[Inpycon] CoC and PSF support

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Anand Chitipothu <anandology at gmail.com>wrote:

> Adopting and implementing the Code of Conduct does mean that the
>> process to handle complaints which violate the CoC would need to be
>> set up and widely published. A CoC is not necessarily a general set of
>> guidelines available via a URL on the event micro-site.
>>
>
> Yes. We need to have couple of trained volunteers who know who can handle
> such cases.
>


Folks, this is important. We have such incidents in India too, we just
don't notice them.

For example, at Meta Refresh during the lightning talks (which weren't
pre-screened), one of the speakers used pictures of two bollywood actresses
to describe two approaches to software development.

The pictures themselves were regular glamour portrait shots, not
sexualized, but the speaker turned these two women into objects where you
could choose one and discard the other based on what you were able to
afford. His examples got the audience to laugh, but I know some women left
the hall in disgust and afterwards I received complaints from both men and
women.

What is noteworthy is that (a) the speaker's wife was in the audience, (b)
the speaker was possibly unaware that there was a problem with his
examples, and (c) most important, he had given the same talk at a user
group meeting a few weeks before, where once again nobody told him there
was a problem.

How did this speaker manage to be offensive without anyone pointing it out
to him? For multiple reasons:

1. For me, as the organizer, the organizer's code of conduct says if
someone has been granted a stage, they have to be allowed to say their
piece. They can't be yanked off stage. Consequences come afterwards.

2. For the audience that let out a nervous laugh, they knew the joke was
off-colour, but they couldn't pinpoint why. Sexualization is easy to spot.
Objectification is not.

3. The speaker's wife, herself, presumably did not notice anything amiss.
I'm not aware of her situation, so this could be for a variety of reasons.

4. For women in the audience who were disgusted, presumably no one wanted
to bring attention to themselves by raising their voice.

5. A man in the audience brought this up during the feedback session (he
had complained to me earlier), but requested that the cameras be turned off
before he spoke up, and remained vague about what the problem was,
presumably because he did not want conflict with the speaker (who was still
in the audience).

6. In all this melee, *no one* informed the speaker that his material was
inappropriate, and for all we know he will do it again the next time he's
on stage.

This is why it's important to not just have a code of conduct but to ensure
that it is widely read and understood. Every single volunteer should have a
thorough briefing on how to respond when a situation arises.

The PyCon US code of conduct is a great reference document and I'm very
impressed with the way PyCon handled the situation.

Kiran

-- 
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://jace.zaiki.in
http://hasgeek.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/attachments/20130323/2a1360e5/attachment-0001.html>