All attendees, speakers, sponsors, organizers and volunteers at our conference will be held to the following code of conduct. Safety Officers and conference staff will enforce this code throughout the event. We expect cooperation from all participants to help ensure a safe environment for everyone.

Our conference is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, body and physical appearance, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), work experience, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. This is an academic conference with a supportive attitude toward sexuality, gender, and intersectionality. Sexualized language and imagery that reinforce bias or stereotypes are not appropriate for any conference venue, including workshops, parties, Twitter, and other online media. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference at the discretion of the conference organizers.

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion, technology choices, sexual images in public spaces, intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

For specific examples of what constitutes harassment, please refer to OpenCon’s Code of Conduct in Brief and the Gathering for Open Source Hardware’s examples of behaviour. We strongly recommend all conference attendees look over these examples as they will guide our determination of what is and is not harassment or bullying. We expect participants to follow these rules at the conference and conference-related events, including social ones. Conference staff will assist anyone experiencing harassment to ensure that everyone feels safe for the duration of the conference. We value your attendance.

Our code of conduct and this information is based on the csv conf’s code of conduct.

Enforcement

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference. Conference staff may take action to redress anything designed to disrupt, or with the clear impact of disrupting, the event or making the environment hostile for any participants.

Reporting

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the We Robot Safety Officers as soon as possible using the methods outlined below. We will handle all reports with discretion, and you can report anonymously if you wish. The Safety Officers are Kate Darling, Ryan Calo, and Anna Swan.

Anonymous report: Please use this form to file an anonymous report. The Safety Officers will fully investigate your report, although we will not follow up with you as the report is anonymous.

Personal report: Please email report@werobot2022.com to file a personal report. We will make every effort to maintain anonymity, with the understanding that email is a public form of communication.

In your report, please do your best to include:

• Your contact information
• Identifying information (e.g. names, nicknames, pseudonyms) of the participant who has violated the Code of Conduct
• The behavior that was in violation
• The approximate time of the behavior (if different than the time the report was made)
• If possible, where the Code of Conduct violation happened
• The circumstances surrounding the incident
• Other people involved in the incident
• If you believe the incident is ongoing, please let us know
• If there is a publicly available record (e.g. mailing list record), please include a link
• Any additional helpful information

Online Harassment: We Robot is a digital and physical community and we recognize the benefit of posting on social media about the event. As such, we see social media as a part of the conference. Meaning, any kind of harassment, bullying or trolling that targets participants of the conference, will be met with a swift response and could result in being expelled or banned from the conference itself.

Conflicts of Interest: If your report involves one of the We Robot organizers or Safety Officers, or you otherwise feel like there is potential for a conflict of interest, please contact Program Manager Alex Bolton (bolt@uw.edu) with your report and include the above bullet point information. Alex is serving as an impartial Code of Conduct incident reviewer for We Robot and will fully investigate your report.

Investigation

We will fully investigate your report and follow up with you via the contact information you provide. Upon receipt of your report, the Safety Officers will immediately start the process to determine an appropriate response. If the incident is deemed urgent, the Safety Officers will coordinate with the We Robot organizers to quickly take appropriate action. This could include giving a warning to the offending party, expelling the offending party, or referring the issue to a non- We Robot entity, such as local police. We are unable to handle emergency situations. If the incident is less urgent, the Safety Officers will confer with the We Robot organizing team to determine the appropriate response.

Confidentiality

All reports made through the above channels will be kept confidential. When we discuss incidents with people who are reported, we will anonymize details as much as we can to protect reporter privacy. In some cases we may determine that a public statement will need to be made. If that’s the case, the identities of all victims and reporters will remain confidential unless those individuals instruct us otherwise.

Acknowledgements

This Code of Conduct was adapted from the csv conf Code of Conduct, Conference Code of Conduct (CC BY 3.0), the eLife Sprint Code of Conduct (CC BY 4.0), and the PyCon Code of Conduct (CC BY-SA 3.0) and was edited, written and adapted by Caroline Sinders, Anna Lee Swan, Ryan Calo and Kate Darling in September 2022. 

We strive to be a supportive and welcoming environment to all attendees. We encourage you to read the Conf Code of Conduct and will be enforcing it.