For those curious, this proposal was not accepted for DjangoCon EU 2025 in Dublin, but my other one about using Marimo Notebooks with Django was accepted, so I’ll definitely be in Dublin.
I’ve attached the proposal below in case it helps kick off any new conversations.
Since submitting this proposal, I’ve also been accepted into the Django Fundraising Working Group - if you’re interested in talking about funding OSS (particularly Django, duh), then let me know!
Title
Procuring Django as a Public Good
Format
workshop - 50mins
Abstract
Every year, globally the public sector spends at least 13 trillion US dollars with its suppliers, and this translates into billions of dollars on software services. Many of these commercial agreements are governed by rules about spending that are designed to take into account ideas like social value beyond just price.
In the UK for example, since 2012, every public sector contract has had “social value” considerations that govern how people in control of budgets can spend money, which favour bids that can explain how in the delivery of work, they’re also able to deliver social and environmental outcomes.
The US and Europe have similar laws and guidance for public sector too, designed to favour paying prevailing wages, union labour, greener services and so on.
If we accept that open source software like Django is a public good, then being able to tell a good story about how it creates social value makes it easier for procurement guidance to favour projects using Django, and to make sure funding goes to the Django project as well.
This can help create a new funding stream for the Django project, that helps anyone who relies on Django.
Description
Who is this for?
Anyone with an interest in learning how Django is funded, and investigating new ways to fund the Django Project. If you work in an organisation that sells services to the public sector, Django is a dependency in your service, and you are involved in designing solutions and selling them, then this should be particularly relevant to you.
While the focus is on public sector, this is relevant to any entity that also includes social and environmental considerations when spending money.
How will the workshop time be spent?
Introductory briefing
To set the scene, we’ll give a backgrounder on where funding currently comes from for the Django Foundation, and the existing strategies for raising funds.
What social value provisions look like for digital projects
Interactively, and in groups if the numbers require it, we’ll run through concrete examples where and environmental outcomes are referenced in requests for proposals, and tenders in the public sector.
The organiser of the workshop will have some case studies and samples to start us off - but attendees are welcome to bring their own.
Moderated discussion
After getting familiar with the kinds of considerations built into public sector procurement , we’ll have a lightly moderated discussion about what activities in the Django community fit into these criteria.
For example, if social inclusion is something that winning bids favour in the public sector, what stories to we need to be able to tell about the outcomes of funding Django Girls workshops or Djangonaught Space, to write the funding of this work into our bids?
Would we need language to allocate a set amount of a project cost towards funding Django Foundation activities? Would this be a thing people selling Django projects would be prepared to write into commercial agreements? If so, what would governance look like? There’s plenty of talk about!
Intended Outcomes
A goal of this workshop is to generate interesting new ideas that could be developed inside the Django Fundraising Working Group, or used by people writing commercial agreements, where Django is a significant part of the technical solution used to meet a need that the public sector has tendered for.
A secondary goal is to meet other Djangonaughts with an interest in finding ways to support the Django Project that are tied to how it makes money for people now. We don’t need everyone in the Django community to have an interest in creative bureacracy, just like we don’t need everyone to be an accessibility expert, or a database wizard, but having a few definitely can help.