What's an alternative to the word "Fellow" or "Fellowship"?

The JupyterHub team has been kicking around the idea of creating a “JupyterHub Fellowship”. Basically, a one-year contractor position that performs a lot of crucial daily tasks across JupyterHub repositories (think “responding to issues”, “helping with infrastructure”, “closing PRs”, etc).

We’re not sold on the word “Fellow” or “Fellowship”. Can folks help us brainstorm some other words for this position, and words for “the person who currently holds this position”?

They should reflect the person’s helpful status within the community, though probably shouldn’t suggest any kind of hierarchy or power.

Any suggestions? Ideas would be much appreciated!

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“Community Manager” sounds most descriptive here and consistent with other projects

Perhaps “Community Helper” if “manager” isn’t palatable?

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Thanks for doing this Chris. Looking at it from how it would reflect on a person’s CV. JupyterHub Research Advocate. JupyterHub Maintainer - Research Services. JupyterHub Research Community Advocate/Manager/Engineer.

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ooooh +1 to “community advocate”

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A few other ideas from various twitter folks:

  • Caretaker
  • Custodian
  • Concierge
  • Porter
  • Curator
  • Resident
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This means keeper of a museum in my dictionary. I will try to look something up

I like custodian. It sounds respectable but also not a word usually used which means people will ask you “so this custodian job you had, tell me more about that”. Which in my book is the whole point of putting stuff on your CV :wink:

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I actually agree here. Well explained betatim :+1:

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I’m a big fan of “steward” and “stewardship” in this context – someone who guides and cares for a thing for a time, before handing it off to the next person. The word has a connotation of rights and responsibility without ownership (in the exclusive sense). Usufructory, as opposed to abusive property rights. There’s a movement trying to create more institutions with this kind of relationship between stakeholders and the long-term good, and I think it matches up very well with the open source movement. E.g. this whitepaper/brochure from Purpose Economy, and here’s a blog post on the same topic.

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at least in the US, Custodian is widely used as a synonym for janitor, which may not be the connotation we are going for.

“Champion” was also suggested in another channel.

I like community advocate and the simple “jupyerhub maintainer” as well as the connotations of “JupyerHub Residency.” For that, I would probably call the individual something like “Contributor-in-Residence” like “Artist-in-Residence” rather than “Resident.”

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Ah. Ok maybe not then :frowning: Steward is good too.

Another word that came to mind from sports: groundsman or groundswoman, in the US groundskeeper. Someone whose job it is to make sure the pitch is in pristine condition for when there are matches.

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I am not a native English speaker.

  • I first encountered the word fellow in an academic context and was not aware of the fact that it was gendered until much later.
  • Steward is used as-is in French for “male flight attendant”.

I think all of the suggestions by Min are great. Thanks folks for improving upon “Fellow”. :smile:

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I really like JupyterHub Contributor in Residence for two reasons:

*It is similar to a title that a good number of people will have some familiarity with (Artist in Residence)
*Unlike some of the others (and for the record I love “Jupyter Champion”) it implies a fixed short term

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Thinking about it a bit, I like Contributor in Residence as well. My main question is to @willingc’s point about a line on the CV. Do we think the title is descriptive and fancy-sounding enough that it can help the person move forward in their career?

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I think Contributor in Residence works. We can always supplement the wording if needed “Contributor in Residence: Research Services”, “Contributor in Residence: Computational Science”, etc. tailoring to what would be best for the person filling the role.

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