CW24 - Participation Guidelines

Summary

Collaborations Workshop is dedicated to providing a harassment-free workshop experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of workshop participants in any form.

All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. 

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees.

Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and exclusionary jokes are not appropriate at the Collaborations Workshop. Do not send any unprofessional messages to other participants including, but not limited to, private messages in Slack and Zoom.

Participants violating these rules may be asked to leave the workshop without a refund at the sole discretion of the workshop organisers.

Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly event for all.

Clarifications

Harassment includes offensive communication related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that words can be offensive to those around you. 

Examples of behaviour that is not welcome or appropriate at Collaborations Workshop include offensive jokes, use of sexual language and imagery, excessive swearing, and repeatedly talking over or interrupting other participants.

Participants will have differing opinions; we want to promote open but respectful discussions and be more inclusive and welcoming to people from different backgrounds. To this end, please be mindful of the language and tone that you use when discussing points of view and lived experiences.

If a participant engages in behaviour that violates this Code of Conduct, the workshop organisers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender, removing speaking privileges, or expulsion from the workshop with no refund.

Contact Information

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact any member of the Code of Conduct Committee:

• Neil Chue Hong, Software Sustainability Institute Director, N.ChueHong@software.ac.uk
• Shoaib Sufi, Software Sustainability Institute Community Lead, shoaib.sufi@software.ac.uk 
• Aleks Nenadic, Software Sustainability Institute Training Lead, a.nenadic@software.ac.uk 
• Patricia Herterich, CW24 Chair, patricia.herterich@gmail.com
• Oscar Seip, Software Sustainability Institute Research Software Community Officer, o.seip@software.ac.uk
• Riva Quiroga, SSI Fellow, riva.quiroga@uc.cl

The Code of Conduct Committee is happy to assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the workshop. We value your participation.

Procedure for Reporting Harassment

You can find the Attendee Procedure for incident reporting here and the Staff Procedure For Handling Reported Harassment here.

Acknowledgement

This Code of Conduct was adapted from the example policy at the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers, which is under a Creative Commons Zero license.

Information about you: how we use it and with whom we share it

The information you provide will be used by the Software Sustainability Institute (a collaborative project between the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton) to:

• administer your attendance at the event, 
• ask you participatory questions related to the event (including accessibility requirements and questions related to the content of the event),
• send out information related to the event,
• enable you to access and utilise infrastructure that allows you to participate in the event, including communication and collaboration with other participants,
• send surveys related to the event, 
• contact after the event for the purposes of publishing any materials authored by participants at the event,
• report aggregated demographic information on an event to stakeholders.

The Institute may record and photograph at the event for promotional purposes, such as for the website, blog, social media and reporting. We will inform participants when any recording or photography will take place and instructions on what to do if they do not wish to be recorded or photographed.  

The Institute will use external companies to process information about you on the Institute’s behalf. We use Eventbrite to manage registrations, fee processing and notifications; Mailchimp for email communication; Google (Docs, Drive, Sheets) for storing and processing event information; and Google Forms for surveys. The Institute, through its constituent University partners, remains responsible for the information and will ensure it is kept securely.

Legal basis: contract

We are using information about you because it is necessary for the performance of your contract with us, namely your participation as an attendee (or booking on behalf of an attendee) at an event run by the Institute.

We will hold the personal data you provided us for a period of one year after the final day of the event, after which point it is deleted. If you wish to check the data we hold about you, or request its deletion, please contact us.

If you have any questions, please contact: Neil Chue Hong, Director - Software Sustainability Institute, info@software.ac.uk 

This privacy statement is continued here where you will find the contact details of the data controller, a statement on data sharing, your rights and how to make a complaint.

Tools

We will use a number of third party tools to facilitate the running of CW24. We include links to their privacy policies below for your convenience.

For keynote presentations and mini-workshop sessions, it is assumed by default that information and images can be published on social media unless the presenter expressly states otherwise.

For collaborative sessions (such as Discussion groups, Collaborative Ideas or Hack Day teams), any publication on social media must first be checked with the rest of the group/team.

Any conversations in workshop communication channels (such as the Slack workspace or Zoom chat) must not be published on social media without the express permission of those involved.

Any conversations that take place within the social programme must not be published on social media without the express permission of those involved.

The aim of this policy is to clarify how contributions from, and outputs generated by, participants at the Collaborations Workshop are treated. The intention is to benefit the CW24 community, and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of others.

Background intellectual property

As a participant in the workshop you retain your rights and ownership of any background intellectual property (the intellectual property that you already own or have a licence to use at the start of the event) you contribute to any part of the event. There must be no assumption of confidentiality - do not share information that you do not wish to be seen by others.

Keynote slides and material presented at the workshop (such as during the mini-workshops and demo sessions) are subject to the licence applied by the authors.

All presentation slides and material from the Software Sustainability Institute will be made available under a Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license after the event.

Foreground intellectual property

Foreground intellectual property generated at the event is owned by the individual authors but they are required to openly license the works so that others can make use of them, unless a specific exception is requested from the organisers before the end of the event. 

All documents produced during the workshop (including but not limited to meeting notes, speed blogs, Collaborative Ideas, Hack Day ideas and presentations) will be published after the event under a Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license. Please be mindful of what personal information you are willing to share in these.

Any new software developed (e.g. during the Hack Day) should be licensed by the authors - we recommend the BSD 3-Clause license. New contributions to existing projects are subject to the existing project’s licence and contribution policy.

Video, audio and pictures taken of the event by the Institute team, or those working on their behalf, are the property of the Institute through the University of Edinburgh as lead partner.

Conversations in the communication channels (such as the Slack workspace or Zoom chat) will not be published publicly.

Exceptions

Participants may request that the Institute does not publish outputs they have created (or remove the attribution to them) at the Collaborations Workshop under various circumstances. These may include where the authors have a specific plan to exploit them, they believe that the output includes content that the authors do not have the rights to use, or the authors do not agree on what is expressed in the publication. Such an exception must be requested by contacting the Collaborations Workshop organisers before the end of the event.

The following policy has been put into place to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, flu and other infectious diseases. 

Please be respectful of other participants’ choices, particularly regarding face coverings, social distancing and testing; intentionally harassing someone because of their choices in this regard will be viewed as a Code of Conduct matter.

CW24 is a hybrid event, and remote/online participation is available for all sessions, including for registered participants who attend the event in-person. In-person participants are very welcome to spread out throughout the venue to less crowded spaces that are not being used for a session on the agenda and connect to the sessions remotely at any time. 

COVID-19 Restrictions in the UK

There are currently no coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions in the UK. 

Check the COVID-19 rules for travel to England, including whether you need to take any tests.

Before the event

To reduce the spread of COVID-19 and flu, all registered participants attending CW24 in-person are strongly encouraged to test for COVID-19 and flu (such as with a rapid antigen test) less than 24 hours before arrival at the event. We encourage testing before travelling, and combined COVID-19 and flu tests will be available on arrival. 

Registered participants must not attend the event in-person if they test positive for COVID-19 or flu or are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms.

If you feel unwell, exhibit symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 or flu prior to the start of the workshop, please contact CW24 Chair Patricia Herterich. If you are able and want to participate remotely, you will be refunded the difference between an in-person and remote ticket or fully refunded for registration if no longer able to participate, where applicable (and where your attendance has not been supported by the SSI).

During the event

Lateral flow antigen tests will be provided to registered participants attending CW24 in-person who are strongly encouraged to self-test daily during the event. 

The wearing of face masks is not currently mandatory in the UK and is a personal choice. Face masks can help reduce the chance of you spreading infection to others, especially in crowded and enclosed spaces, and may protect you from becoming infected. Registered participants attending the event in-person are encouraged to bring sufficient masks to last for the duration of the workshop, however disposable medical face masks will also be provided. 

Social distancing will not be enforced during the event, however, in-person registration for CW24 will be limited to less than the venue capacity to allow for voluntary distancing and there will be additional rooms/spaces for participants to spread out in as they choose. A traffic light badging system (inclusive of colour vision deficiency) will also be available for in-person participants to signal what level of interaction/contact they are comfortable with if they wish, indicating for example:

• Red triangle: No contact please, keeping my distance.
• Amber circle: Limited contact please, some distance preferred. 
• Green square: No social distancing necessary.

Participating in the system to indicate your interaction/contact level will be optional, and please respect those who have indicated what level of interaction/contact they are comfortable with. In addition, if someone would like a side conversation with you and requests that you wear a mask we would strongly encourage you to accommodate the request.

There is an outdoor patio/terrace available for participants who prefer to take their refreshments and meals outside in good weather. We recommend bringing a reusable travel mug to bring coffee and tea outside. Please note that the workshop dinner will take place indoors. 

If any in-person participant receives a positive COVID-19 or flu test result either during or within 48 hours after the conclusion of CW24, there will be a designated point of contact to report to (details will be provided closer to the event). Our team will connect with the participant to offer support, ask some questions about their presence at the event and who they may have been in contact with. If you test positive during the event, you must not return to the event. If you are able, you are welcome to continue participating remotely (for example, via your hotel room), and you will be refunded for registration pro-rata based on how much of the event you were able to attend in-person (and where your attendance has not been supported by the SSI).

Changes

If UK government COVID-19 restrictions are updated, these policies may be changed on limited notice as circumstances develop. If at any time this policy is less stringent than compliance with the latest UK government guidelines, the guidelines will supersede this policy.

Any amendments to the Participation Guidelines will be logged here.