User:RobLa

User:RobLa is the user account for Rob Lanphier. I am (among other things) an electoral theory wonk, a software developer, and an engineering management nerd. I've been a Miraheze community member since September 2018 (main wiki: electowiki). As of January 2020, I'm also a member of the Miraheze board.

CV
Here's a few highlights from my CV that seem relevant to people wondering about my possible contribution the Miraheze Board:


 * 2019 - served as Director for Core Infrastructure at Internet Archive, managing both the operations team and engineers that wrote and maintained the core storage software
 * 2017-2018 - Volunteer political activism work, some private software development work, as well as some maintenance and migration work for Electowiki!, which is mostly hosted at Miraheze now ( https://electowiki.miraheze.org )
 * 2015-2016 - Wikimedia Foundation part II - Established Wikimedia Technical Committee (TechCom) - back when we called it "ArchCom".
 * 2010-2015 - Wikimedia Foundation part I - Established Wikimedia Platform Engineering by hiring, budgeting, and coaching the team of up to 35 engineering staff in 8 time zones at its peak
 * 2006-2009 - Launching the open source client for Linden Lab (makers of Second Life)
 * 1996-2005 - All sorts of things at RealNetworks, e.g. launching Helix, RTSP and SMIL
 * 1993-1995 - Stuff at Conjungi, Asymetrix, other things here and there

I give details about all of this stuff over on https://robla.net

Links
A few other places to learn more about me
 * My English Wikipedia user page: w:User:RobLa, with contributions dating back to 2001
 * My contributions on electowiki.miraheze.org
 * My homepage at https://robla.net
 * My December 2019 blogpost "Why donate to a non-profit with a hard-to-pronounce name?"

Journals
Here's a list of wiki journals that I'm keeping:


 * meta:User:RobLa/Journal - this is where I note my work associated with Miraheze and my responsibilities on the Board
 * https://electowiki.miraheze.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Journal - my journal for electowiki-related activity
 * https://myndmess.miraheze.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Journal - my journal for myndmess-related activity

FAQ
Some frequently(?) asked questions:

How did RobLa start working with Miraheze?
The short answer: I signed up for an account here because User:Psephomancy got tired of waiting for me to fix the problems on wiki.electorama.com, so they copied the content to https://electowiki.miraheze.org. I decided I liked it here, so I got more involved.

The long answer: See my December 2019 blogpost "Why donate to a non-profit with a hard-to-pronounce name?"

What does RobLa do with Miraheze now?
As of January 2020, I'm on the Board. In March 2020, I attended my first board meetings (on and ). See meta:User:RobLa/TODO for how I'm planning to act on my action items (and feel free to seek clarification on the associated talk page if anything is unclear).