense until you experience it firsthand.
Over the past few years, my appreciation for the community has been growing side by side with my involvement in the community, mostly volunteering at EuroPython and PyCon Portugal and speaking at a number of different PyCons. I am not particularly good with feelings1 so I have a really hard time finding the correct words to describe what it is that I feel when I'm at a Python conference, or when I'm helping organise EuroPython, but “sense of belonging” is a big thing.
So, as I continue to write about Python online, share Python with everyone I cross paths with, and invest more and more time into EuroPython and PyCon Portugal, I felt an incredible sense of validation when I received the PSF email saying I was receiving the Community Service Award. I don't know if this is weird to say or not, but I felt understood and validated. I felt like the award validated my passion for the community and the time I devoted to the community. I think that's it.
But boy oh boy, the award is also an incredible honour.
If you open the page that lists previous recipients of the awards, you will see a very big list of incredible people that do 10 or 100 times more for the community than what I do. I am humbled as I go through the list and read the names of the people that got the award before me. Some of the names I recognise instantly. Some of the names are completely new to me. But what everyone has in common is that they have made very significant contributions to the Python community.
I don't think I am insignificant. I honestly believe I have had, and continue to have, a net positive impact on the community. But damn, my contributions feel insignificant next to the others! 😄
And yet, however insignificant my contributions may be next to the contributions of the others on that page – or next to folks who aren't even on that page yet –, someone went through the trouble of emailing the PSF saying I should receive the award. And the board voted on it and agreed.
So, thank you to the person who nominated me; thank you to the PSF board for this incredible recognition; thank you to everyone who's crossed paths with me and who inspired me to contribute to the community!
Now, I am even more motivated to keep contributing to the community. The award doesn't feel – and it's not supposed to feel – like the end of a journey. It's more like a sign on the side of the road telling me I'm going in the right direction!
I am working on it. ↩
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