My Django on the Med 2026 experience 🏖️

Description and use

The author joined the Django on the Med sprint, received mentorship, fixed an ORM bug, and felt integrated into the Django community.

Problem

The author was unsure if their experience level was sufficient to contribute to a Django development sprint and needed guidance on how to integrate into the event.

Outcome

The author contributed a bug fix to Django’s ORM, received mentorship from senior developers, and gained confidence in participating in community events.

Workflow

• 1. Expressed interest on Slack and joined a team focused on nullable expressions in the ORM.
• 2. Worked with Jacob Walls to understand the issue and review a proof‑of‑concept PR.
• 3. Received mentorship from Simon Charette, who explained ORM concepts and guided the author through the bug discovery.
• 4. Identified a new bug in Django 6.1 involving .filter() and .exclude() with __in lookups containing None.
• 5. Created a ticket (37372) and a PR draft (22040) to fix the bug.
• 6. Collaborated with the team to complete the PR and submit it to the Django project.

Evidence

I was being mentored, but at the same time, I felt like a peer.

Source

Then, something interesting happened: While Simon was explaining the null handling in __in lookups to me, he found an ORM bug introduced in Django 6.1!

Source

I was able to accomplish it! That feels incredibly satisfying.

Source