PyCon Austria Code of Conduct

PyCon Austria is a community conference.

We value the participation of each visitor and want all attendees to have an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Accordingly, all attendees are expected to show respect and courtesy to other attendees throughout the conference and at all conference events.

To make clear what is expected, all staff, attendees, speakers, exhibitors, organizers, and volunteers at any PyCon Austria event are required to conform to the following Code of Conduct, inspired by the code of conduct of the Python Software Foundation.

Expected behavior of conference participants

Be open, considerate, and respectful. Behaviors that reinforce these values contribute to a positive environment and include:

  • Being open and enabling collaboration.
  • Acknowledging the time and effort of the work of others, especially volunteer work.
  • Showing empathy towards others. Be attentive in your communications, whether in person or online, and be tactful when approaching differing views.
  • Being considerate.
  • Being respectful. Respect others, their positions, their skills, their commitments, and their efforts. Use constructive comments and criticism and value the experiences and skill sets of others.
  • Gracefully accepting constructive criticism. When you disagree, stay courteous when raising your issues.
  • Using welcoming and inclusive language. Accept everyone who wishes to take part in the conference activities to foster an environment where anyone can participate and everyone can make a difference. If someone displays unacceptable behavior or manners, please be polite and discuss it with the conference staff before making accusations.

Our standards

Every participant has the right to have their identity respected. The conference aims to create a positive experience for everyone, regardless of age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, religion (or lack thereof), education, cultural and cognitive variations, or socio-economic status.

Inappropriate behavior

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

  • Harassment of any participant in any form
  • Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following
  • Logging or taking screenshots of online activity for harassment purposes
  • Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission
  • Violent threats or language directed against another person
  • Incitement of violence or harassment towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
  • Creating additional online accounts to harass another person or circumvent a ban
  • Sexual language and imagery in online communities or any conference venue, including talks, that sexualizes, insults, demeans, or attacks groups or specific individuals
  • Insults, put-downs, or jokes that are based on stereotypes, are exclusionary, or hold others up for ridicule
  • Unwelcome sexual attention or advances
  • Unwelcome physical contact, including simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop
  • Patterns of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
  • Sustained disruption of online community discussions, in-person presentations, or other in-person events
  • Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
  • Other conduct that is inappropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds

Participants asked by the conference staff to stop any inappropriate behavior are expected to comply immediately or leave the conference.

Be professional and don’t spam

We consider PyCon Austria a great setting to showcase the work of the community and encourage networking and business-related discussions, as well as to keep the conference presentations meaningful and interesting for everyone.

We therefore:

  • Limit corporate talks (company marketing, promotional, or recruiting-related activities) to designated areas (recruiting sessions, sponsor tables), unless agreed otherwise.
  • Request presentations—outside the official recruiting sessions—to focus on Python-related topics, not on recruitment.

Consequences

If a participant engages in behavior that violates this Code of Conduct, conference organizers (staff) may take action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the community and community events.

More details are published in the procedures for incident response document.

Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly community for everyone.

Take action

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of the event staff immediately. They can be reached by email, phone call, or WhatsApp:

Conference staff will be happy to help participants contact hotel/venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist any attendee to feel safe for the duration of the conference. We value your attendance.

Local emergency numbers – PyCon Austria 2025

  • State police: 133
  • Ambulance: 144
  • Fire Service: 122
  • (European) emergency services, including suicide prevention: 112

Procedure for handling incidents

Procedure for reporting Code of Conduct incidents

Procedure for incident response

License

This Code of Conduct is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Attributions

This Code of Conduct is based on the EuroPython Code of Conduct. The EuroPython Code of Conduct is based on the PyCon US Code of Conduct, which was forked from the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers, and is under a Creative Commons Zero license.

Additional new language and modifications were created by Daria JENS.