Peter Saint-Andre for Board 2022

Experience

I've been involved with the Jabber/XMPP community since late 1999. Up until ~2014 I served as Council member, Editor, Secretary, Treasurer, Executive Director, etc. I also [co-]authored a lot of specs, both XEPs and RFCs.

In addition to my work in the XMPP community, for a number of years I was very active in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a spec author, working group chair, member of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), chair of the RFC Series Oversight Committee (RSOC), etc. Since the planned disbanding of RSOC earlier this year, I have served on the RFC Production Advisory Team, which provides advice to the RFC Production Center regarding issues that arise during publication of RFCs.

I have also served on other boards, e.g. at the Alliance for Open Media.

In February of 2022 I quit my job as senior director of strategic partnerships at Mozilla and retired from the tech industry. These days I advise a few tech companies but mostly I'm working on a non-tech startup in the business training space.

What's Necessary

The XSF needs a functioning Board to manage its business affairs in accordance with its bylaws, its articles of incorporation, Delaware state law, and U.S. regulations (e.g., governing 501(c)(3) organizations). At a minimum, this means:

• Hold regular meetings (personally I think quarterly might be sufficient).

• Publish meeting agendas in advance.

• Delegate tasks where possible (the Board doesn't need to be involved in day-to-day operations).

• Where delegation is not possible, make timely decisions.

Although this stuff isn't that difficult, it's a hard requirement and we need people on the Board who are committed to fulfilling our obligations.

Going Beyond What's Necessary

The core activity of the XSF is publishing our specification series. The Board should investigate our publication processes (or appoint a team to do so) and define or approve methods and tools for improvement. This is especially urgent given the recent resignation of our long-serving volunteer Editor. If needed we should spend money to make this happen; for example, we might need to pay a few people to write new tools or to adapt tools used for publication of specifications in other communities (e.g., Python, Rust). I say "if needed" because it's possible that we should adapt our processes to fit existing tools, not the other way around.

We might also consider more active fundraising activities (which we've never really done), but I see those as secondary for the next ~12 months.

Conflict of Interest?

For many years I have served as the XSF's Treasurer. Although it is not uncommon in smaller organizations for the Treasurer to serve on the Board, XSF members can make up their own minds about whether this is problematic and not vote me onto the Board if they have concerns.

Contact

JID/email: stpeter@jabber.org