I'm excited to say that today I started a new job as the Executive Director of the .NET Foundation. The .NET Foundation is an independent non-profit organization set up to foster open development, innovation and collaboration around the Microsoft .NET development framework. It's been going a year now and I've been involved with the team from the beginning, but it's fabulously exciting to be an active part of it now. Also quite scary - the team is fantastic with some of the smartest people on the planet, so my job initially is to figure out how to keep out their way as they do awesome stuff while figuring out what I can do to help unblock more openness and innovation by ensuring that the wider community is always involved along the way.
I'll still be an employee of Microsoft but my job is now to focus 100% of my time on the .NET Foundation helping co-ordinate lots of the day-to-day operations of the non-profit organization but also set the strategy and tone for the future. If folks have ideas then please head over to the .NET Foundation Forums and post your suggestions. You can always reach out to me on Twitter(@martinwoodward) or my new work email address (martin@dotnetfoundation.org).
It's an incredibly exciting time to join the team as they are doing some amazing stuff. .NET as a platform is going through rapid innovation at the moment. But more importantly the project teams are working in the open and are focused heavily on responding to pull requests that come in and taking the platform forward with wider community participation which I see as a very good sign.
The .NET Community has always been a passionate one, and a place in which I have found many of my friends. But it is a friendly one as well. I was always the "Mac guy" or the "Eclipse guy" when it came to .NET User Group meetings yet I never felt an outsider - everyone has always been very welcoming and just keen to learn more from one and other. The MVP and RD communities around .NET contain so many passionate, dedicated and smart people.
It's a fantastic time to be involved in .NET. We're at an inflection point in the platforms history and all signs are that things are heading to some very good places indeed.
Now I just need to not mess up and do what I can to help make sure the .NET Community continues to be a great place to be. Drop me a line if you have any ideas, suggestions or feedback as to what I can do to help.
