Kevin Smith for Council 2010

I'm Kevin Smith, I've been serving on Council for four years, and I'm reapplying for a fifth. I've chaired the Council for the last two sessions.

The easiest way of judging if you want me on Council again is probably to look at the Council history and see if what I do is something you want Council members doing: I tend to turn up to all the meetings. I tend to read the XEPs before voting on them. I tend to challenge and propose alternatives to when I don't believe a XEP's ready. I tend to let XEPs through when they solve a problem the community wants solved. I tend to change my mind when I see arguments from people smarter than me.

History
I've been involved with Jabber/XMPP as a developer through Psi since 2002, joining the JSF/XSF members sometime later, I was the project lead for Psi from 2004 until 2009. In 2006 I participated in the Summer of Code program as a student, and in 2007, 2009 and 2010 as a mentor and 2010 as an org admin. I now develop the Swift client with Remko, and at the end of last year, started to work for Isode, primarily on the M-Link server and associated tools. I've served on Council for the 2006/2007/2008/2009/2010 period, chair for the 2008-2010 sessions and would like to serve for 2010/2011 if I'm deemed useful.

The Book
I'm one third of the writing team that brought you XMPP: The Definitive Guide, via O'Reilly. If I didn't have a fairly good grasp of XMPP and how to use it before, I think it's grown writing this with Peter and Remko.

XEP Involvements
As a member of council I've been responsible for reviewing all the XEP changes and proposals for the last years (that means I've read quite a lot of protocol, and am getting to the stage that I know even some obscure XEPs by number. I'm no Peter, though). I've also been actively reviewing the 3920bis and 3921bis specs. I've been involved in the formation of a number of XEPs (and more are coming) and contribute to the standards list for discussion of XEPs throughout their development. My input is informed by my past involvement leading one of the large popular client projects and being on the front line of user requests, my server admin experience, my experience working on a server, and my general knowledge of the XMPP community and its needs.

Software Involvements
I've been contributing code to the Psi Client for several years, and, subsequent to Justin Karnege's abdication in Autumn 2004, was `project leader' until I handed back to Justin early in 2009 to go off with Remko to work on Swift. I've also been involved with the Sleek projects, writing code for the SleekBot that has sat in several MUCs being useful. My day-time is now spent working on M-Link and related things, and most of my free-time XMPP dev is spent on Swift to release.

Suitability
Reasons I can helpfully contribute:
 * I have a lot of experience of XMPP through Psi, Sleek, Swift, M-Link, jabber.org admin, Council etc.
 * I have experience doing 'new stuff' and thinking ideas through, from a PhD, and a couple of R&D-related jobs.
 * I can read and write XMPP 'stuff' (re: book).
 * I still have new things to say about XMPP.
 * I'm one of the jabber.org admins, so I've seen quite a lot of server use, both from users and abusers, and from the server pov (I've run at least five different server softwares in production).

Intentions
Previously, I've said that important things for use to get sorted are
 * I'm glad to be able to cross PEP off the list of things we need widely deployed this year!
 * 198 is specced, and is starting to see use - we need to push for this.
 * File transfer needs sorting.
 * Message archiving hasn't seen much adoption, and Matt and I are working on proposals to rectify this.
 * Social networks are starting to take XMPP onboard, and we need to ensure we have things in place to make that possible for them.

Motivation
I'd like to join the Council this year because I think I can still contribute. I hope to meet people again at the summits.

Films
No, those weren't me. Don't let that stop you voting for me, though, if you liked them.

Kevin Smith
In previous years, I've put blurb here about my free time interests and activities, but I'm guessing no-one really cares - so they're not here this year.

Contact
XMPP:kevin@doomsong.co.uk