Django: Under the Hood 2016 Code of Conduct Transparency Report

Published on 21st Nov 2016 by Agata Grdal, Baptiste Mispelon, Erik Romijn, Ola Sendecka, Rob Kirberich

One of the most important parts of dealing with Code of Conduct issues is being transparent about what happened during the event. It is tempting to avoid talking about it and pretend that the event went without any problems, however we believe that this kind of approach does more harm than good.

By being transparent about what happened during the event, we aim to show that the Code of Conduct is taken very seriously by our team. This way we hope people will feel more comfortable to speak up if something's not right.

For this reason, we publish the transparency report: an anonymized description of the incidents that happened during the conference.

We strongly believe that Codes of Conduct (CoC) are an essential part of a conference and weโ€™ve made a lot of effort to make ours very visible:

  • It was linked from all the pages of our website (header and footer);
  • Reading and agreeing with the Code of Conduct was necessary to register a conference ticket;
  • We had a dedicated e-mail address (conduct@djangounderthehood.com) listed on the website;
  • We had two emergency phone numbers (man & woman) listed on the website as well as on posters around the venue;
  • We mentioned our Code of Conduct during the conference introduction and in email communication;
  • We reviewed speakers slides to avoid potential Code of Conduct violations;

Itโ€™s important for us to share the outcome of these policies and what they mean in practice. So in the spirit of transparency, here is an anonymised list of the CoC-related incidents that we acted upon during the conference:

  • During the conference, an attendee made an inappropriate sexual joke in the presence of other attendees. The attendee was reminded that not all jokes are appropriate during official conference events.
  • During the sprints, an attendee had inappropriate, exclusionary sticker on their laptop. The attendee was reminded about the Code of Conduct and asked to not bring the sticker at a future conference events.
  • A day before the conference an attendee noticed a behaviour of other attendees at the conference hotelโ€™s lobby. It was unclear whether that behaviour was appropriate. We found that our Code of Conduct was not sufficiently clear when and where it applies, and whether the official hotelโ€™s lobby is treated as the part of the conference. We decided to update the Code of Conduct. We also decided that in this particular case we will not treat the reported incident as Code of Conduct violation.

We are not publishing this list to shame anyone or pat ourselves on the back. We believe that transparency on this subject is important in order to give everyone some visibility on what happens โ€œbehind the scenesโ€. We want to show everyone why our CoC is important but also how it is enforced in practice.

We are also sharing reports for all of these incidents with the DSF Code of Conduct committee.

We hope that by making this list public, it will encourage more people to report similar incidents and in turn make our conference a better, more inclusive space for everyone. We would also like to encourage everyone to report incidents even if they arenโ€™t sure whether it is a CoC violation, as this allows us to review whether our processes or our CoC need to be amended for the future.

Much love,

Django: Under the Hood CoC Response Team

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