Announcing the inaugural winner of the Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize

On March 17 this year, Django core team member Malcolm Tredinnick suffered a brain aneurysm and passed away. Over the last 2 months, the Django Software Foundation (DSF) has been raising funds to establish an award in Malcolm's name. We've also been soliciting suggestions from the community for the inaugural recipient of this award.

Today, it gives me great pleasure to announce the inaugural winner of the Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize: Curtis Maloney.

Curtis -- perhaps better known by his IRC handle FunkyBob -- has been a regular fixture on the #django and #django-dev IRC channel for some time, where he has helped hundreds of Django users get their start in Django. He is also active in his local Django users group - MelbDjango - giving presentations and helping to organise and run regular HackFests. Curtis has also brought his considerable experience to discussions on the django-developers mailing list, especially regarding caching and templating.

For these contributions, the membership of the Django Software Foundation wishes to recognise Curtis' as someone who exemplifies the spirit of Malcolm's contribution to the Django community: someone who welcomes, supports and nurtures newcomers; freely gives feedback and assistance to others, and helps to grow the community.

When the DSF approached Curtis about being the winner of the award, he commented: "I was fortunate enough to meet Malcolm in 2007, at Linux.conf.au. He was a genuinely friendly person who managed to encourage everyone around him to create, just by his enthusiasm. I feel quite humbled to think others feel I am worthy of an honor created in his name, and to celebrate his spirit."

Thanks to donations from the Django community, and a generous contribution from Malcolm's family, the award is accompanied by a $1000 cash prize. The hope is that Curtis will use the award stipend as a contribution to travel to a community event -- a DjangoCon, a PyCon, a sprint -- and continue in Malcolm’s footsteps.

Congratulations, Curtis!