Mile
Zero

Rachel Nabors writes that that you literally cannot pay her to attend a conference without a code of conduct:

When I promised not to go to conferences without Codes of Conduct, I wasn’t paying lip service to a trend, doing the popular thing to gain brownie points with my feminist besties. I meant every word. It is my greatest fear in life that something bad would happen to someone attending a conference I attracted them to.

It was weird the other day to realize that I'm actually becoming a mentor figure for some people: I have interns, I teach classes, I'm now the co-organizer of the local Hacks/Hackers chapter. I'm still basically nobody, but I will also make this pledge: if a conference does not have a code of conduct (or its equivalent), I won't go, as a speaker or an attendee. It's important to me that industry gatherings be places where people are comfortable and safe, no matter who they are. Everyone deserves that much consideration, and while a code of conduct is not a guarantee of safe behavior, it's a good start.

It's disappointing, but perhaps to be expected, that several high-profile white dudes have decided that the most important thing they can do this year is fight against codes of conduct. Many of them feel attacked and want to circle the wagons instead of listening to voices from the community. That's too bad for people who attend conferences — but part of the point of the pledge is that it should punish organizers who don't think creating a standard framework for conference behavior is a priority. If they can't get speakers or attendees to come, sooner or later they don't have an event.

Let's be clear: nobody is entitled to run a conference, and helping people with their careers once upon a time does not excuse you from being a good citizen. If the pressure causes people like Jared Spool and Mike Monteiro to change their mind, everyone benefits. If it doesn't, and they go the way of the dinosaurs, well... that's how evolution works. We'll survive without them.

But I think this is a great opportunity to re-examine one particular community role that I see a lot, both in tech and outside. You know the one: that guy (almost always a man) whose schtick is being the "honest teller of truth," which really means "rude, petty, and abusive in kind of a funny way about stuff we all agree on." A lot of times, we tolerate that behavior because honestly, it is satisfying to have someone saying what we're all thinking about clients who won't pay, or bad design, or ugly code. I have sometimes thought of myself as that person, but I'm trying not to be anymore.

The problem with the "angry truth-teller" is that it stops being funny when they suddenly turn those tools on their allies. When that happens, you realize that it was never actually funny: you just didn't care about being respectful, because you didn't think the target was worthy. Unfortunately, a lack of empathy is not the same as a sense of humor. There might be a thin line between "comedian" and "jerk," but unless you're Don Rickles I don't really see the point in intentionally crossing it.

In the end, life is too short to give money and attention to people who can't have a little empathy over something as silly as tech conference administration. We are not required to make them leaders in our community, nor are we required to keep them as leaders if we decide that the negatives of their input outweigh the positives. There are lots of technically-skilled people out there who can be right about an issue — or wrong on it, even — without being entitled, nasty jackasses about it. Let's boost them instead.