Dave Cridland Application 2013

Details

Personal

I'm Dave Cridland. I've a wife, two children, a dog, a cat, and a rabbit. You can talk to me on email or IM.

Professional

I've now worked in "messaging" - that is, person to person text-based communication - for over a decade solidly. Prior to this, there's another decade or so off and on, dating back to telnet BBS days. (Nobody remembers these anymore).

I have $some XEPs, and $some RFCs. I've served on the XSF Board and XMPP Council, and on various IETF Directorates.

Work

Ah, now there's a thing.

I've spent the past 6½ years at Isode Ltd, working on a number of products, but most recently the M-Link XMPP Server, which is now a well-established server in a complex market. They've been good years, and we've accomplished a lot. I'm really very proud of what we've achieved, and what our software is used for. I'll miss working with such an excellent team, on some really fascinating projects - and I'm not leaving without a tinge of jealousy for the rest of my team, who'll take the next steps without me, so I'll no longer be able to claim all the credit.

Very shortly indeed, I'll be working at Arcode, Inc., helping them to build Inky - which is a very clever email client that I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into. So back to "messaging" as mail, rather than "instant".

Nevertheless, I'll be keeping my hand in with XMPP.

Why repply?

Well, good question, given it's clear I'm not going to be working on XMPP for a while.

Mostly it's for the beer I'm missing this year. And the dinner. The dinner's always good.

And then, it's also because the XSF is solving interesting problems, still.

Of course, if I let my membership lapse, I could still join in the mailing lists, but as a member, I can get involved in fixing the metaproblems - work on how the XSF solves the interesting problems.

And, you know, drink more beer. And stuff.

Previous Applications

It's always fun to look at people's previous applications. I try to make mine interesting, on occasion, so:

2012: Voting Aid

Last year, I wrote Voting Aid, a mildly annotated Python script using SleekXMPP which automatically voted for me (and otherwise acted as a bespoke terminal UI for voting).

2011: Wikipedia

Turns out I still don't have a Wikipedia page.

2010: Boring

For some reason, 2010 seems a little Boring.

2009: FAQ

In 2009, I wrote a FAQ - actually a rewrite of the SLirc FAQ (which I also wrote, along which much of that little-known IRC client, back in 1997 or so).

2008: Fairly Dull

2008 is another Fairly Dull one, sorry, and largely based on the Original one.

2007: Original

2007 was when I joined the (then) JSF, about a year after starting on XMPP, so this one is my Original one.