Episode 79: Leah Silen on how NumFocus helps makes scientific code more sustainable

Guest Leah Silen Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa
Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain!
Today, our special guest is Leah Silen, who is the Executive
Director of NumFOCUS. She has been the primary driver behind the
organization and execution of its programs including fiscal
sponsorship, the PyData event series, and DEI initiatives. We learn
what NumFOCUS does, how it works in terms of scientific research,
who provides the funding, and the diversity, equity, and inclusion
support that NumFOCUS provides projects. Leah talks about the
importance of Grant Management and Community Management needed to
help projects in the future, and a “Sustain Exclusive” announcement
is made by Leah on something NumFOCUS is in the early stages of
building. Go ahead and download this episode now to find out what
it is! [00:01:16] Leah explains what NumFOCUS does, how it works,
and what scientific open source means. [00:03:22] Since NASA
researchers use NumFOCUS for sponsored projects, Justin asks if
there are any sponsored projects on Mars right now. [00:05:18] Leah
tells us about NumFOCUS being a project foundational to scientific
research. [00:05:54] We learn about Leah’s art background and
becoming one of the founding members of NumFOCUS. [00:07:21] There
are maintainers of forty-two projects and Leah explains who the
typical maintainer is of the NumFOCUS ecosystem. [00:08:14] Find
out what a typical week looks like for Leah at NumFOCUS. [00:10:37]
Richard is curious how Leah sees the future of this sort of
organization as we’re seeing more of them, and if she’s just going
to keep growing until there’s hundreds of projects under her or
will there be more or less. [00:13:12] We learn who provides
funding at NumFOCUS since they have nine staff members. Justin
wonders how NumFOCUS is diversifying their income and Leah makes an
announcement about something NumFOCUS is building and it’s a
“Sustain Exclusive!” [00:16:11] Justin asks if NumFOCUS ever joins
forces with the PSF. [00:16:55] Leah mentioned the diversity,
equity, and inclusion support that NumFOCUS provides projects, she
describes how it’s important for project sustainability, and the
conversations there have been. [00:19:59] Richard wonders about the
process of taking on a new project. [00:23:25] Leah tells us how
they deal with the maintenance of scientific projects. [00:25:24]
We learn the moon-shot idea of NumFOCUS, besides just making sure
all these projects run smoothly, and what the goal is. [00:26:42]
Leah tells us what she’s most excited about in terms of providing
better stuff to projects in the near future. [00:29:20] Community
Manager and Developer Advocate is discussed. [00:31:20] Find out
where you can follow Leah and NumFOCUS on the internet. Quotes
[00:04:00] “Many of the leaders in that project work for a division
of NASA that have been directly involved in Mars Roemer images and
things like that, as well as Astro Pi, another one of the projects
that’s widely used by the astronomy community.” [00:05:18] “We many
times speak of NumFOCUS projects as being very foundational to
scientific research.” [00:10:59] “We have to make sure that as the
number of projects that we’re sponsoring are affiliated with
NumFOCUS grows, that the organization is able to scale with that.”
[00:12:20] “And there’s so many areas that we don’t address that we
could address for our projects, you know just handling the legal
aspect, grant management, helping them with we have a contributor
diversification and research program.” [00:12:35] “So working on
DEI initiatives that’s woven through everything we do and helping
our projects with that.” [00:23:58] “But that’s one reason we
really want to work and focus on diversifying the contributor base.
Also, with contributors who are across different domains and in
different areas.” [00:24:08] “So, if a project comes and applies to
NumFOCUS and everyone is at one university, we don’t consider that
open, so there has to be contributors spread out no more than two
employed, whether that’s a university or whether that’s a
for-profit entity.” [00:26:50] “So, I think projects, a lot of the
things that NumFOCUS does can be related to Community Management
but definitely when you’re talking about more of an internal
project community.” [00:27:20] “I think that is probably one of the
things that is most needed across projects is every project having
a Community Manager to really look at their internal communities as
well as interactions with their user base.” Spotlight [00:32:05]
Alyssa’s spotlight is Community Managers. [00:32:44] Eric’s
spotlight is Doom Emacs. [00:33:21] Justin’s spotlight is Lipgloss
by Charm. [00:33:42] Richard’s spotlight is IDLE. [00:34:09] Leah’s
spotlight is Sustain Diversity Working Group. Links NumFOCUS
(https://numfocus.org/) NumFOCUS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/NumFOCUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
info@numfocus.org (mailto:info@numfocus.org) leah@numfocus.org
(mailto:leah@numfocus.org) “5 qualities of outstanding open source
community managers” by Jason Blais
(https://opensource.com/article/20/9/open-source-community-managers)
Doom Emacs-GitHub (https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs)
Lipgloss-Charm (https://github.com/charmbracelet) Charm Twitter
(https://twitter.com/charmcli?lang=en) IDLE
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html) Sustain Working
Groups (https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/) Credits Produced by
Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr
at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Leah Silen.