2018 Election Campaign: Phillip Carter

Foundation
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Phillip Carter

Twitter: @_cartermp

Who I am

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I work for Microsoft on F#. My official title is Program Manager, which is kind of a meaningless term as far as I’m concerned, because I do not manage anything and I am not a programmer (at least not for my day job). My day-to-day work for F# at Microsoft involves:

  • Owning Microsoft’s tactics and strategy for what we do with the language and the tools we deliver
  • Owning and writing the official F# documentation
  • Community outreach and involvement, including speaking at conferences
  • Occasional bug fixes

In other words, I am responsible for the “what” and the “why” for F# as far as Microsoft is concerned. I make a concerted effort to make myself available to all F# developers, befriend people in the community, and try to be as open and transparent in my work as I can. From my point of view, F# is nothing without its community.

Outside of the professional realm, I’m a hiking and biking junkie, I listen to music you won’t usually hear on the radio, I cook food with my wonderful wife all the time, and I’ve recently become obsessed with snowboarding.

Why I’d like to be considered

I want to better represent F# from “Microsoft’s point of view” in the FSSF. I also want to better represent the FSSF at Microsoft. I feel that this is easier to do if I am actively taking part in things the FSSF does rather than merely being a bystander . . . who happens to deliver the very software that everyone in the F# community depends on.

I also want to play a more active part in the F# community beyond just being available for people to chat with. The FSSF is doing some amazing things today, such as the diversity and mentorship programs, that I would like to help push even further. I have no idea how that would manifest itself, but I want to be involved in that.

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Good question. Not entirely sure how to answer this. I don’t see any particularly large differences in the short term. However, I do think that being more involved with the FSSF (board meetings, support existing programs, kicking off new ones) will result in a stronger relationship between the FSSF and Microsoft over time.

For example, say we wanted to bring some more visibility to the mentorship or diversity programs. I could count my involvement with this as “Microsoft time”, and try to push it not as an FSSF thing, but as a thing that I also work on. Although there are no guarantees, getting more support from the Microsoft side of things is easier when it’s counted as a work project rather than something an independent group related to the product you’re working on does something.

In terms of contradictions or conflicts of interest, I can’t think of any. If there is an actual conflict of interest, I’d just leave the board.

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BTW - I don’t see why there should be any conflict of interest here. Our current Board does include a Microsoft employee (and previous Boards had more than one). There is no legal problem with that.