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

Submitted on 2016-08-09 23:24

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