Self-nomination for Hyperledger TSC

[Sent on August 9th 2018 in response to CALL FOR NOMINATIONS / Hyperledger / Annual TSC Election sent to eligible candidates]

My name is Bob Summerwill. I have been a professional software developer since 1996 with the majority of my career in the videogames industry, including 15+ years at Electronic Arts in various technical leadership roles on 20 AAA tiles, including a spell as Label Software Architect for EA Sports. I always found myself gravitating to collaboration projects of all stripes within EA. I later worked as a DevOps Solutions Architect at TD Securities in Toronto. I am currently Blockchain Lead for Quantfury, CTO at Varro Technologies, a community leader for the Ethereum Project and Community Ambassador for CryptoChicks, a Canadian non-profit organization working towards gender balance in blockchain.

I have been involved in blockchain since 2014 and have been an active participant in the Ethereum ecosystem in particular since 2015, working at the Ethereum Foundation, ConsenSys and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. I worked as a developer on the C++ Ethereum client at the Ethereum Foundation after several months in the community adding ARM Linux cross-build support to bring Ethereum to mobile Linux devices and smartwatches.

https://doublethink.co/2015/11/30/first-working-ethereum-c-cross-builds/

I spent 5 months in 2016 leading a failed attempt to relicense the C++ Ethereum client as Apache 2.0 so that the codebase could be contributed to Hyperledger. I have always been supportive of Hyperledger, recently speaking at the relaunch of the Hyperledger Vancouver Meetup. I have been participating in the Identity Working Group. I see Hyperledger as critical to the technology, providing an umbrella for open source development with a common IP and licensing policy and with the mature governance and collaboration project expertise of the the Linux Foundation standing behind the projects.

I was instrumental in the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. As Co-Lead Architect I presented the Technical Roadmap at the launch event and later served first as Secretary of the Technical Working Group and later as Vice-Chair of the Technical Steering Committee. I have a very intimate understanding of the dynamics within enterprise blockchain, spanning both public blockchain and enterprise companies. I have spoken at dozens of Meetups and conferences on a large variety of topics in the last couple of years and am I very active on social media and in the community:

Here are some blog posts about my blockchain journey:

I have been working to build bridges across the blockchain ecosystem for many years, but I have unfinished business in building what I see is the most important bridge of all to help blockchain reach its full potential: The bridge to mainstream adoption. That is why I spent a year working on the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and why I want to offer my service on the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee.

This is not a zero sum game. Nobody has all the answers, but many of us are on parallel journeys and would be better served by sharing the road. What might have looked like hard lines in 2015/2016 are increasingly blurring and the line between public and private networks is blurring.

I believe I have both the technical background, personal character and blockchain consortium experience to bring people together on Hyperledger, to broaden engagement, and especially to bring together the Ethereum and Hyperledger communities to a degree which has proved elusive to this point.

Here is my conflict of interests statement: