Community Support Squad (CSS) coordinators and volunteers should be a small group of kind, articulate, and trustworthy people who reflect the diversity of the community. Community Support Volunteers (CSV) will be responsible for:
- Taking reports of code of conduct violations while at the conference during scheduled shifts
- Referring reporters to appropriate services (e.g. conference staff for incident response, medical or other emergency services)
- Participating in decisions about responses to code of conduct violations
- Participating in responses as appropriate.
This work is outlined more specifically in the Procedures document.
Volunteers will not:
- Respond to front-line customer service queries (these are probably best handled by the registration desk)
- Be everyone's pal
- Follow reporters to offsite medical or other services (community support volunteers need to stay onsite; delegate this task to someone the reporter trusts if needed)
- Put themselves in danger (DO NOT DO THIS FOR ANY REASON. Your personal safety supersedes your community support volunteer responsibilities.)
CSVs will work in scheduled shifts, will be clearly indicated (at a specified location, wearing something distinctive), and available at all official conference events, including social events. There should be enough volunteers that no one has to be constantly on. A CSV should be constantly interruptible, so they shouldn't also be doing noninterruptible conference tasks (e.g. livestreaming).
CSVs going off-shift should brief those coming on about recent incidents, if applicable. Conference organizers should recognize the handles that community support volunteers will use to contact them (phone numbers, IRC nicks, etc. - decide in advance and collate this info). They should treat contacts from community support volunteers as priority interrupts.
In consultation with the previous year’s coordinators, the Local Planning Committee (LPC) will recruit two co-coordinators, working to ensure some measure of diverse representation. LPC will also designate two conference organizers to serve as liaisons to the CSS, commit to becoming familiar with the Code Of Conduct and reporting procedures, and provide backup in incident response. The co-coordinators and LPC liaisons will be vetted by the community through a comment period, handled by previous year’s coordinators/LPC/designee.
Once vetted, responsibilities of the coordinators include:
- Send an open call for volunteers to the community
- Review list of volunteers and submit to the community for comment
- Finalize the list of volunteers following the comment period
- Consult last year's organizers for any knowledge they need to transfer relevant to enforcement (e.g. prior incident response; iterations to procedure; or people with ongoing sanctions).
- Familiarize volunteers with procedures and code of conduct, and gather logistical information for planning purposes
- Create a schedule for coverage throughout the conference activities
- Review and prepare training materials; schedule and provide training to volunteers
- Provide guidance throughout the conference to the volunteers and convene conversations to make decisions about reports.
- Decide how conference goers will be able to recognize community support volunteers, and publicize this
- Ensure that leaders of official off-site events (tours / newcomer dinners, etc) are familiar with Code Of Conduct.
- Ensure Local Planning committee includes a quiet, private space suitable for taking reports in venue requirements.
- Establish lines of communication for CSS (i.e. private Slack channel for communications prior to conference; Signal for on-the-ground communication at the conference) and make sure all volunteers have each others' contact information.
- Investigate local laws that may affect procedures.
- Working, charged phone and charger
- Contact information for senior conference organizers
- Local contact information: emergency services, venue security, taxi companies, mental health crisis hotline, sexual assault crisis hotline
- Venue maps, including accessibility information
- Read/write access to incident logs from all community support volunteers at this event
- Access to a quiet, private space suitable for taking reports
- A copy of the procedures for responding to code of conduct violations
- Paper for recording reports