Code of Conduct
HATCH CONFERENCE seeks to provide a welcoming, professionally engaging, fun, and safe conference (and ongoing community) experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Discriminatory language and imagery, including sexual or sexualized language and imagery, is not appropriate for any event venue, including talks, or any community channel such as the chatroom or mailing list.
Harassment is understood as any behavior that threatens or demeans another person or group, or that produces an unsafe environment. It includes, but is not limited to, offensive verbal comments or non-verbal expressions related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religious or political beliefs; sexual, sexualized, or discriminatory images in public (including online) spaces; deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following; harassing photography or recording; sustained disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention.
Respect
Hatch is an intentionally positive event that recognizes and celebrates the creativity and collaboration of independent creators (and independence) and the diversity of people, cultures, and opinions that they bring.
HATCH spaces are an inclusive environment, based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of gender (including transgender status), sexual orientation, age, disability, medical conditions, nationality, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), physical appearance, politics, ideology (real world or tech), or software preferences.
We value respectful behavior above individual opinions.
Respectful behavior includes:
Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, gratuitous or off-topic sexual (body part), or physically threatening behavior, speech, text, names, and imagery.
If you’re not sure, ask someone instead of assuming.
HATCH prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. HATCH organizers reserve the right not to act on complaints regarding:
‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
(Thanks to XOXO for providing the above paragraph and list on marginalized people’s safety with a CC-BY license)
Sanctions
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender, expelling the offender from the event, or banning the offender from a chatroom, Slack workspace, or mailing list.
Specific sanctions may include but are not limited to:
warning the offender to cease their behavior, letting them know that further reports will result in other sanctions
requiring the offender to avoid any interaction with, or physical proximity to, the victim for the remainder of the event
terminating a talk
refusing to publish video and/or slides of a talk
barring a speaker from giving (further) talks at the event
immediately ending any event volunteer responsibilities and privileges the offender holds, including requiring that the offender not be allowed to volunteer for future events (either indefinitely or for a specified time period)
requiring that the offender immediately leave an event and not return
banning the offender from future events (either indefinitely or for a specified time period)
banning the offender from any (or all) online channels
publishing an account of the harassment
HATCH event organizers can be identified by their name badges, and they will help participants contact hotel/venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the event.
In the case of organized events, those responsible for the event should make readily available the following information:
Conference organizer: Damian Martone, 1709090170
Silent Green Kulturquartier: +49 (0)30 1208221-0
Police Department: 030 4664115701
Local Sexual assault / crisis line: LARA: 030 216 88 88 Montag – Freitag von 9 – 18 Uhr
Community Support: community@hatch.berlin
We expect participants to follow these rules at all conference venues, conference-related social events, community gatherings, and online communication channels.
We value everyone’s participation in the HATCH community, and will all work to keep HATCH a safe and friendly space for all participants!
Based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers.
Resolve Peacefully
We believe peer to peer discussions, feedback, corrections can help build a stronger, safer, and more welcoming community.
If you see someone behaving disrespectfully, you are encouraged to respectfully discourage them from such behavior. Expect that others in the community wish to help keep the community respectful and welcome your input in doing so.
If you experience disrespectful behavior and feel in any way unable to respond or resolve it respectfully (for any reason), please immediately bring it to the attention of an organizer. We want to hear from you about anything that you feel is disrespectful, threatening, or just icky in any way. We will listen and work to resolve the matter.
Apologize for Mistakes
Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted as such, own up to your words and actions, and apologize accordingly. No one is perfect, and even well-intentioned people make mistakes. What matters is how you handle them, and avoiding repeating them in the future.
Consequences
If the organizers determine that an event participant is behaving disrespectfully, the organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion and exclusion from the event without warning or refund.
As organizers, we will seek to resolve conflicts peacefully and in a manner that is positive for the community. We can’t foresee every situation however, and thus if in the organizers’ judgment the best thing to do is to ask a disrespectful individual to leave, we will do so.
Resolving an Issue
If you believe you’re experiencing practices at an IndieWeb event which doesn’t meet the policies below, or if you feel you are being harassed in any way, please immediately contact the event organizer(s) or designated code of conduct responders for the event.
If you believe you’re experiencing practices in chat or at an event which don’t meet the policies above, please immediately contact any ally you may know. Anyone in the community should feel empowered to resolve issues and uphold our high standards.
However if you feel the issue requires escalation to a community organizer please contact: damian@hatchconference.com
This Code of Conduct is bassed on the IndieWeb Code of Conduct, with CC0 license.