2023 Code of Conduct Transparency Report

PyCascades aims to continue its legacy of being an inclusive and welcoming conference. Continuing from previous years, we have a code of conduct that applies to all of our attendees, speakers, volunteers, and staff. We also have reporting guidelines and infrastructure in place. This year, we did the following to further our efforts to uphold our community values:

• We formed a Code of Conduct committee that consisted of both in-person and online attendees to ensure that both aspects of the conference had a committee member available during the event.
• Our Code of Conduct committee consisted of members of the community, in addition to several organizers.

Incidents

During and leading up to the conference, we had the following incidents reported to our Code of Conduct committee. These have been summarized and anonymized.

• An organizer's laptop was stolen from one of the conference rooms during the event. The organizing team worked with security on-site and determined that the theft was someone who was walking through the conference space and was not an attendee of the conference.
• Several speakers made comments about how their own slides may not be colorblind friendly. The Code of Conduct committee reached out to these speakers after the event to provide them with some tools for ensuring their slides were colorblind accessible in the future.
• An attendee reached out to a Code of Conduct committee member regarding inappropriate comments made by another attendee. Organizers spoke with the reported party and, before more discussion could be had on what was said, the reported party left the conference. In following up with both parties after the event, the Code of Conduct committee made it clear to the reported party how what they said had affected other attendees, and they apologized for their behavior.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Django and Write the Docs community for providing us with the framework needed to establish our Code of Conduct and associated procedures. We would like to thank various members of our community and organizing body who provided constructive feedback about our conduct reporting process, allowing us to improve. Finally, we would like to thank all of our volunteers who served on the Code of Conduct committee. These volunteers have to deal with emotionally difficult situations in order to ensure that we continue to have a community that is welcoming to all.

We would also be remiss if we did not document that we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback about our Code of Conduct, our efforts towards increased accessibility, and the visibility & amplification of women, transgender & non-binary people, people of color, and other underrepresented minorities. We are proud to be a strong example of the diversity present within the Python community.