Today we shift gears to continue our spirit of full transparency. We’re excited to launch our Community Spotlight Series which takes a behind the scenes look at a few of our rockstar Github contributors. Today we sit down with Sreenivas Alapati, who did his first ever pull request on a DAV project… and the rest is history.

Sreenivas Alapati, DAV Code Contributor and Developer Relations Lead

How have you been contributing to the DAV Foundation?

At DAV I take care of developer relations. I create issues for co-developers and first time contributors. I support and guide them in case they need help in solving the issues by answering questions in github or DAV contributors gitter channel. I also keep contributing to the code base regularly by adding features, fixing some bugs and at the same time adding a few more :).

What’s the most exciting thing you’ve worked on?

The most exciting thing I worked on DAV is my first issue. I remember the day, I was searching the twitter bot first-timers-only to contribute to open source and landed in https://github.com/DAVFoundation/missioncontrol/issues/1. I was super excited about contributing to the project as it involves autonomous transportation, drones and blockchain. I am really thankful to Tal Ater for giving me the opportunity and guiding me through it. The most exciting thing I am currently working on is creating a tool to get all the contributors across all the repos in any github organization.

What drives you to continue to be a DAV contributor?

I’m really excited about the work DAV is doing and I wanted to be part of it. The openness of the organization and the support I get from the team keep me coming back. Apart from getting to work on really cool technology, being able to help developers contribute to DAV, especially first timers (developers who have never contributed to open source before and are trying to take their first steps) gives me motivation.

How do you explain DAV to your friends and family?

This was in the early stages of the project and I was explaining to my wife about all the technical details of DAV such as autonomous vehicles, blockchain, DAV protocol, etc. After listening to the details, she simply said, “Oh, so you guys are building a Uber for all kinds of autonomous vehicles.” That made me think, “Hmmm… Yes!” So, I guess next time I won’t need to use a lot of technical words.

When was your “ah ha!” moment for DAV?

Although I was excited about the project I came to know its true potential once I went through the talks and articles written by Noam Copel. The article `Internet of Transportation` essentially changed my view of DAV and made me realize that DAV is not just a software or an app. It’s an open source movement to change how things are moved from one place to another. This is going to alter the future.

Who’s your favorite superhero or fictional character, and why?

My favorite superhero, fictional and mythological character rolled into one is Lord Hanuman. He is a person of extraordinary strength and power that can move mountains, but is still down to earth and devoted to Lord Rama.

What gets you excited about DAV?

DAV is a unique open source technology that will change the future of transportation in a significant way. As Elon Musk puts it, “Life cannot just be about solving one sad problem after another. There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity.” DAV for me is a way of being part of a movement that will redefine the way humanity uses transportation.