Kevin Smith Application 2011

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

History

I've a PhD (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 (this application is, as always, personal). I've been an XSF member since 2005 and a council member since 2006. I've chaired the last couple of XSF Councils (including the current one).

Jabber/XMPP Projects

Code

  • I was project leader for the Psi client for nearly 5 years, until early 2009.
  • I'm now coding on the Swift client with Remko (recently releasing 1.0, yay).
  • 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.
  • My (new and highly unfinished) MaybeLater rewrite task manager system is entirely XMPP over BOSH.
  • 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 and read all the XEPs that go through (it's hard to review them for Council otherwise).

XMPP documentation

Plans for the future

As well as continuing work on Swift and MaybeLater, 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 (and was last 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.