Code of Conduct

This policy is a living document and subject to refinement and updates in the future. Last update on 7 June 2019.

The Lead Developer is a friendly community where everyone should feel welcome, safe and comfortable to share ideas and engage in open discussion. It’s really important for us to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone at the conference inclusive of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, nationality or religion.

All delegates, speakers, sponsors and staff are required to abide by our code of conduct in-person at White October Events conferences and meetups, and online. Any violations will be dealt with seriously and may include being expelled and banned from events or online spaces without a refund. This is to protect the safety of our community.

Definitions

What do we mean by “harassment”? Harassment includes but isn’t limited to:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body size, race, age, nationality, religion or belief, marital and civil partnership status, pregnancy or carer or parental status, familial status, veteran status, citizenship
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
• Homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, racist, or misogynist slurs or comments
• Physical contact without consent or after a request to cease
• Threats or acts of violence or intimidation
• Unwelcome sexual attention
• Sharing/displaying sexual or sexualised images
• Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent
• Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
• Sustained disruption of discussion
• Advocating for or encouraging any of the above behaviours

We prioritise the safety of marginalised people over privileged people’s comfort. This means we reserve the right not to act on complaints regarding:

• Reverse-isms, including ‘reverse racism’, ‘reverse sexism’, and ‘cisphobia’
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone”, “go away”, “I’m not discussing this with you”
• Criticising racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to stop immediately.

Participants engaging in harassing behaviour may be asked to leave an event or online space and may be banned temporarily or indefinitely. If a ticket was purchased for an in-person or online event, we reserve the right not to issue a refund.

If harassment occurs outside an event or online space organised by White October Events that may impact the safety of our community, we reserve the right to investigate and take appropriate action, for instance banning from future events.

Reporting

If you are being harassed or made to feel unsafe or unwelcome, please report it as soon as possible. You can help us by reporting any behaviour you think might go against the Code of Conduct.

• Email: Megan Kingdom-Davies, Event Manager: [email protected]
• Call/text: +44 7753 334 342
• In-person at events: speak to a staff member wearing a t-shirt with ‘staff’ or ‘organiser’ on the back.

Reporting & enforcement process

1. Incident report is taken in a safe, private space
2. Incident responders investigate with the reported person
3. Incident response team reconvene to discuss an appropriate response
4. Appropriate action is taken
5. Incident responders follow up with the reporter and the reported person
6. Inform community if necessary
7. Debrief and document internally

Important local contacts

• Emergency services: 999
• Non-emergency police: 101
• Non-emergency medical: 111
• Local hospital: Barts Health, W Smithfield, London EC1A 7BE
  (+44 20 7377 7000)
• Local taxi: we’d recommend using a ride-sharing app for reliable, affordable local transport. Feel free to connect to the conference wifi to book your ride.

Thanks

Our updated Code of Conduct was based on resources from Geek Feminism and the XOXO Community Code of Conduct.