[TYPO3-about] Anti-harrasment policy for our events?

[Tolleiv Nietsch]

Hi,

I just spent some time to re-read some of the reports from 29C3 last
week (biggest hacker event in Germany) and one topic caught my attention
- the long list [1] of violations of the explicit formulated
anti-harrasment policy of the event [2] and the even longer list of
other events [7].

Looking back at the TYPO3 conferences and events I've attended in the
past - I'm not sure whether our events had such extreme harrasments or
anything, but due to the fact that our community consists to >90% of
white european males, I assume that we're not perfect in that regard.

What is it about? -  comparable to the code of conduct (for
communication) [6] an anti-harrasment policy sets the guidelines on
accepted and not-accepted behavior at events. It helps
organizers/speakers/staff to have a clear and strict policy on how to
deal with issues and shows publicly that people/organizers are
open-minded in that regard and that they are willing to help. It's
supposed to create an more friendly (harrasment free) environment for
every attendee of an event regardless of their sex, skin-color,
hair-color, size, language, ...

I know that feminism / sexism / ... is a complicated topic, but as it
seems, having clear policies can help a lot (see [4]) and hopefully make
our events a friendlier place for everyone.

In case I'm not convincing enough:
Tim O’Reilly [5]: “[...] It’s become clear that this is a real,
long-standing issue in the technical community. And we do know this: we
don’t condone harassment or offensive behavior, at our conferences or
anywhere. It’s counter to our company values. More importantly, it’s
counter to our values as human beings.”

To close this up - it would be great to hear your ideas in that regard.
Should we do that, how could we do that, what are your experiences?

Cheers,
Tolleiv

[1] -
http://adainitiative.org/2013/01/ending-sexism-in-hacker-culture-a-work-in-progress/
[2] - http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/wiki/29C3_Anti-Harassment_Policy
[3] - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment
[4] -
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy_resources#But_I_shouldn.27t_have_to_do_this.21
[5] - http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/sexual-harassment-at-technical.html
[6] - http://typo3.org/community/code-of-conduct/
[7] - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
-- 
Tolleiv Nietsch
TYPO3 Core Developer


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