by The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that February’s Community Spotlight goes to Steve Callender, the Support Manager for Equinox Open Library Initiative. Steve oversees the Support Team at Equinox and works with a wide variety of Evergreen libraries and library staff across the United States and Canada.
In his role as Support Manager, Steve is very familiar with not only the most popular features of Evergreen but also some of its issues and pain points. Because of this, Steve has been active in reporting bugs to Launchpad as well as authoring several commits for the Evergreen codebase.
“Having direct access to both end users and developers allows me to bridge the gap between the groups when either documenting a bug or just explaining to someone how it’s designed to work,” Steve says. His patches often come out of direct conversations with end users or issues that he encounters while doing his own work in Support.
One of Steve’s earliest patches – and one that stands out in his mind – was adding a way to update Org Unit proximity automatically when an Org Unit is changed. Previously, this required using a separate parameter with autogen, and Steve’s patch made it part of the regular autogen process. “The patch was very minor, and a bit self serving,” Steve admits, “But it was definitely a catalyst for me to continue to try to help streamline processes and occasionally just find a better way at doing something.”
Steve has been a part of the Evergreen community for 11 years and spreads his enthusiasm for it often. “I love explaining to new folks about the community and then watching them become involved,” he says. Steve points out that some of Evergreen’s most popular features started out as wishlist items in the community. “It’s a great way to … find partners that may be interested in bringing those new ideas to life with you.”
Steve notes that the Evergreen community is not just for developers – it also includes end users, who can talk to other end users about how they use the software; and new coders, who can learn the ropes of Evergreen code and patch creation.
“I’ve witnessed other communities that make it really difficult for folks,” Steve tells us. “[They make] someone feel embarrassed or afraid to ask a question, and it’s such a breath of fresh air to see that Evergreen has none of that toxicity. It’s just a wonderful community.”
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Any questions can be directed to Andrea Buntz Neiman via abneiman@equinoxinitiative.org or abneiman in IRC.