Steven Parkes Application 2011

My name is Steven Parkes and I'm reapplying for XSF membership.

History
I'm (currently) an independent developer working in mobile and cloud computing. I've been doing concurrent programming based on the Actor model since grad school and developed a concurrency library, Dramatis, for dynamic languages (currently Ruby, Python, and Javascript) in the last couple of years.

The most recent incarnation of Dramatis supports Javascript using XMPP/BOSH as the underlying transport. It uses StropheJS on the client side. On the server side, I developed an event-driven Ruby gem (package) BOSH connection manager, kibosh, to incorporate XMPP into Ruby server applications.

Jabber/XMPP Projects

 * Dramatis (Actors over, among other things, XMPP): https://github.com/dramatis/dramatis
 * Kibosh (Ruby BOSH connection manager, based on eventmachine and rack): https://github.com/smparkes/kibosh

Jabber/XMPP - Why I like it
I use Jabber/XMPP for location-independent real-time interprocess communication. It's the only technology that has a sufficiently open yet secure authentication mechanism to make it feasible use in web-wide, real-time, ubiquitous (read: can work in the browser) communication.

The resource model is wonderful.

Why I'm applying
XMPP serves a unique position (location-independent connectivity) which I use a little now and I think will be an even bigger deal in the future. I'd like to give back. Currently my XMPP work is at a pretty low level. XMPP is used internally in some of my work, but nothing released publicly. I expect this to change, but I'm not sure when. As a consequence, my involvement within the XSF has been fairly low. I try to be active on membership things and keep watch for areas that I might be uniquely qualified to contribute to. (I can do infrasturcture stuff pretty quickly, but, then, so can most XSF members.) Now I'm not as active as others and I would like to be, but step in as I can.

Contact
xmpp: smparkes@smparkes.net

email: [mailto:smparkes@smparkes.net smparkes@smparkes.net]

Affiliation: individual (smparkes.net llc)