Episode 291: Chelsea Finnie on PythonNZ  🔗 **Source:** [Episode 291: Chelsea Finnie on PythonNZ](https://share.snipd.com/episode/86bc1d36-f0dc-44af-b902-b4415573576b) ## Highlights - **Network Automation Work At REANNZ** - Chelsea runs network DevOps at REANNZ and is working on the PANDA initiative to push defined network services to devices for automation. - PANDA repackages network service definitions and pushes them to devices, shifting REANNZ from hand-built scripts to declarative automation. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie So REANZ. REANZ stands for Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand. It is the National Research and Education Network for New Zealand, providing network services for research institutes, universities, other things. Additionally, we also recently combined with NESE, which is a high-performance computer collaboration from the universities and organizations. So they're part of us. So we're providing those high-performance services to research organizations as well. What do I actually do there? Yeah. My current job title is a senior network DevOps engineer. I would probably say that my job is, yes, I do stuff. I do things. I was originally hired there to do network automation. There was some network automation systems that we had written in Python that my boss built and I was brought on board to understand that system, take the risk away from just him understanding It and also creating tools, new things to automate our network. That has progressed on to what we're doing with a network automation now, which is called Panda, Program Advancing Network Device Automation. We were actually defining network services and then pushing them down out to the network. ([Time 0:01:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/435e7812-0b52-4c5a-aba4-22833dc97286)) - **Glue Service Connecting Prometheus To Argus** - Chelsea built an open source Flask Transcript: Chelsea Finnie One of the things that I've done is this Argus Glue service. So Argus is this like an incident management system built by another NRIN or at least something that has an NRIN SICT I think. They're in Norway and pretty much it's this alert management system, incident management, where alert comes through and you can acknowledge it, close it and stuff. I've built a glue service that connects alert management from Prometheus to Argus using basically just Flask as a webhook. And that's actually open source. That's out, used by other organizations. It's there online. ([Time 0:03:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5794c564-b89f-48e7-8d43-1db659b36adf)) - **Volunteering AV Led To Community Leadership** - Chelsea got involved in Python New Zealand by volunteering AV at Kiwi PyCon after being given a free ticket and helping record sessions. - Helping fix AV and production convinced her she could run a conference and led to joining the committee and later standing for election. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie And he basically pulled me in to help do some video recording stuff at KiwiPyConX, was the one. It was the one in Wellington. I think it was 2019, 2018. What are those years? I think it was before COVID. All that kind of blurs for me. And he gave me a free ticket, got a t-shirt, kind of said first taste is free. And so that was kind of my first exposure to more of the community side of Python. Fast forwarding a few years, I was kind of just looking around at what I was doing with my role and trying to kind of see what else was out there and wanting to make some connections in the Industry. And so I started going to Python conferences again. I think this was back in 2023. And ended up going to Kiwi PyCon down in Invercargill. Why hope I? And that was an interesting experience. Let's just say I was kind of told about a week beforehand that they didn't have any AV. And my good friend, Simon Merrick, he rang me up. He was like, hey, we don't have any video recording for this kind of thing. We don't have any AV. Do you have any ideas? And I'm like, well, I've got some equipment. I could probably do a thing. It might not be very good, but I could probably record something. And I ended up asking around. I was still at Catalyst at the time. Got some advice to talk to Frank Keating. He's one of the organizers for CheckOn down in Christchurch. And we were like, oh, can we borrow some equipment? And he was like, why don't I just come down? And I'll sponsor, but I'll just come down and record things. And so I ended up spending my time... I was meant to be attending a conference, being voluntold to basically help with AV. It was a bit of a mishmash. And so as I was helping get people mic'd up and everything like that, I was telling some people what to do for the production side of things. And I left that conference thinking, I could probably run a conference, I could probably do that. And so leaving that, I decided to join NZPUG at the time, now Python NZ, and then apply for the committee. To give context of this, at Kiwi, PyCon, and Vikargle, ([Time 0:05:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56286e4f-64c5-4b78-8ed5-fb2cd8be1303)) - **Sea Shanty Lightning Talk Won Goodwill** - As a committee candidate Chelsea promised to write and perform a Python-based sea shanty and then delivered a sea shanty lightning talk. - The playful campaign pledge helped her connect with the community and likely aided election to the committee. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie They have a lightning talks thing. And I decided to teach everyone a sea shanty. Sea shanties is one of the things I like doing. That's one of my hobbies on Thursdays, I go see sea shanties at the pub and it's a great thing. If you don't have a sea shanty club in your city or town, you should start one up. Recommended. I can send some links through on that one as well. So yeah, I ended up doing a sea shanty and a lot of people loved it. And so part of my bid by my election promise for joining the committee was that, well, if I'm elected, I will write a Python based C shanty and sing it at the next Kiwi PyCon. Now, I don't know if that was a reason why I was elected, but I was elected. ([Time 0:07:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77036f5c-9ac5-4ddd-9fb4-a0e8553e2a0d)) - **Committee Discovered A Significant Budget Hole** - Shortly after election Chelsea and the committee discovered the society was insolvent with multiple purchases unrelated to Python New Zealand. - They spent weeks combing spreadsheets to identify questionable transactions and confirmed a significant amount had been misused. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie This is an interesting thing and maybe not a common story for people who first get involved in open source communities. I was elected onto the committee and one of the first conversations I had was with the then president, Tom Eastman, where he was alluding to the fact that from previous conferences, We had quite a bit of a hole in our budget and we still had a lot of people to pay. And it seemed like previous conferences were kind of more getting paid by the next conference rather than the profits of the conference at the time. And that seemed concerning. Now, he didn't really have any suspicions at the time of any malpractice. But I was kind of like, well, this kind of rings a bell to some other things that I've kind of come across in life before. And I suspect that maybe the treasurer has been doing some less than honest work. This is a very hard thing for, I think, a community to go through because when you trust somebody and you have that relationship, it's very hard to see everything completely objectively. It's hard to assume the worst or assume what's actually happened. So I've joined this committee and one of the first things that I hear is the fact that we might not get to exist as a society anymore and we might not have a conference next year. So this could be the shortest stint of being on a committee that anyone's been on and we might be winding up in a few months. That's an interesting thing. How do you react to that? How do you go about that? Now, for me, I'm stubborn. Maybe stubborn is not the right word. I'm tenacious. I don't give in and give up easily. And I'm like, well, surely we can work around this. Now, going through from that, we end up having our first committee meetings. We get access to the bank accounts because the bank accounts were closed for some reason. I'm not going to go into detail as to why and what the excuses were around that. But once we get those bank accounts, it was quite clear as to what was going on. ([Time 0:09:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55c1076d-12a8-4e97-9569-555083e94b64)) - **Board Members Face Personal Liability When Insolvent** - Legal advice warned that if the society continued while insolvent committee members could be personally liable for creditors. - That reality forced the committee to consider winding up or finding external financial backing before running another event. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie And so we have discussions about what we need to do we talk to a lawyer we get some legal advice on this right of can we continue to operate can we run another conference? And the reality that we're facing was the fact that we were insolvent. And the legal advice was that basically, if we took out a loan, if we continue to operate the society, that every committee member, every director, effectively, would be financially Liable. And so this is a big risk, right? This is a big thing, a heavy thing to think about. And now maybe this is stupidity, but I was kind of like, well, surely we can find a way. And the majority of the committee was on board with that. And I don't want to speak to anybody who wasn't, right? Because that's perfectly reasonable to position. And not being a part of that is a perfectly reasonable thing. So yeah, we're faced with this hard decision. Now, one of the things that we need to do is also go to the police. So regardless of what we do, if we need to wind up, which kind of seems like the direction we'll probably have to go unless we could get some kind of financial backing, we basically don't Have the choice to wind up. But regardless, we have to go to the police. ([Time 0:11:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/20246947-c43d-4849-8c21-177b5ea80405)) - **Linux Australia Provided A Community Lifeline** - Linux Australia stepped in with a sponsorship to pay creditors and auspiced Kiwi PyCon for up to five years so Python New Zealand could keep operating. - The sponsorship was a community rescue, not a loan, and allowed Kiwi PyCon to continue under Linux Australia’s oversight. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie Now, this is where communities are really important. This is where these connections, these relationships, super critical. And Tom Eastman called up the president of Linux Australia and let him know of the situation with how big of a hole we've got and what we're facing. It's hard to express how we felt with what they came back with, which is they effectively proposed two things. One is that they'll effectively sponsor Python New Zealand or NZPug at the time and pay off our creditors with that sponsorship. So this wasn't a loan. This was just like a community sponsorship that they did. And then the second thing was they would have us run Kiwi PyCon, auspiced under Linux Australia for the next five years or until we returned the effective value of the sponsorship that They have given. This was an amazing thing to have proposed, right? We were faced with going insolvent and here we are basically given this chance to still exist and to still run the community. This's the thing that we need to discuss and vote on and agree on as a committee. But like, it was a no-brainer at this point. Like we are being offered a massive lifesaver. And so we did. We took that sponsorship from Linux Australia. And we've, for the past two years, been running Kiwi PyCon Auspice under Linux Australia. And you'll see them listed as our Phoenix sponsor, right? ([Time 0:13:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/85b1fa0c-bbac-4288-9bc5-b0abe0f165be)) - **Enforce Dual Signatures And Use Accounting Software** - Implement multi-signatory controls and monthly bank reports and test that signatory rules are enforced to prevent unilateral spending. - Adopt accounting software like Xero so transactions are visible early and fraud is exposed sooner. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie So we actually had it in our charter that two people were meant to have access to the bank account. And it's difficult for me to talk about it without throwing shade to a specific company, so I won't. But let's just say the enforcements that were expected to have weren't there. And there's certain processes and things that weren't followed from either side as well. But now what we do is we ensure that we've got a bank report every month for the committee to read. And additionally, we've actually tested the financial authority on those accounts to ensure that they are what we have set them to be, to ensure that the people who've got access to Those accounts have access to those accounts, and that you can't make transactions without like that dual signatory. Richard Littauer So you've gone down to McDonald's with your card and seen if it works or not without having another signatory? Chelsea Finnie I wouldn't say we've specifically done that thing, but in terms of general, more big transactions, we've at least tested where the functionality of those policies have actually been Implemented properly. Like we've tested that. That's one side of it. We've also got Xero as well. So this was a thing that the previous treasurer argued against having because, oh, we don't need it and everything like that. The thing is, is that if Xero was there, then it would have very clearly exposed the fraud in the first place. What's Xero? Xero is a financial, it's like an accounting SaaS application thingy. Do you have an app which tracks where everything goes and how it's going? Yeah, basically doing money in a small medium enterprise kind of thing. It does sound like an ad for it. So we could just say it's an application. Additionally, there's things like in terms of when we're actually having committee members onboarded, requirements around like, is this person actually qualified or are they not Disqualified from being a committee member in New Zealand or on a board? ([Time 0:18:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/768d4308-0936-4dc0-b020-8d02e1eb528d)) - **Motivation Comes From Community Care And Personal Growth** - Chelsea stayed motivated by caring for the community and stubbornness, using leadership as both service and career development. - Committee work offered non-monetary rewards: community preservation, CV experience, and Institute of Directors recognition. Transcript: Chelsea Finnie I guess it's knowing why you're doing it. What is the motivator for doing it? And I guess for me, I want to keep the community alive and stubbornness as well. To be honest, like there's that sort of like spite. Spite is a strong motivator for me, I'd say. It's like, we won't let this die. And so we'll put in all these checks and balances in place to ensure that this can't happen again. It's a motivator for me. That's not the exciting stuff, right? Why would you sign up to do this? The reason is because you care. Looks good on your CV too, right? It's a good experience. And it has counted towards my membership of the Institute of Directors as well. So like there are some personal things that like this is actually really good for. I'm not going to pretend like I get nothing out of this as a result, right? But I don't get money out of it. But what I get is exposure to this kind of work that you probably wouldn't get exposure to easily otherwise, right? It's in the not-for and it's in the charities. ([Time 0:20:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06e13827-5ad8-436f-a78d-11467cc06180))