Who am I
My name’s Phillip Carter, and I’m a dork who’s been working on F# at Microsoft for the past 4 years. I’m responsible primarily for the “direction” of the F# language, tooling, and general emphasis. Though I’m not the only one who decides things, I am ultimately the “owner” of where we take F# as a product. I also like to dive into the F# codebase from time to time to improve things.
I also help maintain some F# libraries in my spare time, and generally enjoy being immersed in community spaces with other F# developers. Sometimes this is helping people out, sometimes it’s giving an opinion about something, and sometimes it’s getting feedback about things I’d like to do. There’s definitely a blending of my work responsibilities and the things I do in my free time, which is partially why I’ve been on the FSSF board for the past few years.
When not at the computer, you can find me on a bike during the summer, a snowboard during the winter, and in the kitchen cooking cool stuff with my awesome wife. I’m also starting to learn Korean.
Why I’d like to be on the board
I am seeking re-election largely because I feel that I have developed good relationships with other board members and other members of the FSSF community, and that I can use these to continue doing good things for the overall F# community. I view the position on the board as a commitment to the F# community where I take actions in service towards the FSSF goals. Although I could do many things without being a board member, it’s the commitment that matters. Additionally, as a board member I’ve been able to exercise my right to vote on using FSSF funds to help fledgling communities. I believe that my most important role is to help empower other F# users to create community spaces, and if that requires a little bit of money I’m almost always going to be in favor of helping them.
I also developed a very strong sense of care for the F# community when the board had to handle an incident involving an F# user submitting death threats to other F# users in the month leading up to OpenFSharp. I’m proud of how everyone on the board collaborated to ensure peoples’ safety at OpenFSharp - even if though was ultimately unnecessary - and I want to continue being in a position where I can be more than just a bystander when someone does something that necessitates action.
My principles as a board member are:
- Help people in the greater F# community feel empowered to create and grow their own community spaces
- Help people understand F# and .NET behavior, especially as beginners
- Contribute to efforts that help with broader F# adoption
- Dedicate personal time to maintaining and improving F# libraries that people depend on
Some of the ways I will act on these principles concretely are:
- Voting to sponsor events and tickets for events where F# is concerned, especially if it is a first-time conferences
- Being active in community spaces and paying attention to questions that would otherwise be difficult for others to answer (e.g., F# preview behavior): the FSSF slack, F# StackOverflow, F# Subreddit, Twitter, etc.
- Participate in a new “dugnad” series Don Syme established to improve the F# web presence on fsharp.org, wikipedia, and other high-volume websites
- Improve XPlot to align with .NET Interactive, allow for exporting charts as images, and releasing updates from community contributions; completing a .NET Standard 2.0-only revamp of the Type Provider SDK and working with other community members to improve their type providers
As always, I intend on being responsive, transparent, and open about things. I also intend on being as present as possible in the FSSF slack for anyone to chat with about stuff.
Thanks for the consideration!