Code of Conduct

!!Con (BangBangCon) is a community conference intended for networking and collaboration in the developer community.

We value the participation of each member of the programming community and want all attendees to have an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Accordingly, all attendees are expected to show respect and courtesy to other attendees throughout the conference and at all conference events, whether officially sponsored by !!Con or not.

To make clear what is expected, all delegates/attendees, speakers, exhibitors, organizers and volunteers at any !!Con event are required to conform to the following Code of Conduct. Organizers will enforce this code throughout the event.

The Short Version !!Con is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.

All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for !!Con.

Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.

Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly event for all.

The Longer Version Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Exhibitors in the expo hall, sponsor or vendor booths, or similar activities are also subject to the anti-harassment policy. In particular, exhibitors should not use sexualized images, activities, or other material. Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualized environment.

Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for !!Con.

If a participant engages in behavior that violates this code of conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund.

In addition to having a code of conduct as an anti-harassment policy, we have a small set of social rules we follow. These rules are intended to be lightweight, and to make more explicit certain social norms that are normally implicit. Most of our social rules really boil down to "don't be a jerk" or "don't be annoying." Of course, almost nobody sets out to be a jerk or annoying, so telling people not to be jerks isn't a very productive strategy. That's why our social rules are designed to curtail specific behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment.

No feigning surprise

The first rule means you shouldn't act surprised when people say they don't know something. This applies to both technical things ("What?! I can't believe you don't know what the stack is!") and non-technical things ("You don't know who RMS is?!"). Feigning surprise has absolutely no social or educational benefit: When people feign surprise, it's usually to make them feel better about themselves and others feel worse. And even when that's not the intention, it's almost always the effect. As you've probably already guessed, this rule is tightly coupled to our belief in the importance of people feeling comfortable saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand."

No well-actually's

A well-actually happens when someone says something that's almost - but not entirely - correct, and you say, "well, actually…" and then give a minor correction. This is especially annoying when the correction has no bearing on the actual conversation. This doesn't mean !!Con isn't about truth-seeking or that we don't care about being precise. Almost all well-actually's in our experience are about grandstanding, not truth-seeking. (Thanks to Miguel de Icaza for originally coining the term "well-actually.")

No back-seat driving

If you overhear people working through a problem, you shouldn't intermittently lob advice across the room. This can lead to the "too many cooks" problem, but more important, it can be rude and disruptive to half-participate in a conversation. This isn't to say you shouldn't help, offer advice, or join conversations. On the contrary, we encourage all those things. Rather, it just means that when you want to help out or work with others, you should fully engage and not just butt in sporadically.

No subtle sexism

Our last social rule bans subtle sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. This one is different from the rest, because it's often not a specific, observable phenomenon ("well-actually's" are easy to spot because they almost always start with the words, "well, actually…").

!!Con is not a place to publicly debate whether comment X is sexist, racist, etc. If you see something that's unintentionally sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. at !!Con you're welcome to point it out to the person who made the comment, either publicly or privately, or you can ask one of the faculty to say something to that person. Once the initial mention has been made, we ask that all further discussion move off of public channels. If you are a third party, and you don't see what could be biased about the comment that was made, feel free to talk to faculty. Please don't say, "Comment X wasn't homophobic!" Similarly, please don't pile on to someone who made a mistake.

Why don't we want public discussions of sexism, racism, etc. at !!Con? For many people, especially those who may have spent time in unpleasant environments, these conversations can be very distracting. At !!Con, we want to remove as many distractions as possible so everyone can focus on programming. There are many places in the world to discuss and debate these issues, but there are precious few where people can avoid them. We want !!Con to be one of those places.

Why have social rules?

The goal isn't to burden !!Con with a bunch of annoying rules, or to give us a stick to bludgeon people with for "being bad." Rather, these rules are designed to help all of us build a pleasant, productive, and fearless community.

If someone says, "hey, you just feigned surprise," or "that's subtly sexist," don't worry. Just apologize, reflect for a second, and move on. It doesn't mean you're a "bad" person, or even a "bad" !!Coner. As we said above, these rules are meant to be lightweight. We've all done these things before. In fact, we originally adopted a no well-actually policy for our company because Nick and Dave well-actually'd each other all the time.

Contact Information If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff. Conference staff will be wearing "!!Con Staff" t-shirts. You may also contact hotel staff and ask to be put in touch with the conference chair - [name].

If the matter is especially urgent, please call/contact any of these individuals:

[names and contact] Conference staff will be happy to help participants contact hotel/venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the conference. We value your attendance.

Procedure for Handling Harassment Attendee Procedure for incident handling Staff Procedure for incident handling Based on Revision

License This Code of Conduct was inspired by PyCon's code of conduct and !!Con's social rules. [unclear if we should attribute ada initiative and geek feminism here because pycon forked there's]

Creative Commons License ??