Heiner Wolf Application 2009

I am Heiner Wolf. I am applying for XSF membership. I have been JSF member before.

Contact

 * JID: wolf.heiner@googlemail.com
 * Email: wolf.heiner@gmail.com

History
I have been writing code for many years. I write mostly C++/PHP and I will continue to do so. I was engaged in virtual presence projects of the European Union during my PhD. I am CTO of weblin, a virtual presence system based on Jabber. I speak and write about the topic "virtual presence with Jabber".

Code

 * I am the lead developer of weblin, a virtual presence client which uses XMPP as transport protocol.
 * I developed the web portal where people configure their weblin avatar.
 * I am currently developing a new virtual presence client with XMPP transport.
 * I am the software architect of the Phoenix project, which will create a virtual world based on XMPP in Summer 2009.

Activities
While I am trying to be the chief scientist, I am still the CTO of weblin. This means I plan and develop new features for weblin with our Agile Development teams. We are using a cluster of ejabberds. Weblin has 2 Mio. registered and 25,000 peak concurrent clients. I program new features occasionally, but most time I spend as trouble shooter, architecture and framework developer.

XMPP Protocol

 * I was authoring XEP-0151 and a set-redirect proposal. I contributed to avatar discussions.
 * Extensions to the XMPP protocol are documented at www.virtual-presence.org

Web sites

 * www.virtual.presence.org an aggregator of virtual presence systems and news


 * www.weblin.com the weblin portal/download site


 * blog.wolfspelz.de my blog (german)

Why I'm applying
I work on virtual presence. Jabber/XMPP is the best infrastructure for it. I am sure that we will see millions of people on the web with their avatars and this might give a giant push to XMPP (not that it would need it :-). As a company we rely heavily on Jabber, client libraries, servers, documentation, and know-how. We are using off the shelf open source XMPP servers. In other words: Jabber is very important to my company and I am trying to give something back to the community by paying for XMPP support.