The .NET Foundation

I think the .NET Foundation is a Fantasitc idea. A dedicated organisation pushing .NET led by a capable and enthusiastic set of wonderful people. I truly believe that .NET is one of the greatest software stacks available today bridging web, mobile, desktop, cloud, IOT, AI, machine learning and mixed reality. And becoming more open source and cross platform every day.

Any organisation that advocates and encourages .NET automatically gets my support. Which is why I have submitted my application to become a member.

Membership Application

As part of the application process I highlighted some of my contributions to the .NET ecosphere, most recently my websites VisualStudioTips.co.uk (listing 30+ tips for Visual Studio) and XamarinArkit.com (showing .NET developers how to create Augmented Reality mobile apps for iOS devices using Xamarin, .NET and C#). I await the result of my membership application.

Contributing to the .NET Foundation

Then I got to thinking how else I could contribute to the .NET Foundation directly.

As part of my role as Software Development Manager at Leasing.com, among other things, I am constantly trying to optimise its performance, seo, web accessibility and adopt best practices. I'd even go so far as to say that website optimisation has become a strength of mine. So I decided to put the .NET Foundation website (https://dotnetfoundation.org/) under the magnifying glass and come up with some suggestions for improvements that I would like to present back to the .NET Foundation team.

I then realised that the .NET Foundation website itself is open source, so I intend to create issues and pull requests for as many of my optimisation suggestions as I can.

.NET Foundation Website Improvement Suggestions

I have created a bit of an audit document that suggests how various parts of the .NET Foundation website could be improved. Whilst not exhaustive, I believe it contains a number of very simple changes that could easily be made that would be of benefit to the website and the Foundation.

I see no reason to not share the findings, so you can download my .NET Foundation website optimisation suggestions here.

Summary

I hope that the website audit and list of suggested improvements is received in the manner it was intended. Not to list things that are wrong with it, rather to identify things that could be easily changed to make it even more awesome. I think the overall site, its message, purpose and content is great.

I'm also led to believe that the .NET Foundation encourages volounteers to help run the foundation. If that is the case..

To the .NET Foundation board and committee, I would like to say this.

If allowed, I would be honoured to help maintain the .NET Foundation website or apply for a volunteer post within your organisation whose duties involve the maintenance and evolution of the .NET Foundation website.

I truly believe that Leadership (among a great many other things) is about leading by example, I hope that I can either directly or indirectly help elevate the .NET Foundation website to be one that is a shining beacon of best practices.

Thank you

-- Lee