Kevin Smith Application 2009

My name is Kevin Smith and I'm applying to retain my XSF membership. The template for this re-app is extracted from my application from last year, and in turn 3 years back, which was in turn extracted from Johannes Wagener's 2005 page so should hopefully cover all pertinent points; if it doesn't, please contact me over xmpp (kevdadrum@jabber.ex.ac.uk) and I'll amend this page. My email's: domain kismith.co.uk, and my user part kevin.

History
I'm in my mid-twenties, currently living in Exeter, UK. PhD from the University of Exeter, which was a study into Simulated Annealing Techniques for Multi-Objective Optimisation, I'm now working as R&D Manager at a company developing credit card fraud detection systems. My BSc degree is in Computer Science (1st class honours), from the same institution. I've been an XSF member since 2005, and a council member since 2006.

Code

 * I've just stepped down as project leader for the [Psi] client, after 4 1/2 years.


 * I'm now coding on the new [Swift] client with Remko.


 * I wrote the [SleekMigrate] app for migrating between XMPP server software.


 * I developed much of the [SleekBot], which is a bot for running in MUCs - it's active in the jabber and jdev mucs on jabber.org, as well as Psi's muc.


 * My (mostly abandoned) [MaybeLater] task manager system accepts new tasks through an XMPP bot.


 * I sometimes contribute to the [SleekXMPP] Python XMPP library.


 * I use other unreleased snippets for handy tasks like alerting me when my computational simulations complete.

XMPP Protocol
I'm a co-author of several XEPs, and as a member of the XSF council am reading all the XEPs that go through.

XMPP documentation

 * Peter, Remko and I have just finished[XMPP: The Definitive Guide] for O'Reilly, which goes to press today. It's good, really - buy it please.


 * As leader of the Psi project, I've obviously contributed to the documentation at [Psi Wiki].

Plans for the future
As well as continuing (and hopefully expanding on) my work with Psi, I intend to continue contributing to XEPs directly and through council.

Jabber - Why I like it
I came to Jabber because I was on Linux and didn't like the thought of using clients that had to play catch-up to the legacy networks; Jabber's open standard felt cleaner. Also, as a geek, helping to set up the university Jabber server was an appeal. I got drawn into development with Psi and learned more about the protocol and I think this is a standard worth supporting. I've since had a great deal of contact with the communit(y|ies), and met a good bunch of people at FOSDEM and the XMPP Summit over the last few years - community is one of the things that distinguishes XMPP from most other standards bodies (as everyone keeps saying) and this makes life fun.

Why I'm reapplying
I wish to continue doing what I've been doing so far; see Swift released, helping define extensions, contributing to discussion of others' extensions and core protocol and continuing with my work on the XSF Council.