thanks for the cc @sarahboyce @Lily-Foote. Lots of people have made great points about DEPs and decision-making generally. On DEPs, personally I’d recommend to make it as easy as possible to submit a DEP (Markdown, all fields optional, start a DEP with no forum thread). If there are too many DEPs, that’s a good problem to have, but really shouldn’t be a concern in the current state.
Beyond decision-making – I’d really like to see a wider effort to improve the whole contributor experience in Django, and in particular be more respectful of people’s time. In my experience, DEPs are just the tip of the iceberg, and there are a lot other ways by which contributing to Django could be made easier / faster / more pleasant. A lot of paper cuts that contributors face. And big blockers to possible bigger changes.
I don’t think this has to be super complex or fully comprehensive to be worthwhile – just start by asking sprint participants, Djangonaut Space people, the community at large – what are your common pain points in contributing and what improvements would you suggest. With more seasoned contributors then making efforts (a DEP, perhaps! 
) to take on this feedback and see the changes through.