Resources for safer conferences

laura
Industry
October 25, 2018

The MAAWG conference was held in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. Many positive discussions and sessions happened at the conference. But there was an incident of harassment during the conference where one participant assaulted multiple other attendees during late evening activities. I’m not going to speak too much to what happened as I wasn’t there. What I will say is that I am proud of my friends and colleagues who stepped up to make sure that the targets of the harassment made it safely to their rooms. I’m also pleased that the conference pulled the harasser’s badge and banned him from the conference in short order.

This incident did expose some issues with how the conference is collecting and handling code of conduct violations. But that’s nothing unusual. In fact, most good policies include the after-action report to look at ways to improve the process in the future. MAAWG is looking at how to handle things better, moving forward, and that’s what they should be doing.

There’s been much discussion about this across the industry since this happened and a number of people have asked for information and resources on how to handle incidents. As I’ve been participating in these discussions, I’ve found a number of sites that are useful resources. I’m using this post, primarily, as a way to document those resources and make it such that I have a single link I can send to men who ask me how they can help.

Resources

Wikis and FAQs

Conference anti-harassment from Geek Feminism. It collects policies from different conferences and talks about what works and what doesn’t.

Code of Conduct 101 from Ashe Dryden

Men who advocate for safer conferences.

The Code of Conduct Jess Noller from Python

Jim C. Hines, and John Scalzi both SF Authors

Other good resources

Actions to take

Why women don’t speak up: HBR and Ashe Dryden

Commentary

For myself, a lot of what I’m doing is sharing information with people in different fora. Some of them are public, like this blog post. Others are semi-private fora. Still others are one on one (or one on few) discussions. The group I co-founded, Women of Email is also starting to look into this problem, and I am the sponsoring board member. Given how much success we’ve had getting women speaking at conferences, I’m confident we will make a difference.

Through the course of these discussions, I’ve had a number of men ask what they can do. They want to help but they don’t know how to fix things. I deeply respect this position, but, women don’t know how to fix this either. We don’t have the answers. What I think would really help is for men to start educating themselves and other men. Stop asking women to shoulder the burden of telling you what to do on top of of being targets, of navigating reporting, of dealing with the personal and professional fallout and of figuring out how not to be targeted again.

I know there are other resources out there, I’ve seen them. But I don’t always bookmark what I should. These pages are ones I’ve found helpful over the last few weeks and others I remember. What resources have you found to be helpful and would like to share?

M3AAWG in Philly This Week

Today marks the training day for M³AAWG 37 in Philly. With all the traveling and speaking I’ve been doing lately we’re not going to be there. So no tweeting from me about the conference.

We’ve been attending various M³AAWG meetings since way early on – 2004? 2005? in San Diego. The organization has grown and matured and really come a long way since the early days. One of the challenges of M³AAWG is that it is a true working group. This isn’t like the various conferences I’ve been attending recently. I think there are two things that makes M³AAWG different from other conferences.
One of the most obvious things is the lack of a vendor floor. Sure, there are vendors and sponsors but vendors don’t bring in displays and have sales people stand around them to talk to folks. The conference does have demos and negotiations and meetings, but done differently than other events.
The other difference I’ve noticed is that M³AAWG is much more about participation. As the name says, this is a working group. Everyone is encouraged to get involved in things they’re interested in or that they think they can contribute to. Other conferences are a lot more about information being shared by speakers and panels. But during M³AAWG conferences, there are 2 mornings devoted to round tables.
The round tables are a true community effort, and probably deserve some discussion for people who’ve never been to the conference. Before the conference, members of the community submit ideas for things they think M³AAWG should discuss. These suggestions are reviewed by the board and leadership and ones that fall within M³AAWG’s purview are taken to the conference.
The first day of roundtables each topic is discussed in small groups. Volunteers facilitate a 20 – 30 minute discussion on the topic at hand with attendees. After time is called, attendees go to another topic and discuss that one. Part of what is discussed is not just the issue (say, how to get off a blacklist) but also what the final work product looks like. Is this a document for M³AAWG members? A panel at a future conference? A public document?
The second day is refinement of the roundtable topics and commitment from people to move the project forward. Champion is the person who is project managing this. Other roles depend on the work product. For presentation or panels, there is one set of roles. For documents there are roles as writers and editors and contributor.
M³AAWG has written and produced some useful resources and information over the years. Many of those resources are public, like best practice documents and metric reports. Other docs and reports are specifically for members.
The working group part of M3AAWG in one of its real strengths. Experts on all sides of the business of email get together to keep email useable and workable. Early on it there were a few barriers and some suspicion about various participant groups. But, as the industry as grown things have changed. Many folks have moved from ISPs to ESPs and back. There’s also a bigger place for companies that provide services to ESPs and ISPs, like us here at Word to the Wise. We’ve built bridges and technology and have been a positive force on the world.

2018 JD Falk Award … a mailing list

It’s M³AAWG time. Even though we’re not there, I’m getting regular updates from friends and colleagues who are there. Yesterday, was the presentation of the 2018 JD Falk award. The award recognises “a particularly meritorious project undertaken by a dedicated individual or group reflecting the spirit of volunteerism and community building.” In this case, the award went to a group of people on the “BEC mailing list.”

M3AAWG 36 – San Francisco

So many familiar faces. So many new faces.
This is my one M3AAWG this year and I’m so excited to be here. The organization has really grown and changed over the 10 years we’ve been a member. It’s only getting better and better.
I’ll be tweeting from public sessions (and probably tweeting random things that occur to me as I’m here) using the #m3aawg36 tag.