I, Utkarsh Gupta, hereby nominate myself for another term of DMB elections.

Who I am

I am Utkarsh, a Software Engineer II at Canonical for about 3 years now. I've been an Ubuntu Core developer for about 3 years and have been a Debian core developer for about 6 years.

I joined Canonical in 2021 as a member of the Server team where I handled a bunch of customer tickets, did lots of distro work, and eventually got my core developer rights. Two years ago, I transitioned into the CPC (Public Cloud) team where I (still) work on customer tickets, distro work, infra and tooling bits around cloud images, and in general cloud stuff.

When I am not working, I do lots of other open source work, esp. in Debian, where I have worked on more than 1000 packages.

Apart from that, I am constantly reading, traveling, and checking items off my bucket list.

Reasons for standing in the elections

Last term with DMB

I was elected for the last term in DMB and I spent the last 2 years doing the following:

• Chairing 74% of the meetings held during the last two years.
• Replying to 67% of the request mails on the DMB mailing list.
• Working on getting the documentation out on the expectations of the DMB.
• Facilitating through team and personal issues that have arised in the DMB in the last two years.
• Making tooling better to act on the requests of others developers that they raise on the DMB list.

Helping with the technical bits

Back in 2021, when I joined the Server team, a general expectation (as is with every member of the uploading teams) was to get to core dev at some point. I did my research, talked to my colleagues, and few people from the DMB to get the expectations right.

After being well-versed with what the expectation was of me, I got to working. And within 3½ months (which is also a record time in Ubuntu/Canonical, at least so I've been told!), I applied for core dev and my application was approved with 4/4 votes.

I've had the pleasure of working with Robie, a member of the DMB, who also endorsed my application:
From https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UtkarshGupta/CoreDevApplication#Robie_Basak:

   I started with my usual reference when I've been asked in the past my expectations for
   a core dev applicant: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RobieBasak/DMB/CoreDev. In this document,
   I say: "I don't necessarily expect detailed direct experience in all of these, but I do
   expect to see direct and deep experience of at least some of them and a general
   understanding of most of them." Utkarsh decided to go for direct and deep experience
   of all of my topics, far exceeding my expectations.

And this was only possible because I had done my homework of understanding what is expected of me. Furthermore, I not only did that but also went through past 50 or so application meeting logs (which is public!) to understand why few people do not make it through. So if I were to get elected, I'd like to fix this aspect of it. Help more people understand what's required of them and try to help them get through to the other side, thereby creating a "win-win" situation.

Social side of things

In light of recent backlashes on the devel-permissions@ list, I think I could be someone who'd help smoothen a few rough edges out. Also, there are sometimes heated arguments on and off list, which could derail the whole progress and the initiatives taken by people and I think, with me on the team, I could take care of that bit. And this is something I'd like to work on as well. Some members of the DMB have seen and acknowledged this skill in me and having that on the team would be a net win, in my opinion.

So all in all, I'd like to nominate myself for another term on the DMB team, helping in both, social and technical side of things. \o/