Kevin Smith for Council 2006

This page is still a work-in-progress, please do not judge it yet.

History
I've been involved with Jabber through Psi since 2002, joining the JSF members sometime later.

JEP Involvements
My involvement in JEP creation has been limited; I started off the PEP movement I believe (which I want to see through) but I can claim no credit for the work of writing the JEP (thanks Peter etc.) I'm also sitting on a metacontacts JEP which I need to get fleshed out and pushed into the system. Even as a (hopeful) JSF council member I do not intend to author a proliferation of JEPs; there are some core issues I would like to see solved well, but I don't think producing a large number of extensions would be necessarily desirable.

Software Involvements
I've been contributing to the Psi Client for several years, and, subsequent to Justin Karnege's abdication in Autumn 2004, have been `project leader'. My long-term involvement in one of the longest/running clients, has given me insight into many of the issues surrounding XMPP/Jabber with the result that I (now) think I have some thing to bring to the protocol, through council.

Suitability
I believe that my experience with XMPP/Jabber on Psi and on standards-jig, coupled with my Computer Science education at degree level, distributed system experience for my degree project and research/problem solving skills from my PhD would serve me well as a council member.

Intentions
The key areas that I think need addressing over the next 12 months (and beyond) are
 * PEP - I'd like to see this come into widespread use.
 * Reliability - This is an area I think we (urgently) need to address.
 * Getting usable e2e encryption into public use.

Motivation
I'd like to join the council this year because I'd like to see xmpp's strong position grow stronger and I think I have experience and ideas to help assist the other council members in this.

Kevin Smith
Outside the Jabber world, here are some facts about me:
 * Studied percussion for 9 years, in a bunch of ensembles, playing at locations from the Royal Festival Hall (London) in the finals of the Festival of Music for Youth (twice), Disney (Paris) to the Coity Primary School Summer Fete ;)
 * Self-taught guitarist (around 7 years).
 * I've helped run a Cub Scout pack.
 * At various times I've enjoyed rock-climbing and hiking on a weekly basis.
 * I've been training in the martial art TaeKwon-Do for five years, and currently hold the highest colour belt grade (the precursor to black belt).
 * I have a (1st class honours) BSc in Computer Science from the University of Exeter.
 * I'm weeks from the end of a PhD in Computer Science (Simulated Annealing Techniques for Multi-Objective Evolutionary Optimisation)

Contact
kevdadrum@jabber.ex.ac.uk

I would rather not be contacted by email (else why would I be doing this?), but if necessary can be reached at kismith@psi-im.org