Ashley Ward Application 2013

I am Ashley Ward and I am applying for XSF membership for the first time. :)

Contact

 * JID (Personal): ashward@jabber.org
 * JID (Work): ashley.ward@surevine.com
 * Email (Personal): ash.wardly@gmail.com
 * Email (Work): ashley.ward@surevine.com

History
I have been involved with IT since I was a wee lad and we got a Commodore 16 one Christmas. Didn't have many games so used to borrow coding books from the library and write stuff instead! I now code in various different languages, but seem to be doing a lot of Java and Javascript lately.

In my current role I have been involved with the creation and deployment of a chat application for one of our clients based on emite/hablar which got me involved in XMPP as a technology a few years ago. More recently I have also been involved in the Buddycloud project.

Coding

 * I am a co-owner of the EmiteGWT projects on github https://github.com/EmiteGWT
 * I contribute to the budycloud project https://github.com/buddycloud
 * I have also contributed to the openfire server project

Work on the XMPP Protocol

 * I am the author of XEP-0314 (Security Labels in PubSub) http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0314.html
 * Co-organiser of the XMPP UK meetup group. Come to our first meetup - it'll be great! Got some interesting talks lined up, and to top it off there's free pizza and beer :) http://www.meetup.com/XMPP-UK-Meetup/events/92855262/

Personal
Live in Kent, UK with my wife and 14 months old daughter. Family life keeps me pretty busy so don't have much spare time, but I do get involved and tread the boards with the local Amateur Dramatic society.

Why I'm applying
I really like the XMPP protocol, and can see it becoming an increasingly essential internet protocol in the future, not just for IM but for far more general applications too, and I really want to be involved in shaping that. I also really enjoyed being with everyone and getting involved at the recent summit, and want more of that. The XSF is such a nice bunch of people! :)