The Samvera Community Helpers is a group of volunteers who provide support to others within the Community. Since this group was organized in ca. 2015, it has taken on a variety of initiatives, activities, and responsibilities to generally ensure respectful behavior, to encourage a diversity of voices, and to promote a welcoming, inclusive atmosphere for all Samvera members in our events, team collaborations, products, and documentation.
In the interest of adequate coverage and context, the group of Helpers should have an appropriate mix of members based on their level of regular presence and participation in Samvera spaces, such as:
Developers actively contributing to Samvera products, participating routinely on tech calls, community sprints, pull request reviews, component maintenance
Designers, service/product managers, and analysts who are involved in sprints, reporting bugs, or Interest Groups and Working Groups activities
Board members
With the introduction of a dedicated Response Team in 2021, the role of the Helpers has been scoped more narrowly. The Helpers will:
Monitor the Helpers email list
Refer any reports of Code of Conduct violations to the Response Team, but no longer are be responsible for incident response
Participate in reviewing the Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment policy annually for revisions
Support new Helpers
Identify and nominate new Helpers
Maintain onboarding documentation and resources
Commit to serving a term of two years
Be eligible to volunteer or be nominated for the role of Incident Responder
Event Helpers are a group of volunteers who are committed to providing help to others within the Samvera Community at various Samvera events. Helpers assist in fielding concerns regarding reported violations of the Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy, or responding to general help requests. Event Helpers can be members of the Samvera Community Helpers or volunteers from the Community. Event helpers serve a variety of roles:
Presenting and explaining the Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy at the beginning of each day of Samvera events
Staffing welcome table at Samvera Connect meetings
Being available for questions
Mentoring new Samverans
Coordinating with event organizers (program committee, local hosts) as needed
https://forms.gle/WvPikozBRBuVpMp8A
The Helpers have been and integral part of building the Samvera Community. Examples of past Helper activities include:
Drafted and periodically updated the original Anti-Harassment Policy and Samvera Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy
Volunteered to be formally available at specific events as on-call Helpers
Responded to reports of disrespectful behavior or Code of Conduct violations
Engaged in discussions with community members about practices and expectations of event presenters (eg., pronouns, verbally describing one’s appearance)
Monitored the Helpers email list
Bess Sadler, Notch8 (bess@notch8.com, bess on GitHub, Freenode and Samvera slack, @eosadler on Twitter)
Michael B. Klein, Northwestern University (michael.klein@northwestern.edu, mbklein on GitHub, Twitter, Slack)
Chris Awre, University of Hull (c.awre@hull.ac.uk, clawre on GitHub and Twitter
Rosalyn Metz, Emory (rmetz@emory.edu, rosy1280 on GitHub, @rosy1280 on Twitter)
Hannah Frost, Stanford (hfrost@stanford.edu, hannahfrost on GitHub, @feefifofannah on Twitter, @hannah on Samvera Slack)
Jeremy Friesen, University of Notre Dame (jeremy.n.friesen@gmail.com, jeremyf on Github, jeremyfriesen on Slack)
Lynette Rayle, Cornell University (elr37@cornell.edu, elrayle on Github and Slack)
Brian McBride, University of Utah (brian.mcbride@utah.edu, brianmcbride on Github and Slack)
Simeon Warner, Cornell University (simeon.warner@cornell.edu, zimeon on Github and Slack)
Alicia Morris, Tufts University (alicia.morris@tufts.edu, amorris on Slack)
Your name here!
Note: Heather Green Klein (Samvera Community Manager) is also an owner of the Helpers email list. Her subscription is set to "no email", though she may read messages sent to the list at her discretion.