Who am I?
I am a 32 year old from India. I am a relatively new member of Debian (DD since May 2019, DM since 2016). Unlike majority of the other DDs, I do not have a long history of association with Debian. I was a librarian with zero technical background, working in a corporate library, before I got introduced to Free Software and Debian in 2015-16. Everything changed from there. I became a Free Software advocate and a Debian contributor and a couple of years down the line, I became a Debian Developer.
I am part of ruby, javascript and golang teams in Debian. I maintain a good number of packages with major ones being gitlab, gitaly, rails etc.
I have been mentoring people to contribute to Debian. I am involved with numerous packaging workshops and other Debian events throughout India.
I am leading the Indian DebConf bid team which won bid for DebConf22.
Why am I contesting?
Concerned with the skewed gender ratios within the Free Software community (and Debian) I am working towards doing whatever small things I can to better the situation. This DPL candidature is also in fact one small step towards that. How many times did we have a non-male candidate for DPL? My primary goal of contesting for DPL is to bring the diversity issues to the mainstream.
I am aware that Debian is doing things to increase diversity within Debian, but as we can see, it is not sufficient. A good amount of money is also spent, but are we getting quality diverse contributors? We need to find answers. We need to find out better and effective ways.
One effective way I see to encourage diverse people to contribute is to have more visibility for diversity already within the community. I would encourage more women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people who are already part of the project to be more visibile instead of staying hidden in some part of the project (like I was doing until recently).
My plans as DPL
I do not have any extraordinary plan as DPL. But below are some simple things which I would like to focus in addition to regular activities of DPL. I am not good at writing detailed plans, but I am open to discussions on each of the below points during the campaign if needed.
Be an approachable DPL, open for suggestions and discussions.
Drive activities focusing on improving diversity in Debian.
Special attention for better spending of diversity budget.
Making Debian more welcoming to all – new comers and old timers alike.
Encourage and facilitate people proposing new ideas and processes for improvement of Debian.
Discussions and activities for positive changes and overcome the reluctance to change visible at various levels in the project.
Better delegation of responsibilities.
Enabling discussions for how to better "do-o-cracy" within the project.
Promote more face to face team meetings/sprints.
Encourage reducing flame wars and focusing on better communication between teams/individuals.
Time commitment
As a freelancer who works on Debian packaging as day job, allocating time for DPL work will not be an issue at all.