Code Of Conduct

We are committed to creating an environment that is safe, professional and of mutual trust where diversity and inclusion are valued, and where everyone is entitled to be treated with courtesy and respect. We commit to making the conference and all associated activities safe, productive and enjoyable for everyone. We will not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
Please follow these guidelines:

  1. Behave professionally. Harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary comments or jokes are not appropriate. Harassment includes sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, sexual attention or innuendo, deliberate intimidation, stalking, and photography or recording of an individual without consent. It also includes offensive comments related to individual characteristics, for example: age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, nationality or religion.
  2. All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual or sexist language and imagery is not appropriate.
  3. Be respectful and do not insult or put down other attendees or facilitators of the event. Critique ideas, not people.
  4. Should a participant witness events of bullying, harassment or aggression, we recommend that they approach the affected person to show support and check how they are. The witness may also wish to suggest that the person report the inappropriate behavior. However, it is up to the affected person alone whether or not they wish to report it.
  5. If participants wish to share photos of a speaker on social media, we strongly recommend that they first get the speaker’s permission. Participants may also share the contents of talks/slides via social media unless speakers have asked that specific details/slides not be shared.

The organizing committee has two members who are designated as the contact points for all matters related to this code, Kathy Vivas (kvivas@ctio.noao.edu) and John Blakeslee (jblakeslee@gemini.edu). Participants can report any violation of these guidelines to these designates in confidence. If asked to stop inappropriate behavior participants are expected to comply immediately and, in serious cases, may be asked to leave the event. We will not tolerate retaliation against anyone reporting violations of this code of conduct.

Thank you for helping to make this conference welcoming for all.


Acknowledgments: This code of conduct has been adapted from the one from the conference “Survival of dense star clusters in the Milky Way system” , which in turn was adapted from the ESO conference code of conduct, also an adaptation from the London Code of Conduct (by A. Pontzen and H. Peiris), which was derived from original Creative Commons documents by PyCon and Geek Feminism. It is released under a CC-Zero licence for reuse. To help track people’s improvements and best practice, please retain this acknowledgement, and log your re-use or modification of this policy at https://github.com/apontzen/london_cc .