Code of Conduct

Applies to attendees, speakers, sponsors and organizers — in person, online, and in the spaces we run. Published 9 September 2026.

Who this applies to

Everyone, in every space we run: attendees, speakers, sponsors and their staff, volunteers, and organizers — the organizers most of all.

Every space: in-person meetings, online meetings and their chat, the LinkedIn group and Page, event pages, recordings and their comments, and any social space we operate.

A note on the organizers. This document binds us harder than it binds you. An organizer who violates it is a bigger problem than an attendee who does, because we hold the microphone and the member list.

Expected behavior

• Treat people as colleagues. Different experience levels, employers, tech stacks, and career stages all belong here. A room where only senior people feel safe asking questions is a failed room.
• Respect the presenter and the other attendees. Hold side conversations outside the room. Let others ask questions before you ask your second. If you think a presenter is materially wrong, raise it with an organizer rather than correcting them from the floor — a clarifying question is fine, a public takedown is not.
• Respect people’s stated names and pronouns.
• Respect confidentiality. You may hear about someone’s employer, project, or job search. Do not repeat it.
• Credit other people’s work. Do not present someone else’s material as your own.

Unacceptable behavior

• Harassment of any kind — including based on age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status, disability, physical size, medical condition, veteran status, political affiliation, or technology choices.
• Sexual harassment — unwelcome advances, unwelcome physical contact, sexual comments or gender-based jokes, excessive unwanted romantic attention, sexually explicit content, or conditioning any benefit or opportunity on sexual favors.
• Threats, intimidation, stalking, slurs, personal attacks, or sustained disruption.
• Photographing or recording someone who has asked you not to.
• Impersonating an organizer, a speaker, a sponsor, or another member.
• Doxxing — publishing someone’s private information without their permission.
• Discriminatory or demeaning “jokes.” Intent does not decide whether something was harassment; impact does.

Being intoxicated is not a defense. Where we meet in a venue that serves alcohol, the venue’s rules apply on top of ours — but nothing in this document relaxes because someone had been drinking.

Sponsors, recruiters, and exhibitors

Sponsors make these events possible and we say so publicly. They operate under this Code like everyone else, plus these specifics:

• No aggressive recruiting or invasive marketing toward members. Being in the room is not consent to be worked.
• “No” ends it. A member who declines a pitch, a demo, or a recruiting conversation is done with that conversation.
• No collecting member contact details except through channels the group has explicitly sanctioned and disclosed. We do not hand over attendee data, and no giveaway, raffle, badge scan, or sign-in sheet may be used as a way around that. See Privacy.
• Sponsor content stays in the sponsor slot. No selling from the floor, no selling from the Q&A.
• Recruiters may sponsor. No pitching from the front.

Online meetings

Our first events are online, so this is not an afterthought.

• The chat is part of the room. Everything above applies to it.
• Organizers may mute, remove from the meeting, disable a participant’s screen share, or turn off chat, at their discretion and without prior warning if the situation calls for it.
• Removal from a meeting in progress is not a judgment on the whole person — it is how you stop something quickly. It is followed up afterward, not litigated live.
• Recordings: we say up front what is being recorded and what will be published. Q&A participation may be edited out on request.

Reporting

If something happens, tell us. You do not have to be certain, and you do not have to be the target.

The rule, stated so it survives whoever fills the slots

• There are always at least two. Today there are three, from three different households.
• They are not from the same household. Two people who share a kitchen are one point of failure and one point of view.
• The subject of a report never handles it. That is what conduct-alt@ is for, and why it is published rather than offered on request.
• Every route is published — here, on the event page, and said out loud at the top of every meeting. A reporting path nobody can find does not exist.

What we will do when you report

1. Listen, and take you seriously. We will not ask you to prove it before we act on your safety.
2. Ask what you want to happen — and where we can, do that. Sometimes the answer is “nothing, I just want it on record,” and that is a legitimate outcome.
3. Keep your report as confidential as we can, telling you in advance if we cannot.
4. Tell you what we decided, rather than leaving you to guess.
5. Never retaliate, and never tolerate retaliation, against someone who reports in good faith.

In an emergency, or if you are in danger, call 911 first. Tell us after.

Transparency about the system, privacy about the people

We publish what the process did. We do not publish who it was done to.

A code of conduct nobody ever hears about the operation of is indistinguishable from one that is never enforced — members have no way to know whether reporting works. But publishing names turns enforcement into punishment-by-publicity, which is retributive, disproportionate, and unfair to everyone involved including the reporter.

What we publish — annually, in aggregate

• How many reports were received
• Broadly what kinds (e.g. “two reports of sponsor sales pressure, one of disruptive behavior”)
• What happened (e.g. “one resolved by conversation, one formal warning, one removal from a meeting”)
• Anything we changed as a result

What we never publish

• The name of anyone reported, or details that identify them
• The name of anyone who reported, or details that identify them
• The specifics of an incident where the people involved are identifiable to those who were in the room

The narrow exception: where someone has been banned and members need to know for their own safety, we tell members directly and privately — we do not post it. The purpose is protection, not a public record of the person.

Records we keep

Formal warnings are written down, held by the organizers only, and kept for two years — long enough that a pattern across events is visible rather than resetting every month. We record the minimum that makes the record useful, and nothing about a report that went no further than a conversation.

This is the one exception to the deletion promise on our Privacy page. Everything else we hold about you, you can have deleted on request without explaining why. A conduct record is different: a record the subject can erase is not a record. We would rather name that exception than let you assume it away.

Escalation

Step 1 — Direct, when it is safe and appropriate

Many problems are a misunderstanding between two people who can sort it out. This is never required, and nobody should be told to “just talk to them” about harassment. If you do not want to, skip to Step 2.

Step 2 — An organizer handles it

A quiet word, a warning, or removal from the meeting. Most things end here.

Steps 3 and 4 — not yet available, and we will not pretend otherwise

The intended process continues to a board, and then — when someone contests a decision that materially affects them, such as a ban — to a review panel of four: two members chosen by the board and two chosen by the person under review, deciding the corrective action together. That construction exists so a review is not a foregone conclusion: the person under review gets real representation without getting a veto.

Standing rules that apply at every step

• Recusal is mandatory, not optional. Anyone with a personal, financial, or employment stake in an incident steps out of deciding it. This includes Shannon.
• Conflicts of interest are disclosed — to the board, and where members are affected, to the members. They are not resolved quietly.
• Safety decisions are not delayed by process. An organizer may remove someone from a meeting immediately; review happens afterward.
• Emergency action can be taken by one person. Permanent consequences require more than one.

Consequences

Depending on severity and pattern, an organizer may:

1. Ask you to stop. Most things end here, and that is a success, not a failure.
2. Give a formal warning, recorded as described above.
3. Remove you from the current meeting — online or in person.
4. Ban you from future events, temporarily or permanently.
5. For sponsors: up to and including ending the sponsorship relationship, pulling a sponsor’s segment from the published recording, and removing sales posts.
6. Report to law enforcement, where warranted.

Serious violations skip the ladder. Threats, violence, and sexual harassment do not get a warning first.

Venue and host rules

When we meet in someone’s space, their rules apply too — building access, alcohol, tobacco, parking, sign-in. Where a venue’s rule is stricter than ours, theirs governs on their site.

Where a venue’s rules conflict with this Code, this Code governs our conduct and we find a different venue. A host requirement that would exclude members, or that quietly hands our attendee list to the host, is a reason to meet somewhere else.

Changes

Version 2, 9 September 2026. Version 1 was published earlier the same day with a single named contact and an honest note that there was no independent route for a complaint about the organizer. There now is one, and this page says so instead. The parts still marked as gaps are the parts we expect to change next.

When something changes that affects what you can expect from us, we will say so at a meeting and in the group, not just edit the page quietly.