Steffen Larsen Application 2011

My name is Steffen Larsen and I am re-applying for XSF membership.

Contact Information
Jabber Id: [xmpp://zooldk@gmail.com zooldk@gmail.com] or [xmpp://slarsen@braintrust.dk slarsen@braintrust.dk]

email address: [mailto:zooldk@gmail.com zooldk@gmail.com] or slarsen@braintrust.dk

company name: BrainTrust

Background
My name is Steffen Larsen, 35 years of age. I am living in Copenhagen, Denmark with my girlfriend. I have a Master degree in Computer Science, where my final thesis heavily was concerning about XMPP (core, XEP-0166, XEP-0167 and XEP-0176). More specificly I was implementing a complete functional VOIP solution based on Jingle into the pidgin platform as a plugin. When I wrote the thesis the Jingle was just beginning to mature, so I belief I made some valuable feedback and contributions to XEP-0166, XEP-0167 and XEP-0176 (also acknowledged). All the code was designed and implemented, from the establishment of the signal (ICE) to signaling (XMPP) and streaming. In general my interests within Computer Science lays in distributed computing, cloud computing, media streaming, protocols and network specifications.

For more personal and work information, please see last years application

XMPP Community and XSF Contributions
I consider my self very active for the XSF and the XMPP community in general, and is participating in almost all the meetings for the members and for the tech review team, which I am currently active in.


 * Contributed and acknowledged for XEP-0166, XEP-0167, XEP-0176.
 * Reviewed XEP-0234, XEP-0260, XEP-0261.
 * Contributed a bit to tigase server and build.
 * Developed xmpp client/server component for controlling TV/STB via. thin clients like android/iphone.
 * Implemented a fully functional Jingle (VOIP) plugin in pidgin (though not the final XEP, because it was finished in 2007) (see ).
 * Owner and maintainer of the XMPP group at linkedin.com (good for promoting XMPP for companies).
 * Doing a lot of different XMPP external components with Whack/Smack, exmpp and node.js/xmpp.js for various projects.
 * Implementing client side Strophe plugins and applications (pub/sub etc).
 * Currently subscribing, reading and writing actively on the following email lists: Jabber dev, XMPP standards, XMPP social, XMPP member, XMPP jingle, strophe-dev, strophe, punjab.
 * Testing a lot of XMPP servers through extensively usage of TSUNG.

Plans for the future of XMPP / XSF
My plans if I am selected as a member will concentrate on these goals:


 * Improve XEP-0114 (external components).
 * Improve further extensions and easier login to XEP-0133 (service administration).
 * Discussion about BOSH/Web Socket interop. (at some time we should start looking into that, both server and client-side).
 * Getting better organization of the review team.
 * Continuously contributing to the tech review meetings in terms of agendas (updating the wiki), discussions and actual reviews.
 * Helping in order to do interop. of XMPP servers (like we do at every XMPP summit).
 * Develop a Danish XMPP community for meetups and hacking.

Why I am re-applying
Almost the same as last year;

I see a very bright future for the XMPP protocol, because it seems to converge different technologies and medias. Every day at work I keep preaching XMPP. I see it as a way to make many different technologies and media on the net converge, due to the interoperability and real-time. Well, I'm dependent on XMPP and it's community, so I want to see it do well; it's been a huge benefit to me. I'd like to give something back. So if I can help some by giving out some experiences and knowledge, I will be more than glad to do so. I really want to make this protocol succeed, both due to my huge interest in distributed system and my work. My interest right now is XMPP push (BOSH) for limited devices, such as mobile phones, set top boxes, TVs etc. integrating XMPP presence, pub/sub systems on TV for eventing.

Some elements I will focus on if I am elected: Large scale XMPP, load-balancing, BOSH optimizing/Web Socket integration, and finally Jingle / Multiuser jingle. As I see it not many scenarios have been seen in a large scale (>100k users) before. Testing these XMPP scenarios and giving feedback by optimizing XMPP servers, proxies, connection managers and network topology will be one of my key issues. This said I hopefully get time to expanding the already huge portfolio of XEPs. Maybe it will be time for XMPP to get XEPs for TV and remote controlling by making new specifications.