Guus der Kinderen for Board 2017

This is the XSF Board of Directors candidacy announcement for the Election 2017 of Guus der Kinderen, a software engineer from Rosmalen, the Netherlands.

= Motivation =

Over the years, I've been working on XMPP-related implementations on and of, both voluntary as well as in a professional capacity. My primary reason for being actively involved within the XSF is to contribute back to the community that has provided me with a lot of opportunities.

Since it's inception many moons ago, XMPP has properly matured. That in itself brings new challenges: one of which is that the public perspective on XMPP has taken an nose-dive. Another is that some of the energy that was brought in by early contributors has started to dissipate.

Over the past few months, I've been trying to poor back in new energy. I prefer a pragmatic and practical approach, by trying to lower the burden of individual members that we depend on to much, for example. I've been getting involved in various work teams to become able to either pave the way, or share the workload. I'd rather have the capable members work on new standards, implementations, or other stuff that they like doing, instead of having them spend time on chores that anyone is capable of doing. Not only will this generally be more fun to do for everyone, but it'll surely improve the XMPP ecosystem as a whole, which will benefit us all.

I'm also trying to apply more structure to some of the XSF activities, in the expectation that this will lead to a better quality of exposure for XMPP. A lot of these activities can be simple (making sure that the website is up-to-date, post regular blog posts, and so on), while others require more of an effort (have good and predictable support for people that are organizing a summit, conference or meetup, evaluate and possibly improve XEP-0001-styled processes, to name a few). There is still a lot to be gained in all of this. I'm confident that improvements here will hugely impact the public perception of XMPP, which should allow us to shed some of the dust that we've been collecting recently.

I'll be more effective in my efforts by joining the Board of Directors (also, I should put my money where my mouth is), which is why I've decided to run in the upcoming election. As a member of the Board, I intend to focus on:


 * revitalizing the XSF, and
 * improve public perception of XMPP

So, err, vote for me, please? Thanks!

= Personalia &amp; Contact Details =

= Contributions to the XMPP community =
 * Name: Guus der Kinderen
 * Jabber IDs: [xmpp:guus.der.kinderen@igniterealtime.org guus.der.kinderen@igniterealtime.org], [xmpp:guusdk@jabber.org guusdk@jabber.org]
 * E-mail address: [mailto:guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com]
 * Company name: GoodBytes
 * Github: guusdk
 * Twitter: @guusdk
 * LinkedIn: guusderkinderen

Pre-2016 (from the 2016 Q2 application)
I got introduced to XMPP in the early 2000s, when I was working on my thesis. That thesis later evolved into Nimbuzz, where I was employed for a number of years.

We based Nimbuzz on Openfire, a project that I continued to support in my spare time after I left the company. After Jive Software slowly but surely pulled out, I became the de facto project lead for Openfire. Although somewhat hard to combine with my daytime jobs at the time (didn't have a remote connection to XMPP), I helped keep the project and the broader Ignite Realtime community afloat until dwd stepped up.

Last year, I leaped and/or plunged, quitting my job and starting a business of my own. Now that I'm self-employed, I find myself more and more involved in projects that relate to XMPP (Yey). As a result, the amount of time that I spend on XMPP-related activities has increased a lot. Being more active as ever, and having to owe part of my paycheck to XMPP, I thought it to be good and contribute back to the community, starting by signing up as an XSF member (okay, I started by fixing a link on the xmpp.org website, but this is the next best thing, right?)

2016/2017 (from the 2017 Q2 application )
In my first year of XSF membership, I've tried to contribute to the XSF by maintaining the xmpp.org website, by producing bugfixes and chasing down issues on the issue list. I participated in Summit 21 and helped man the XSF booth at FOSDEM 2017, which I enjoyed a lot.

I've been helping out preparing for the the XSF participation in Google's Summer of Code 2017, and serve as a mentor of one of this year's students. Finally, I've been made a member of the iteam only days before the re-application period ended.

Outside of the XSF, I've been contributing to XMPP as a member of the Realtime community. For Ignite, apart for my continued work on Openfire and other project, I was involved in revitalizing [1][2] the Spark client project and creating a legal entity for that community[3], serving as the Chair of the board for the Ignite Realtime Foundation. Other than that, I continue to be a regular contributor to various XMPP-related software projects, most of which are available via my Github profile.


 * 1) ↑ wroot, &quot;Spark 2.8.0 Released&quot;, Ignite Realtime Blog, Aug 25, 2016
 * 2) ↑ Guus der Kinderen, &quot;Request for Comments: Mavenizing Spark&quot;, Ignite Realtime Blog, Feb 20, 2017
 * 3) ↑ Guus der Kinderen, &quot;Starting the Ignite Realtime Foundation&quot;, Ignite Realtime Blog, Oct 21, 2016