Incident Report Procedure

The best way to contact the Uptime Code of Conduct event staff is by email at codeofconduct@uptime.aiven.io

If everyone is presently physically safe, involve law enforcement or security only at a victim's request. If you do feel your safety in jeopardy please do not hesitate to contact local law enforcement of the Netherlands by dialing 112 (free of charge) or text phone for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing: 0800-8112 (free of charge).

If you do not have a cell phone, simply ask a staff member.

Contact Us On-Site

Conference staff will be wearing a conference t-shirt/button with the word “STAFF” on it (or otherwise clearly marked as staff). The staff will also be prepared to handle the incident. All of our staff are informed of the Code of Conduct and guide for handling harassment at the conference.

Contact Us Online

Report the harassment incident (preferably in writing) to a conference staff member. All reports are confidential. Please do not disclose public information about the incident until the staff have had sufficient time in which to address the situation. This is as much for your safety and protection as it is the other attendees.

If you believe someone is in physical danger, including from themselves, the most important thing is to get that person help. Please contact the appropriate crisis number, non-emergency number, or police number. If you are an Uptime attendee, you can consult with a volunteer or staff member to help find an appropriate number.

If you believe someone has violated the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to report it. If you are unsure whether the incident is a violation, or whether the space where it happened is covered by the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to still report it. We are fine with receiving reports where we decide to take no action for the sake of creating a safer space.

If you find that you need to make a report, and you cannot find the appropriate Code of Conduct reporting contact, you may report to the Uptime Code of Conduct email. Uptime event staff will handle your report. If this happens, please also mention that you could not find specific reporting information so that we can improve.

When you make a report to an incident responder, they will gather information about the incident according to the Code of Conduct Enforcement Procedure.

After an incident responder takes the report, they will immediately consult with the Uptime event staff, unless there is a conflict of interest, in which case any non-interested parties will be contacted.

If the incident is ongoing and needs to be immediately addressed, any lead incident responder may take appropriate action to ensure the safety of everyone involved. If the situation requires it, this may take the form of a referral to an appropriate non-Uptime agency, including the local police. Uptime is not equipped to handle emergency situations.

If the incident is less urgent, the report will be discussed by the event staff, who will meet to determine an appropriate response.

Before any large in-person gathering conference, staff will have a mandatory meeting where incident response procedures will be outlined. After the conference, all incident responders will attend a debriefing session with the lead responders to discuss all incidents and determine any necessary follow-up actions.

Following Up With Reporters

Within one week of an incident report, the a member of the event staff, or one of the lead responders, will follow up with the person who made the report and provided their contact information. The follow up may include:

  • An acknowledgment that the Code of Conduct responders discussed the situation
  • Whether or not the report was determined to be a violation of the Code of Conduct
  • What actions (if any) were taken to correcting the reporter behavior

In some cases, the lead responders may need to ask additional questions about the incident in order to identify the reported person.

Conflicts of Interest

If an incident responder has a conflict of interest for a report, they will recuse themselves from the discussion and handling of the incident. The incident documentation will not be available to them, and they will excuse themselves from any conversations involving handling the incident.

Should more than two of the Uptime lead incident responders need to recuse themselves, another Uptime staff member will step in as a temporary lead incident responder.

In the event of a conflict of interest, you may directly contact any of the lead incident responders:

Confidentiality

All reports will be kept confidential. When we discuss incidents with people who are reported, we will anonymize details as much as we can to protect reporter privacy.

However, some incidents happen in one-on-one interactions, and even if the details are anonymized, the reported person may be able to guess who made the report. If you have concerns about retaliation or your personal safety, please note those in your report. We still encourage you to report, so that we can support you while keeping our conference attendees safe. In some cases, we can compile several anonymized reports into a pattern of behavior, and take action on that pattern.

In some cases we may determine that a public statement will need to be made. If that’s the case, the identities of all victims and reporters will remain confidential unless those individuals instruct us otherwise.

Note

Incidents that violate the Code of Conduct are extremely damaging to the event, and they will not be tolerated. The silver lining is that, in many cases, these incidents present a chance for the offenders, and the community at large, to grow, learn, and become better. Uptime staff requests that they be your first resource when reporting an Uptime-related incident, so that they may enforce the Code of Conduct and take quick action toward a resolution.

If at all possible, all reports should be made directly to The Uptime organisers codeofconduct@uptime.aiven.io, or at the Registration Desk.

This procedure was adapted from US PyCon's "https://us.pycon.org/2022/about/code-of-conduct/attendee-procedure/" which was adapted from the Ada Initiative’s guide titled “Conference anti-harassment/Responding to Reports”, the Django Project reporting guidelines (CC BY 3.0), with additions by Otter Tech.

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