[Members] 2013 Board and Council Elections - questions for candidates

[Philipp Hancke]

Hi Laura,

>
> Following on from the great answers and discussion below, my response to 'What do you expect the Board to do this year" would really focus around my skills, experience and knowledge and how I think I can hep the Board.
>
> Developing the XMPP community (through meet-ups, summits etc) is an obvious objective. It has become clear while launching the XMPP MeetUp group in London that the sense of community isn't there, as it is with other open source communities (for example, Elgg). Building and facilitating the growth of the community would benefit both those in the community (allowing them to share ideas with co-developers and overcome hurdles) and those interested in the community - events and meet ups are a great way of encouraging those developers and contributors who are currently lurking (e.g. watching the work being done, with interest) to join in and add to the development of the protocol.

I think comparing the XMPP community to the community of an open-source 
software project does not fit. It's good to make this comparison 
however, since we can analyze what is different.

The XSF is not working on software (i.e. it is not the Jabber Software 
Foundation). The XSF produces standards.
The people who use the 'product' are developers which are in turn 
responsible for projects/products that use XMPP.
Those things are used (hopefully) by a large number of users. However, 
those users are often unaware that they're using XMPP, nor do they care. 
But it typically means the feedback they give might not reach the XSF.

You might have solved that for the London Meetup already...


On the other hand, those developers sometimes work for companies that 
compete even. There was an interesting mail to the ietf-discuss list on 
that topic:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg79780.html
I think the XSF is somewhat similar to the IETF in faciliating this kind 
of collaboration.
 From looking at the XSF membership list we have drawn quite an 
assortment of WG chairs and ADs. Also note that the former XMPPWG chair 
is currently applying for membership.

philipp,
packing for the flight to Portland