Who am I
Of all the projects I worked with, F# was one of the main technologies that helped me form the way I write software and made me a better engineer. I am a software engineer, speaker, mentor and community activist with a decade of full-spectrum expertise across a variety of platforms, languages, and technologies: functional programming in F# and Scala, distributed systems, big data, Java and JVM ecosystem, open-source, large-scale data analysis, and data science. I am from Belarus and now work at AWS Aurora in beautiful Seattle, WA.
Why I would like to be on the Board
I hope my multifaceted knowledge and profuse experience will be greatly helpful in working to expand the power and reach of F#, apply its strength to more scenarios, use cases, and bringing it to the very top. I will do my best to continue expanding applications of F# in the main field of my focus - distributed systems, large-scale computing, and big data. At the root of me is incredible passion and desire to help the F# ecosystem be its best and help grow diverse F# community. I deeply love and believe in F#.
Representing independent community of software engineers who truly love F# for its unique elegance and excellence, I am running to help take the existing power of F# and .NET to help it excel on more platforms and more types of applications across many domains. I would be immensely honored and delighted to have the trust of the community and serve the F# community.
F# |> I 
Recent projects
Contact Information
- GitHub: @natadzen
- Twitter: @nata_dzen
- LinkedIn: Natallia Dzenisenka
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I have 2 questions I’m going to ask each Board candidate to begin - but first, a little background:
Historically, the programs managed by the F# Software Foundation have been managed and operated by a Board member. While it’s great to see Board members be actively involved and hands-on (something I highly encourage!), the downside to this is that sustainability of programs has suffered at times. For example, the Diversity Program has been very quiet over the last year, as none of the current Board members have “stepped up” into that role and taken it over since the previous member decided not to run in 2018. We run the risk of this again this year - Gien, who has been the core enabler of the Mentorship Program, has decided not to run for the Board this year, which will leave that program in limbo until somebody is setup to run it or a new approach is devised.
- Are there any programs, either existing or new that’d you’d like to see formed, where you would like to take an active role in helping coordinate or enable?
- Given the sustainability concern mentioned above, do you have any ideas for ways to try to keep more consistency in programs moving forward, particularly as Board members come and go?
- Are there any programs, either existing or new that’d you’d like to see formed, where you would like to take an active role in helping coordinate or enable?
I am willing to dedicate efforts to encourage the creation of more F# content for real-world solutions and emerging technology areas with the goal of showing how F# can be useful for different use cases. Speaking of existing initiatives, I think Applied F# Challenge is a great example and I’d like to see it continue and develop further. If I am elected, I would be thrilled to take an active role in this, and similar initiatives that empower engineers to discover and use F# for more scenarios and in more domains.
- Given the sustainability concern mentioned above, do you have any ideas for ways to try to keep more consistency in programs moving forward, particularly as Board members come and go?
This is a valid concern, I see how this can become an issue. I think one of the possible solutions can be having former F# Board create a list of existing initiatives with their current status and ongoing activities. When the new F# Board starts, they could review the list and decide/vote which ones they can take over and be responsible for, agreeing on who can continue existing efforts from the very beginning, and closing or pausing initiatives that didn’t receive dedicated Board member support.