FSSF Report: 3rd Quarter 2019
Since the new Board has been elected in May, we have been busy. Here is a summary of what the Board has been working on, and what is in the works for the near future.
Over the July - September 2019 period, membership increased from 2947 to 3117, including currently 41 sustaining members. The Slack channel now counts 2,768 members, and over 6,800 follow @fsharporg on Twitter. Our Discourse forum has been active, albeit a bit less than previous quarter.
Mentorship program: Jeremy Abbott took over the program organization after Gien Verschatse, and launched what is now the 7th round of mentorship. As is usually the case, there were more people applying to be mentored than volunteers to provide mentoring (17 vs 58). 18 pairs of mentors/mentees have now been formed, and the round just started. The goal is to organize another round early in 2020. If you are interested in helping out, reach out to Jeremy Abbott!
Website redesign: the previous Board initiated an effort to redesign the fsharp.org website, to make it easier to maintain and navigate, and improve the sign-up experience. After collecting feedback from the community, the effort stalled. Dave Curylo has started working with Reed Copsey to assess the situation, and plan out the missing tasks. The goal is to finish this before this Board completes their term, hopefully during the first half of 2020.
In September, 2 F#-focused conference took place: FableConf, in Antwerp, Belgium, and Open F# in San Francisco. This year again, the F# Software Foundation sponsored both events. It also helped Open F# put additional security in place, to address recent threats made against some members of our community.
Outreachy internship: the previous Board decided to participate in the Outreachy internship program, and Nikita completed her internship, working on the FsAutoComplete project, under the guidance of Enrico Sada.
The first edition of the Applied F# Challenge, started by Lena Hall, was a success. Phillip Carter and Natallia Dzenisenka volunteered to organize a second edition in 2020.
Communications: in addition to amplifying affiliated F# meetups via Twitter, the communications working group plans on more regular messages around the activities of the F# Software Foundation, to increase awareness of some of our lesser-known programs and benefits. As part of this effort, we will publish another quarterly update (like this one) early January. If you are interested in helping out, reach out to Mathias Brandewinder on Slack!
Speakers Program: the goal of this program is to help local communities find speakers to present F# content, by financially supporting new and experienced speakers with their travel expenses. The Board recently decided to expand this program, and make support available to free community events, and not only meetups.
If you have questions or comments, or if you want to help out with these activities, let us know, either by commenting here, or by reaching out directly to Board members!