Kevin Smith Application 2010

I'm Kevin Smith, xmpp:kevin@doomsong.co.uk, and I'm applying to retain my XSF membership.

History

I've a PhD from the University of Exeter, (a study into Simulated Annealing Techniques for Multi-Objective Optimisation), I worked as R&D Manager at a company developing credit card fraud detection systems, and I now work for Isode in the XMPP team. I've been an XSF member since 2005, and a council member since 2006. I'm chairing the current XSF Council.

Jabber/XMPP Projects

Code

• I was project leader for the Psi client for nearly 5 years, until early last year.
• I'm now coding on the new Swift client with Remko.
• I wrote the SleekMigrate app for migrating between XMPP server software.
• I developed much of the SleekBot, which is a bot for running in MUCs - it's active in the jabber and jdev mucs on jabber.org, as well as Psi's muc.
• My (abandoned) MaybeLater task manager system accepted new tasks through an XMPP bot.
• I have contributed to the SleekXMPP Python XMPP library.
• In my day job I work on the M-Link server (among other things).

XMPP Protocol

I'm a co-author of several XEPs, read all the XEPs that go through (it's hard to review them for Council otherwise).

XMPP documentation

• XMPP: The Definitive Guide for O'Reilly, which goes to press today. It's good, really - buy it please.

Plans for the future

As well as continuing work on Swift, I intend to continue contributing to XEPs and chairing council. I also expect I'll keep doing XMPP stuffs at Isode.

XMPP - Why I like it

I came to Jabber because I was on Linux and didn't like the thought of using clients that had to play catch-up to the legacy networks; Jabber's open standard felt cleaner. As a geek, helping to set up the university Jabber server was also an appeal. I got drawn into development with Psi and learned more about the protocol decided it's a standard worth supporting. I've since had a great deal of contact with the communit(y|ies), and met a good bunch of people at FOSDEM and the XMPP Summit that help me want to keep being involved.

XSF Work

• I'm a Council member.
• I chair Council.
• I'm the infrastructure team lead.
• I'm one of the jabber.org admins (not strictly XSF).
• I'm an XSF org admin for GSoC this year.
• I perform small tasks like proofreading for the commteam.
• I'm on the review team.

Why I'm reapplying

So I can keep doing what I'm doing in the XSF.