Haskell Foundation Executive Director Change

[myShoggoth]

The Haskell Foundation is one year old, which calls for a moment of pause and contemplation. After considering the progress that we have made, the state of the Foundation, and the future we are looking forward to with Haskell as a mainstream industrial language, I have decided to step down as Executive Director.

I believe we are in good shape in terms of sponsors, funding, good will, and our position in the ecosystem. By focusing on finding the right successor to take the Foundation the next step, with new energy and ideas, I think we set ourselves up for great things to happen over the next few years.

While the Board conducts its process, I will continue to run the day to day operations of the Foundation for one to two more months, and ensure a smooth transition. We are moving ahead on the initiatives underway: hiring a DevOps engineer, our various working groups and task forces, working with maintainers of the open source projects that are the basis of our community, and working with our sponsors to make sure those projects understand the needs of industrial users.

If you have questions or concerns about this transition, you can reach out to me at andrew@haskell.foundation, the HF Board of Directors at board@haskell.foundation, or jump on our Slack instance.

[Kleidukos]

Thanks a lot for all the good work you’ve put in Andrew, you have been instrumental in giving the Haskell Foundation a face, and really nailed many aspects that helped us get going!

I had an absolute blast working with you.

[simonpj]

Thank you Andrew! The Haskell Foundation seeks to bring together a passionate, smart, busy, geographically-distributed, often-opinionated, group of people – the Haskell community. That is not easy to do, but you have led us with skill and grace.

We have made good progress, and have much to look forward to. Thank you for the major contribution you have made.

Simon

[rae]

When Andrew joined the HF, we were little more than an amorphous blob, hoping we would be able to keep the lights on for a year. As we are transitioning to our second ED, we are in a remarkably healthier position, with the funding to hire a staffer (see: the DevOps position) and a solid budget for direct funding of yet more initiatives. We have an active Slack instance, and there has been nice engagement here on Discourse. Our podcast is going strong, powered by a group of volunteers. We have seen significant refreshment of both Cabal and the Core Libraries Committee (CLC) under our CTO @emilypi’s guidance – and we now have a proposals process where you, the Haskelling public, can submit your ideas for consideration. Due to @Bodigrim’s hard lift, the community can now use a text library native to UTF-8 – a technical initiative the community has wanted for some time. There is yet more to do, but we have indeed come a long way from where we started – all under Andrew’s leadership and coordination.

So thank you to Andrew for taking a chance on us and setting down the first bricks of our road ahead. We are indebted to you.

[ekmett]

Thank you so much for everything you’ve contributed to the community in general and the Haskell Foundation in particular.

It took an incredible amount of courage for you to step up, leave your previous job and breathe life into this thing we all hold so dear.

You have my utmost respect and gratitude.

[etorreborre]

Thank you Andrew for all your work! Having a successful and active Haskell Foundation is a very helpful selling point for the rest of us, trying to promote Haskell in the trenches

[Mikolaj]

Thank you for your unwavering professionalism, Andrew. In these turbulent times with little physical interaction and lots of virtual venting, it was so comforting to have (another) constant voice of reason and beacon of goodwill somewhere high at the top.

[hasufell]

Thanks @myShoggoth for your relentless work! I know open source work can be a minefield, navigating through conflicting ideas and opinions. I’m deeply impressed how you handled the obstacles and kept positive attitude throughout.

[avi]

Thank you for everything @myShoggoth! I really admire how far you’ve taken this foundation in such a short time, in a slice of the OSS ecosystem we all care so deeply about. Wishing you all the best with whatever comes next.

[HeinrichApfelmus]

Thank you so much, Andrew! I particularly enjoyed our interactions.

[dreixel]

Thank you, Andrew! It was a pleasure to work with you, and you leave the HF in great shape for whatever comes next. All the best for your future endeavours.