Django News Newsletter

Show & Tell
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Hi everyone,

tl;dr We are trying to make the Django News Newsletter into the best free resource for keeping up with the Django/Python community.

This week the Django News Newsletter turns one year old with issue 52. Will Vincent and I would like to know what you think so far?

Please help us out by answering any of the following questions or use the Google Form if you’d prefer to keep your answers private:

  • What do you like and dislike about the current newsletter?

  • Is it actionably helpful? If not, what kind of information would be actionably valuable to you?

  • We do our best to watch projects to cover their announcements like Django, Python, Channels, Django REST Framework, and Wagtail releases, to name some of the more active projects. What else should we track or would you want to know about?

  • What other tech newsletters are you subscribed to? Why? (We’d love to hear from non-Django News Newsletter subscribers too.)

  • If you’re a subscriber: Do you tend to read the emails all the way through? Put another way: do you enjoy reading them?

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Like: timely - I see things that I wouldn’t otherwise find for weeks or months.

Yes! The links to the reading material (articles, blogs, new packages) helps keep the backlog loaded.

Honestly don’t know. I look to the more active and involved members of the community to point out what’s new and interesting that I should look at.

None.

Yes! I may not go to all the links or look at all the projects mentioned, but at least I appreciate gaining some sort of awareness of them.

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Very useful. I’m super-happy that this exists!

Like: it’s a good roundup of links/news. I find something useful in every issue (at least one link, often more). The links to useful apps/projects are especially valuable; I feel like the newsletter saves me a bunch of time trawling through GIthub.

Not a dislike, exactly, but something I feel is … missing? And would love to see: I’d really enjoy more editorial content from y’all. E.g., not just presenting a link, but a few words on why it’s useful, or why you included it, or how it stacks up against other options in the area, etc.

Quite a few actually but the ones that are most relevant I think:

I think you’ll see the editorializing I’m talking about up there in these, especially in Last Week in AWS. Obviously Corey has a unique voice and I’m not suggesting other people try to copy him! But I love that he brings his voice to the newsletter, as do Clint and Hanno.

Yes, and yes!

Thanks for the newsletter, Jeff and Will! I’m somehow surprised it’s only been a year, because I already feel like its a critical part of the Django community/ecosystem.

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I like the overall organization, and the variety of information that you share.

Absolutely. It calls attention to areas of Django that I’m not actively digging into through my own projects. Many times these turn out to be things I didn’t even know to look for. I feel much more up to date with Django the framework, and Django the community after reading the newsletter for the last year. The combination of this newsletter and the Django Chat podcast is wonderful.

PyCoder’s weekly provides similar information for the larger Python ecosystem.

Yes, every week. They’re quite enjoyable. :slight_smile:

Thank you both for putting this together every week!

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I am very happy with the newsletter as it is. It’s a great community resource and something I regularly point people towards.

Yes, I get a good overview of recent content and updates.

Perhaps the major Django-related “DevOps” announcements? (databases, Ubuntu, cloud providers, etc). For example, PostgreSQL 13 came out in September but I only found out due to browsing its docs, which I imagine most Django devs barely touch.

Last Week in AWS but I don’t read that nearly as often :wink: Also lots of RSS feeds that I catch up on once in a while.

I make sure I’ve at least seen each headline, to know if it’s relevant.

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  • What do you like and dislike about the current newsletter?

Like: the attention to detail. Even if I read my social media timelines back to front there’s still things that y’all pick up!

Dislike: Honestly, there’s nothing I’d say here that isn’t also room to improve while considering the labour of love this newsletter is.

  • Is it actionably helpful? If not, what kind of information would be actionably valuable to you?

Yes it is! There’s more than a few times that I’ve gone “oooohhh!” on a link and immediately tried it out. But I also appreciate having a cache of searchable projects in my inbox that I can go back to to see if there’s anything in there that can help if I’m after something for x thing.

  • We do our best to watch projects to cover their announcements like Django, Python, Channels, Django REST Framework, and Wagtail releases, to name some of the more active projects. What else should we track or would you want to know about?

Honestly this is pretty good coverage for the ecosystem of Django and the bits just above and below it in the stack.

  • What other tech newsletters are you subscribed to? Why? (We’d love to hear from non-Django News Newsletter subscribers too.)

sreweekly
developeravocados
devopsweekly

  • If you’re a subscriber: Do you tend to read the emails all the way through? Put another way: do you enjoy reading them?

I’ll skim the entire thing, and click through anything interesting. It’s always great to see what’s going on in the djangosphere.

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