Remko Tronçon Application 2009

Personal Trivia

 * My name is Remko
 * I live in Leuven, Belgium.
 * After finishing my Master in Computer Science at the Catholic University of Leuven in 2001, I stuck around and did a PhD in Engineering at the same university.
 * Since early 2007, I am employed as a software engineer at CoWare, an EDA company designing tools targeted towards embedded system chip designers.
 * I have been an active free software developer and contributor ever since I learned to write my first few lines of code in a language that didn't end with the letters 'BASIC', and will probably be so for the rest of my life.

Jabber/XMPP Activities
I have been a member of the lead development team of Psi since early 2004, after having contributed regularly since 2003. In 2004, I joined the XMPP Software Foundation (in the good old days when it still was called the JSF). Together with Kevin Smith, I'm currently working on the Swift Jabber/XMPP client and C++ library. Besides Swift development, I also contribute to various other Jabber OSS projects, including Openfire and PyMSN-t.

Besides coding, I like to do some writing now and then too. Together with Peter Saint-Andre and Kevin Smith, we wrote the O'Reilly book XMPP: The Definitive Guide. I also wrote a chapter on XMPP in O'Reilly's upcoming title Beautiful Testing, promoting XMPP in other circles as well.

Although I hang around on the XMPP mailing lists and do my best to contribute constructively to protocol (and other) discussions, my official protocol spec contributions are limited to the following XEPs:
 * XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities
 * XEP-0146: Remote Controlling Clients
 * XEP-0209: Metacontacts

Finally, I try to attend as many XMPP meetings as my (personal) budget allows me. So far, this has brought me to EuroOSCON and to 2 XMPP summits.

Motivation
I have always been very passionate about (protocol) standardization. XMPP is probably the greatest place to be for working on protocols, not only because of its potential, but because the community is extremely open to anybody who wants to contribute. I would like to continue my involvement in the community, and even take it to the next step as an XSF council member.

Contact
If you're interested in discussing my application with me, feel free to have a chat with me.