DSF member of the month - Bhuvnesh Sharma
For May 2026, we welcome Bhuvnesh Sharma as our DSF member of the month! ⭐
Bhuvnesh is a Django contributor since 2022 and a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) participant in 2023 for Django. He is now a mentor and a GSoC admin organizer for the Django Software Foundation organization. He is the founder of Django Events Foundation India (DEFI) and DjangoDay India conference. He has been a DSF member since July 2023. He is looking for new opportunities!
You can learn more about Bhuvnesh by visiting Bhuvnesh's website and his GitHub Profile.
Let’s spend some time getting to know Bhuvnesh better!
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc)
I’m Bhuvnesh (aka DevilsAutumn), a software developer from India. I graduated in 2024 from GL Bajaj Institute of technology and management, and most of my work has been around Python, Django and building backend systems. My journey with Django started when I started contributing to Django core in 2022. I usually like working on things where there is an actual product involved, not just writing few APIs and closing the task. I like thinking about how the whole thing will work: models, permissions, background jobs, deployment, users, edge cases and all of that.
Apart from work, I like reading books around startups and entrepreneurship, watching movies, and honestly I overthink a lot about building products. Sometimes too much, but yeah that’s also how many ideas start for me. I’ve also been involved with the Django community through Django India, GSoC, Djangonaut Space and DjangoDay India, which has been a big part of my journey.
I'm curious, where your nickname "DevilsAutumn" comes from?
Haha, Nice question. So, there is one of my friend who used to write sci-fi novels. In 2022, I decided that I’ll have one unique coding name for me and thinking that I have a friend who write novels his imagination must be great, I went to him to ask for name ideas and one of the names he suggested was DevilsAutumn, since then I use that as my nickname.
How did you start using Django?
When I was in my exploring phase, I was really curious and trying out different languages, frameworks etc. and I read a blog post from Instagram engineering team about Django being used at Instagram. A framework which is a backbone of a product used by billions of users, will get anyone curious. From there I started exploring Django and I fell in love with it. The framework, the community, the documentation - all of it was amazing.
What other framework do you know and if there is anything you would like to have in Django if you had magical powers?
I have also worked with FastAPI and I find that really cool as well. But the calmness django has is unbeatable.
If I had magical powers, I’d be living on the moon. Just kidding. 😆
There are a couple of things that I would love in Django:
First is "modernising" the website which is already underway. The website feels very boring and outdated. I’d love to see a modern version.
Second, I would love to see Django have built-in support for creating REST APIs. DRF is amazing and it has done a lot for the Django ecosystem, but because it is still an external library, there are some rough edges. Sometimes serialization can feel a bit slow or heavy, the learning curve is different from regular Django, and you also depend on a separate package for something which has become a core need in modern web apps.
What projects are you working on now?
I am currently working on a project called Trevo, which helps people find activities happening around them which anyone can join and socialize with others in real life.
Apart from that, I am also working on an open source python library which is a migration safety toolkit for Django. It's called django-migrations-inspector. It helps you find problems in your migration files before they go into production.
Which Django libraries are your favorite (core or 3rd party)?
Although there is a long list, I’d probably say Django REST Framework (DRF), django-import-export, and django-debug-toolbar.
DRF is the obvious one because I’ve used it a lot for building APIs with Django. Even with some rough edges, it has been very important for the ecosystem 😛
I also really like django-import-export, mostly because in real projects you always end up needing some Excel/CSV import export kind of thing, and this just saves time.
And django-debug-toolbar because it has made debugging queries and performance issues much easier for me personally.
What are the top three things in Django that you like?
I think the first thing has to be the community. People in the Django community are genuinely nice and helpful, and the docs are also really good. A lot of times, when you are stuck, either the documentation has already explained it properly or someone has discussed the same thing before.
Second, I really like the ecosystem around Django. For most of the common things you need while building a product, there is usually already a good package available. And Django itself also gives you so much out of the box, so you don’t have to build every basic thing from scratch.
And third is Django admin. Honestly, I really like it. Some people may not think of it as a very exciting feature, but when you are building real products, having a working admin panel so quickly is super useful. It saves a lot of time.
You are one of the admin organizers of GSoC program for Django organization, thank you for helping. How is it going for you? Do you need help?
It has been going well so far, thank you for asking. I’m really happy to help with organizing GSoC for Django. It’s always nice to see contributors getting involved and working on meaningful projects, I even posted about it on LinkedIn.
Everything is good for now, but I’ll reach out in case I need any help. In fact, we are also working creating GSoC working group to make things more smooth for future. I’m sure that is also going to help us.
You have been part of Djangonaut Space program as a Navigator (Mentor) in the first session. How did you find the experience? What is your reflection on the program after all this time?
It was a great experience! I love to help people who are new to open-source and guide them just like I was guided by a mentor in my college days. I believe anyone can do great things in life if they are given proper mentorship. That's my motivation behind getting involved in Djangonaut Space.
Djangonaut Space program has created a strong community of developers from all background that love Django. A lot of people want to contribute to open source, but they don’t always know where to start, or they feel the project is too big for them. Djangonaut Space helped reduce that fear by giving people guidance, structure, and a friendly space to ask questions.
Even after all this time, I still feel it is one of the best community-led efforts around Django. It doesn’t just help people contribute code, it helps them feel that they belong in the community.
Do you have any advice for folks would like to consider mentoring through GSoC or Djangonaut Space?
I just want to say that people who are experienced, who have been contributing to Django or people who are maintaining any 3rd party package, must consider mentoring through GSoC or Djangonaut Space program. It is one of the most impactful way to contribute to open source in my opinion because you are not just guiding a few people, you might be guiding the next generation of mentors, Django maintainers, org admins, community leaders or Djangonaut Space organizers.
And mentorship plays the most important role in maintaining the ecosystem that django has created for years.
You have been previously a participant of GSoC for Django organization, you are now an admin of the organization. That's great! How did you get to this point? Did you ever imagine you would end up here?
Haha honestly, no. I don’t think I ever imagined it would turn out this way. When I first got into GSoC with Django, I was just really happy to be there and contribute. At that time, I was mostly focused on learning, understanding the project better, and trying not to mess things up 😅
But after that I kind of stayed around. I kept contributing, stayed connected with the community, mentored in Djangonaut Space, then mentored in GSoC 2024, and slowly started getting more involved in the community and organizing side of things too.
So it was never like I had this clear plan that one day I’ll become an org admin. It just happened very naturally over time, mostly because I kept showing up and people trusted me with more responsibility.
Now being on this side feels a little unreal, but also very special. I know how it feels to be a contributor, how confusing and exciting it can be, so I really care about making the experience good for others too.
In a way, it feels like a full-circle moment, but also like there’s still a lot more to learn and do.
You are the founder of DjangoDay India and Django Events Foundation India, could you tell us a bit more on the event and what made you create this structure?
DjangoDay India started from a very simple thought, like we should have a proper Django-focused event in India. There are a lot of people here using Django — developers, students, companies — but we didn’t really have one place where everyone can come together. It was really difficult to organize DjangoDay India in 2025 because it was the first Django event happening at that scale in India but we still made it thanks to the amazing team.
Django Events Foundation India (DEFI) was created to give this some structure. I didn’t wanted DjangoDay India to become just a one-time thing or something which only depends on me. Apart from that, I even want to support more local Django events happening around India through DEFI. The idea is to make it sustainable, community-first, and slowly involve more people. For me, it is mainly about growing the Django ecosystem in India and giving people a space to speak, volunteer, sponsor, contribute, and maybe later lead also.
Do you remember your first contribution to Django and in open source?
Yes, so I was going through someone else’s PR which got merged and in that I found a small typo in the comment. Then I created a new PR to fix that. It was my first contribution to Django.
Talking about the first open source contribution, it was adding some phone number validation checks in validatorjs library.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Nothing much, just thank you for having me here. If someone is thinking of contributing to Django but feels scared, please don’t worry. Most of us also started by staring at the codebase and pretending we understood what was happening. Just start small, ask questions, and slowly it starts making sense.
Thank you for doing the interview, Bhuvnesh !
