Congratulations on your new position! I love the way Canonical is heading, which is supporting software for as long as possible (12 is just crazy) while also not being stuck in the past.
You mentioned automation to make maintaining packages for Ubuntu easier, to which I would like to add, wouldn’t it make sense to get rid some of the traditional .deb packages in favour of already existing snaps?
I feel like snaps are really powerful and can do anything traditional packages can. If there’s no other option but to use the snap, it will have to get better and its remaining issues ironed out.