Wholehearted support.
-- jaf
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Jeremy Frumkin
Assistant Dean / Chief Technology Strategist
University of Arizona Libraries
+1 520.626.7296
[log in to unmask]
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"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more
complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in
the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
"To clarify, add detail. Imagine that, to clarify, add detail. Clutter
and overload are not attributes of information, they are failures of
design. If the information is in chaos, donąt start throwing out
information, instead fix the design."
‹Edward Tufte
On 11/26/12 3:27 PM, "Roy Tennant" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I'd be happy to join this effort, and would like to suggest a friendly
>amendment. We need, as a community, to have an anti-harassment policy that
>governs ALL of our collective interactions (e.g., the chatroom, for
>example), not just for the conference.
>Roy
>
>
>On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Bess Sadler <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>> Dear Fellow Code4libbers,
>>
>> I hope I am not about to get flamed. Please take as context that I have
>> been a member of this community for almost a decade. I have contributed
>> software, support, and volunteer labor to this community's events. I
>>have
>> also attended the majority of code4lib conferences, which have been
>>amazing
>> and life-changing, and have helped me do my job a lot better. But, and
>>I've
>> never really known how to talk about this, those conferences have also
>>been
>> problematic for me a couple of times. Nothing like what happened to
>>Noirin
>> Shirley at ApacheCon (see
>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Noirin_Shirley_ApacheCon_incident if
>> you're unfamiliar with the incident I mean) but enough to concern me
>>that
>> even in a wonderful community where we mostly share the same values, not
>> everyone has the same definitions of acceptable behavior.
>>
>> I am watching the toxic fallout from the BritRuby conference
>>cancellation
>> with a heavy heart (go search for "britruby conference cancelled" if you
>> want to catch up and/or get depressed). It has me wondering what more we
>> could be doing to promote diversity and inclusiveness within code4lib.
>>We
>> have already had a couple of harassment incidents over the years, which
>>I
>> won't rehash here, which have driven away members of our community. We
>>have
>> also had other incidents that don't get talked about because sometimes
>>one
>> can feel that membership in a community is more important than one's
>> personal boundaries or even safety. We should not be a community where
>> people have to make that choice.
>>
>> I would like for us to consider adopting an anti-harassment policy for
>> code4lib conferences. This is emerging as a best practice in the larger
>> open source software community, and we would be joining the ranks of
>>many
>> other conferences:
>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption.
>> The Ada Initiative has a great discussion of why adopting an
>> Anti-Harrassment policy is a good choice for a conference to make, as
>>well
>> as some example policy statements, here:
>> http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/ Here is a
>> summary:
>>
>> > Why have an official anti-harassment policy for your conference?
>>First,
>> it is necessary (unfortunately). Harassment at conferences is incredibly
>> common - for example, see this timeline (
>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_incidents) of
>> sexist incidents in geek communities. Second, it sets expectations for
>> behavior at the conference. Simply having an anti-harassment policy can
>> prevent harassment all by itself. Third, it encourages people to attend
>>who
>> have had bad experiences at other conferences. Finally, it gives
>>conference
>> staff instructions on how to handle harassment quickly, with the minimum
>> amount of disruption or bad press for your conference.
>>
>> If the conference already has something like this in place, and I'm just
>> uninformed, please educate me and let's do a better job publicizing it.
>>
>> Thanks for considering this suggestion. If the answer is the usual
>> code4lib answer (some variation on "Great idea! How are you going to
>>make
>> that happen?") then I hereby nominate myself as a member of the
>> Anti-Harrassment Policy Adoption committee for the code4lib conference.
>> Would anyone else like to join me?
>>
>> Bess Sadler
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Manager, Application Development
>> Digital Library Systems & Services
>> Stanford University Library
>>
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