My journey as a core team member of CiviCRM

I am Yashodha Chaku, one of the core team members of CiviCRM. I stumbled into the Civi-world quite by chance. After graduating from college with Bachelors in Computers Science I happened to join Web Access (which hosts a Civi team in India) in 2006 and started working on CiviCRM. When I started off CiviCRM was in its nascent stages (1.4 I guess) and it has come a long way ever since. With each added feature it has started getting more and more traction from a wide range of organizations both in terms of size and spectrum. 

I am very excited about the work we do on CiviCRM which involves building on each other's ideas to create the best of breed solutions for non profits. The crowd-source nature of open source software makes sure it's in sync with the needs of non profits. The sheer amount of enthusiasm, expertise that community members bring to the table is amazing and interactions that we have had with folks during meetups, CiviCON, sprints has been rewarding and helps sustain a healthy eco-system. I love being a part of this project where my colleagues are always inspiring and there's a great deal of passion and zeal in all the team members to work towards producing a better software. 

Currently I am responsible for the release of 4.5 which includes co-ordinating with the team to ensure quick fixes for the outstanding issues. In general I have worked on various pieces of the software.

Road ahead looks good as we have done marked improvements not limited to functionality but also in terms of usability so that we can offer high-quality, cost-effective solutions to the non profit community.  We also plan on doing more things for improving the technical backbone and architecture in upcoming versions.