Code of Conduct

Be someone a newcomer is glad to have met. Assume the person you’re talking to knows something you don’t. When you get it wrong (everyone does) listen, fix it, move on.

The rest of this page is what that means in practice, and what happens when someone doesn’t.

Everyone at a gathering listed on DevRel(ish), and everyone using this site: attendees, speakers, organizers, sponsors, and volunteers. It applies at the venue, whether in person or virtual, in the group’s online spaces, and in one-to-one contact that starts at one of these events.

• Make room for people who just arrived. Open your circle. Explain the acronym. The person standing alone at their first meetup is the whole reason this site exists.
• Take people at their word about their own experience, identity, pronouns, and name.
• Disagree about the work, not the person. Strong opinions about tools are the point. Contempt for the people holding them isn’t.
• Ask before you photograph, record, or post anyone. Not everyone can be publicly visible at a tech event, and they don’t owe you a reason.
• Accept “no” the first time — to a conversation, a photo, a pitch, a drink, a follow.

• Harassment in any form — including comments about gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, neurotype, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, or technical background.
• Unwelcome sexual attention, advances, or imagery.
• Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following — at the venue or afterwards, in person or online.
• Photography, recording, or posting about someone after they’ve asked you not to.
• Sustained disruption of a talk, a session, or a conversation.
• Publishing someone’s private information — address, employer, immigration status, health, or an identity they haven’t shared themselves.
• Deliberate misgendering, or repeatedly using a name someone has asked you not to use.
• Advocating for or encouraging any of the above, including “as a joke” or “just asking questions.”

Being asked to stop is not itself harassment. Neither is being told that something you said landed badly. The expectation is that you stop.

Listing a group here means agreeing to all of this:

• Your event is open to anyone who fits its stated subject.Groups organized for a specific community — women in tech, underrepresented practitioners, a local language group — are welcome and encouraged; say who the group is for on your group page.
• You’ll act on reports rather than wait for them to resolve themselves. You can remove someone from your event. You don’t need proof beyond reasonable belief, and you don’t need to run a trial.
• You’ll state accessibility honestly — stairs, step-free access, seating, loud rooms, whether food covers common restrictions. “I don’t know” is a fine answer. Silence isn’t.
• You won’t make alcohol the point. Serve it if you like; make sure someone who isn’t drinking still has a reason to be there and something to drink.
• You’ll be reachable. Attendees need a way to contact you that isn’t shouting across a room.

If you can, tell the organizer. They’re in the room and can act immediately. Every group page has a contact form, and organizers list a contact address.

If the problem is the organizer — or you’ve reported something and nothing happened — write toadmin@devrelish.tech. That goes to DevRel(ish), not to the group.

Useful to include, if you have it: what happened, when and where, who was involved, whether anyone else saw it, and what you’d like to happen. Any of those can be missing. Report anyway.

We won’t share your name with the person you’re reporting without asking you first. We may have to describe the incident to act on it.

DevRel(ish) is an index, not a host. We don’t run these events, we are not present at them, and we have no staff at the venue or online. What we can do is decide who gets listed.

On a report we will look into it, and we can:

• Ask the organizer for their account and what they did about it.
• Require a specific change before the group stays listed.
• Close the group — it stops appearing in search, listings, and the network feed.

What we can’t do: remove someone from a room we’re not in, delete records from an account we don’t control, or act as an investigator or a court. If you are in danger, contact local emergency services first.A code of conduct is not a substitute for that.

Because groups and events are published to the AT Protocol network, other apps may have already copied a record. Closing a group here removes it from DevRel(ish); it can’t reach into anyone else’s index. Deleting the underlying record is the organizer’s to do, on their own account.

Adapted from theContributor Covenantand theBerlin Code of Conduct, both widely used and freely adaptable. Errors and additions are ours.