Let's talk about...our Code of Conduct!

PyCon Australia 2016 has a code of conduct, as the conference has had since 2011 (the second year). The aim of the Code of Conduct is to lay out our expectations for behaviour to facilitate an environment that is safe, welcoming and inclusive.

We recognise that a Code of Conduct is not a silver bullet and the mere presence of one does not guarantee that everyone does in fact have a good time. Therefore, we have spent some time formulating our incident response plan. It's outlined below so that if you have to report something, you can know what to expect.

Reports made to one of the conference’s Code of Conduct representatives (the response team) will be documented in a paper form. If there is an immediate threat to safety we will contact venue security and/or police. In other cases, we will meet with the rest of the response team and decide on what actions if any to take (aiming within half a day for reports during the conference days). We will follow up with the person who reported to communicate our actions.

Data retention policy: Reports will be kept for the same organising team (PyCon AU 2017/Melbourne) and will not be passed on to successive teams.

The Code of Conduct response team consists of:

• Katie McLaughlin
• Greg Turner
• Craige McWhirter
• Brianna Laugher
• Chris Neugebauer

Brianna and Chris are part of the core organising team but Katie, Greg and Craige are not.

You can reach out to one of these people in person, and you can also report problems via email to safety@pycon-au.org. This goes to a ticketing system which these 5 people have access to.

The Code of Conduct applies not only to the formal days of the conference itself, but also social events such as the conference dinner, and online channels such as mailing lists, Twitter and the Slack group.

Our plans here are gratefully informed by a huge amount of prior work done, in particular we have drawn from:

• The Django Code of Conduct Handbook, by Ola Sendecka and Ola Sitarska
• US PyCon Staff Procedure for Handling Harassment
• Geek Feminism wiki's page on Responding to reports
• Audrey Eschright's 2015 OSFeels talk on Enforcing Your Code of Conduct

Related events: Data Carpentry workshop, MelbDjango birthday, PyLadies breakfast, Running group

It's PyCon Australia week! We trust you are as excited as we are! 😁

There are a few events happening this week in close association with PyCon AU. Check out the details below:

On Wednesday and Thursday, there will be a Data Carpentry Workshop at VLSCI (University of Melbourne). This is a hands-on workshop teaching basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data. It's well suited to researchers and scientists, but open to anyone (including people not attending the conference). Topics covered will include spreadsheet analysis, SQL, basic Python and Pandas. It's free to attend but see the web page to register.

Data Carpentry is a sibling organization of Software Carpentry. Where Software Carpentry teaches best practices in software development, the Data Carpentry focus is on the introductory computational skills needed for data management and analysis in all domains of research.

We are big fans of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry at PyCon Australia; last year a Software Carpentry workshop was held alongside PyCon AU in Brisbane, so we are happy to see this tradition continue. Let's pythonify ALL the scientists!

On Thursday evening, there will be the MelbDjango birthday party to celebrate MelbDjango turning three! That's a huge achievement for any meetup to sustain, let alone the other things they have also done - organising MelbDjango Camp, and MelbDjango Schools to share their knowledge and love for Django to new audiences. Congratulations to Brenton and the Common Code crew -- here's to another three years. 🎂

Finally, on Saturday morning, the PyLadies breakfast will be happening at Left Bank Melbourne, just up the road on Southbank. This is also a free event, but please register by Friday for catering.

The PyLadies Melbourne chapter just formed this year, and it's an exciting and rare chance for women and genderqueer/non-binary Pythonistas from around the country to meet in person and make connections. We are looking for a sponsor for this event. As the conference is sold out we unfortunately can't offer any free tickets, but we would be heartened to see financial support forthcoming for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. If you or your company is interested, please contact us.

On the days of the conference, there will be a Running group. There are some great runs planned and it's the best way to prepare for a day of sitting down watching presentations, so pack your sneakers!

Announcing miniconf keynotes

We've already announced that the main conference keynotes are Damien George and Dr Russell Keith-Magee, with Solange Cunin speaking at the dinner. Now it's time to find out who will be keynoting our Friday miniconfs!

First up at the DjangoConAU will be Donna Benjamin! An absolute legend of the Australian open source scene, and sitting on the board for the Drupal Association, Donna will take us through Django & Drupal: A tale of two cities. This knowledgeable comparison between the two projects (something of a tradition at DjangoCon AU) will explore the common challenges and highlight where approaches diverge, providing an opportunity to reflect on how each project can grow stronger separately, and maybe even together. Donna is also speaking on Sunday on Turning user stories into websites.

Secondly at the Internet of Things miniconf, if you can't wait until Saturday to hear Damien George, luckily you can get a sneak peek on Friday! Damien will talk about high-level languages that have been adapted for use in microcontrollers including Lua, JavaScript, Ruby, and of course, Python. Lachlan Blackhall, organiser of the Internet of Things miniconf, said, "The inaugural IoT miniconf at PyconAU will be an exciting opportunity to learn about and discuss everything from Python on embedded devices, to how Python is powering IoT enabling cloud services and everything in between."

Thirdly, at the popular Science and Data miniconf, we will hear from Juan Nunez-Iglesias, on Python's bright future in science. Juan is a core developer for the scikit-image library and a research scientist at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative, in the University of Melbourne. He has taught scipy workshops around the world and co-authored the "Elegant SciPy" book, putting him in a prime position to comment on Python's status in the scientific programming community.

Finally, at the Education Seminar, we're excited to hear from Roland Gesthuizen, from Digital Learning & Teaching Victoria, speaking on Smart City: Connecting the dots and digital kids. Roland's current mission is to challenge students to design, build a smart city consisting of intelligent vehicles and infrastructure. To do this they need to program a navigation algorithm to autonomously navigate vehicles through a series of traffic challenges that test collision avoidance and road safety. Roland has an active interest in the development of online learning communities, open education and software freedom, and is a recipient of the 2010 ACCE Educator of the year Award and 2012 ISTE Making IT Happen Award.

With four amazing options, the hardest part of Friday morning will be choosing which one to attend! Conference check-in opens from 8am on Friday our venue, Level 1 of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. You can also check in on Thursday afternoon, from 4:30pm to 6:00pm, so if you are around the CBD on Thursday, we encourage you to beat the rush and collect your badge then.