by The Evergreen Outreach Committee is thrilled to announce that our first Evergreen Contributor of the Month is Michele Morgan of NOBLE.
Michele has been involved with Evergreen since 2012, and in that time has quietly but steadily made a positive difference in the code and the community. She has been a significant contributor to Launchpad, with 97 bug reports to her name and 175 bugs commented upon. Michele has also authored 16 bugfix patches that are now a part of the Evergreen codebase.
“I like things to work right,” Michele notes. “I like writing bugs and I like trying to fix bugs.” Michele has a reputation as a careful and thorough tester of code, and has participated in every community Bug Squashing event since their inception in 2014.
Michele’s approach is always end-user focused. “I advocate for the end user, because I used to be one,” she says. In her day job at NOBLE Michele serves as a Technical Support Analyst and takes calls from NOBLE’s member libraries about any Evergreen issues they’re having.
As the front line of support for NOBLE, she gets user input firsthand and helps them to resolve problems. She has spent most of her career on the public services side of libraries, including serving as Head of Circulation, which gives her a valuable perspective on the day-to-day workflows of library staff.
Michele can often be found in the #evergreen IRC channel, welcoming newcomers, giving advice, and tossing around ideas with other community members. She’s always willing to help another Evergreener troubleshoot an issue in IRC.
Michele recommends that new community members lurk and listen — but not be afraid of stepping in! “Listening is a great way to start,” she says. “Lurk in IRC, be on the lists, answer what you can. Make yourself comfortable with Evergreen. It’s OK to say something wrong, the community is very supportive.”
Michele’s contributions and consistent helpfulness make her a great example of how individual people can be big difference-makers in open source projects. “It’s a community effort,” she concludes. “You do what you can when you can, and it’s definitely a community effort.”
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Do you know someone in the community who deserves a bit of extra recognition? Please use this form to submit your nominations. We ask for your email in case we have any questions, but all nominations will be kept confidential.
Any questions can be directed to Andrea Buntz Neiman via abneiman@equinoxinitiative.org or abneiman in IRC.