It would an understatement to say that I have enjoyed the Debconf5 videos; as a New Maintainer who had no chance of being able to attend, the videos have both informed me and helped me feel more connected to the Debian community. Who knew all these hackergotchis on Planet Debian had bodies attached to them?
I received an email from the New Maintainer Front Desk today stating that they could see no evidence of me having contributed to Debian recently, and therefore I would not be assigned an Application Manager. For the first 90 seconds after I read it, I could feel the heat in my face and how rapidly my heart had begun beating. But right away I remembered the video of Hannah Wallach, Dafydd Harries, and Moray Allan’s presentation on the New Maintainer Process. I remembered them saying how understaffed the process was and what a large workload existed. They also explained how sometimes you might need to provide more information during the process via email conversations. Since most of my work is in the Debian Java Packaging project, I am less visible as an individual. Almost immediately this otherwise upsetting message made sense. I provided a writeup of my activity with links and mailed it back, ego a bit bruised but not too shaken 8^).
So thanks once more to the video team and to all the presenters from Debconf; your labor has paid off long after the conference and I can personally say it has made a positive and encouraging impact in my life.