# CNCF TOC Nomination Name: Nick Young Email: inocuo@gmail.com Github: youngnick My name is Nick Young, and I'm nominating for the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee. ## Headshot ![New Headshot Square](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/ByaFLUucT.jpg) ## Bio and Background I've been working in the Cloud Native space for about 7 years now, starting with being involved with the early SIG-Federation efforts in Kubernetes, and being a co-chair of the original Kubernetes LTS Working Group. Since then, I've also: - been a maintainer for Contour during its admission to the CNCF as an incubating project - been a maintainer for the Kubernetes Gateway API project, coordinating writing a spec across many different vendors for a highly contentious space - been involved in establishing Envoy Gateway as an Envoy subproject to implement Gateway API - become a committer in Cilium, working on Cilium's Service Mesh. Across all of these roles, I've tried (and seemingly succeeded to some extent) to create a welcoming, inclusive community wherever I am, while at the same time ensuring that everyone stays on task and things actually happen. In particular, I think that my experience with Gateway API and WG-LTS have really taught me the value of clear, precise language in bringing folks to a consensus. It's surprisingly common that people use the same words to mean different things, and that can lead to disagreement and bad feelings - with the converse being that spending the time to ensure everyone is clear on language can pay huge dividends longer-term. ## What I could bring to the TOC I think that the TOC is at a stage of maturity where my experience with writing processes and specifications will be really useful - based on the great work I see happening to tighten up the processes around graduation and TAG governance, anyway. In terms of focus for me right now, I think that I'm most aligned with TAG Network, TAG Contributor Experience, and TAG Security, probably in that order. But I think that a critical part of the TOC is having folks that are technically capable but not literate in all the TAGs to be able to provide fresh eyes even onto areas they aren't as experienced with personally. In summary, I think I'd be a good fit for the TOC because of my experience in leading inclusive, welcoming open-source communities that get things done.