An online friend of mine once said this about a sexism incident at a conference:

"If I had been there, ZERO chance I would've sat idly by and let someone treat you like that"

I like to believe that I have the same policy: If I am there when some casual sexism occurs, I will call it out.

It turns out that this is untrue.

One

I have witnessed a number of incidents of sexism at conferences that I've been to recently and I want to talk about one particular situation that occurred.

Around lunchtime at a recent conference, I was with a group of developer friends that included one woman. A man joined our group and made a joke to the woman along the lines of asking if she was here with her boyfriend. I understand that they are friends and that he was being ironic and humorous and certainly meant no personal insult. She responded with a cutting remark and that was that.

Except that wasn't that.

I did not speak out.

It was just a joke. It worked by demeaning women in my industry. I should have said something, especially as I was in the company of friends. The fact that I didn't speak up is unacceptable because jokes like this are actively harmful by contributing to the background tolerance of discrimination against women.

I am ashamed that I didn't speak up. I let my friends and myself down and and I apologise to everyone in our community for not doing my bit when I had the chance.

Two

On Saturday, I took my son to one of his extracurricular activity sessions. Afterwards, my son and I were talking with his coach about the rest of our weekend and how I'd be helping him with the electrical bits of building his new Tamiya Hornet remote controlled car. The coach commented that he would like to do the same sort of things with his future grandchildren and hoped that he wouldn't get a granddaughter.

Maybe it was because my son was there and I'm trying to help teach him about these things, or maybe it was because of the incidents that I'd witnessed recently at conferences, but this time, I spoke up.

I talked about my friend who took an Arduino and some coloured LEDs to create a fuzzy clock where the colour of LEDs indicates the time to the nearest hour. I'm fully intending to copy her project as it would be especially useful to me at night when I'm not wearing my glasses. We then talked a little about how a granddaughter could certainly be interested in building and running remote control cars!

Fin

I want to help reduce sexism in this world. More than one recent conference incident has reminded me that I have a long long way to go, but maybe there's some hope for me yet.

Even though I regularly fail, sometimes I succeed and I won't let my failures stop me from getting it right next time.

tl;dr

I want every conference to enthusiastically champion their code of conduct in order to publicly reassure attendees (women in particular) that any issues will be dealt with. I want all of us to actually notice jokes and conduct that make conferences uncomfortable for women and call out or report issues if we see them. I'm still learning how to do this, but the rest of this post goes into detail on why I think this is subject is important.

The detail

Following up on my last post about codes of conducts, I was recently asked why I'm interested in them. While I responded directly, it crosses my mind that I should probably write down my thoughts on this and then I can practice good DRY practices and just link back here!

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of women and non-white people I see at the conferences I go to. It was particularly noticeable at one conference I went to fairly recently and so I’ve been asking why this is. Many of people who inspire me are women, but I hardly see any women at conferences. So, I've started with the issue of the lack of women at conferences and in development in general.

Conferences are one of the best ways I know to become a better developer. Not only do you get exposed to new technologies and techniques via the talks, you get to meet other developers & make contacts that last beyond the event.

We know from US statistics that around 20% of all developers are women. Looking at the male to female ratios at most of the conferences that I go to, I don't even see that many women developers there. I'm assuming that they are choosing not to attend.

That's sad.

So I've started reading. It's hard to read without judging based on your own experiences. I’ve also talked to my wife who has gone to events in a different space and other women friends in a variety of industries and it has been eye-opening.

From my learning so far there seemed to be two main topics that kept coming up: atmosphere and safety.

One major concern I have is that a woman’s initial base assumption seems to be that she expects that something “uncomfortable” is to going happen to them over the course of an event. This runs the full range of things from physical things like being touched “by accident”, through having someone stand very close in her personal space and monopolise her to the point that she is “trapped” talking to this person to men staring at her breasts when talking to her. There's also the words she will hear – from casual comments about women belonging in the kitchen, to overhearing jokes about how bad women are at logical thinking all the way to being asked if she has a boyfriend and if not, being propositioned.

As a man, it’s taken me ages to understand why a casual comment to a woman about whether she has a boyfriend is so damaging. It seemed harmless to me. Just a joke. However, no one ever talks to me a conference with an underlying subtext that they are mainly interested in having sex with me rather than geeking out on tech and programming. No one ever questions my authority in my subject area. Even now, I have been places where I hear conversations between one of my female friends and another man and they tell me afterwards that the man clearly didn't think she was competent by his choice of words and demeanour and I didn’t even notice :(

Hence, I can completely understand why a woman would rather not go to a conference than have to deal with this underlying unspoken assumption that she isn't good enough to be a programmer. Don’t even get me started on the message that's sent when you see pictures of women in lingerie or short skirts in slide decks and sponsor advertising material. I’ve seen all these things at conferences before.

To my wife, her personal safety is very much an active thought in her mind when she meets any man. It's her default position. Apparently this is as much of a worry in a public social setting as on a lonely street at night; maybe more so. By safety, I don’t mean violent rape. I mean being hugged when you don’t want to be; being touched "by accident"; being cornered by someone. These things don't just happen at evening socials, they also happen in the coffee break. These things are happening in public places and and no one else in the room notices.

How are we supposed to stop things that we don’t even see from happening?

The logical thing to me is that if any woman experiences anything she is uncomfortable with (or a man sees something happening to a woman), they should feel able to report it in private and be 100% sure that they will be believed and looked after, no matter how minor the organisers may perceive this incident to be.

I don't think I can emphasise enough that so many incidents appear to be minor and "just the way things are" to men. I'm finding this really difficult to internalise and I'm, notionally at least, aware of the issue. "Just a joke", "That's just how Bob is", "That's not against the law", "It's just a pat on the bottom" are all ways to enable us to believe that there's nothing in our community that needs improving.

Coming back to the subject at hand, I think that a published code of conduct is a clear way to say to the attendees that the organisers know that these things can happen and that (a) they are publicly saying that they are unacceptable and that (b) they are signalling that they have a plan, already in place, for dealing with any incident that may happen.

I appreciate that other people don't agree with me and think that their conference doesn't need a code of conduct because they work towards improving diversity in other ways.

I disagree.

Personally, I see a code of conduct that is championed by the organisers as a great way to improve the inclusivity of an event which can only make for a better conference. I want to see them at every conference.

I was impressed to see that NYCC put their code of conduct on billboards throughout their conference! This is a commercial venture, so certainly they thought about the pros and cons of doing it.

However, the best way we can make conferences more welcoming to women is if we, the attendees, call out our fellow attendees on what they say and what they do that's unwelcoming. It takes courage to report a joke that isn't suitable for a professional conference, but if we all do it, it becomes the norm.

Further reading

If you are interested in some further reading, on this topic then I can recommend Codes of Conduct 101 + FAQ, Sexual harassment at technical conferences: A big no-no and Your conference needs an anti-harassment policy.

For some real-world experiences, try My first OSCON, This is why we can't have nice things, The Creepy Librarian Stalker Hypothesis & Please do not pat me on my head. There are many many more examples out there; try asking any woman who's been to a conference as I haven't found one yet that did not have a story to tell.

Finally, the discussions on this reddit thread and on BoingBoing about the very visible NYCC banners are interesting too.

As my mind turns towards the conferences that I'm attending this autumn, I came across Why you want a code of conduct & how we made one by Erin Kissane. I highly recommend that you read it and the links within it.

The part that struck me most was the thoughts on a plan of action. It's all very well to have a code of conduct, but if the event's organisers haven't got a plan on how to deal with reports and actual enforce the code, then it's a waste of time and doesn't help anyone.

I can imagine that reporting, in particular, can be more complicated than initial thoughts would imply. "Just talk to a member of staff" doesn't work very well for everyone as they always seem busy.If they aren't busy, then they are usually surrounded by people; not everyone is confident enough to interrupt and say "can I have word, privately". I can see why the really good codes of conduct have a telephone number on them. One code of conduct I read says that the report should preferably be in writing. That may be useful legally, but I'm not sure that that sends the right message.

Similarly, I wonder if the organisers with a code of conduct have a plan of action and know what they will do in advance if a report is made. Have the organisers discussed how they will react if it's a close friend that's caused the problem? Have they talked about what actions will result in a warning & which will require the attendee to leave the conference? Most importantly is it clear how any such decisions will be made and who will actually talk to the harassing attendee? I really hope so as it's incredibly hard to sort these things out during an actual incident.

I think the visibility of any code of conduct says a lot about how important inclusiveness is to the conference organisers. A conference I attended recently called out the code of conduct right at the start of the introduction. I liked this a lot.

Inclusiveness is important to me. Going forwards, this will be a factor I take into account when deciding to attend a conference. The conference organisers set the tone they expect and then it is for us, the attendees, to call out any unacceptable behaviour we see before it becomes an incident needing to be reported.

If ever there was a word to make someone defensive, it's privilege.

You are brought face to face with the fact that someone else doesn't have the same experiences in life as you and that their experiences somehow make their life harder than yours.

I am one of the most privileged people I know. I am a well-educated European white man. I was raised in a loving, stable home. I have a loving, stable relationship and two children. I am doing well financially, working in a job I love. The list goes on and on and on…

I understand intellectually that not everyone has this good a run in life. But I feel defensive when someone mentions privilege. "But it's not my fault!", I want to whine.

I have friends who are treated as inferior by strangers. I have friends who are not listened to at work because they aren't a white man. I have friends who have been sexually assaulted. I have known this for years and I used to shrug it off as "It's just the way the world is, but not all men are like that.".

This is not acceptable.

I've started paying more attention. I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I will not blithely ignore that the rest of the population have to deal, day-in and day-out, with problems that I cannot ever fathom.

I'm reading articles and watching talks on the subject. I'm listening carefully to what my wife and friends have to say. How else can I learn?

I now know what the Bechdel Test is and I've noticed the lack of female protagonists in new games coming out of E3. I was shocked and depressed by what I read on #yesAllWomen.

I will change my behaviour and the way I talk. I will call out others too.

I will fail regularly in my attitude, in what I say and in what I do. I need my friends to point this out and, when they do, I will not whine.

On the 26th January, I fell off a skateboard, dislocating & fracturing my left elbow. A trip to A&E that Sunday resulted in hospital admittance on Monday and surgery on Tuesday.

This was the first time I've been admitted to hospital for an overnight stay and I found the whole process fascinating, but not something I ever want to repeat. I also can't say enough good things about the staff at Worcester Royal Hospital. Everyone I interacted with was friendly, helpful and competent.
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As 2013 finishes, I continue my tradition of showing off some photos that recap my year. Last year I discovered that I didn't take many photos at all, so this year I've published at least one photo every day! A lot of them were rubbish, but a good number are shots that I'm very pleased with.

January

It rained in January. I liked this picture of Worcester racecourse:

January also saw me visiting Belgium for the PHPBenelux conference, where I took a very good picture of Chris Hartjes:

February

February was a quiet month, with the highlight of visiting our friend in Swansea. There was also a history event in Worcester which the kids enjoyed:

March

We had snow in March which seemed a little late in the year. Also, Tornado came to Worcester, so I got a photo!

April

I started Nineteen Feet in April. This was the month when creating paper models of Minecraft items became a thing in our household:

May

in May, I returned to the excellent php[tek] conference where we celebrated Liam's birthday:

June

By June I realised that I really need a desk as I was now working full time at home!

July

The highlight of this month was a trip to the National Railway Museum in York to take photos of some A4s:

August

In August, we go on holiday and this year we went to Devon. It was surprisingly warm who was nice. The highlight was a trip to the aquarium, but I also got to go on a train!

September

September was the start of a busy traveling time for me. In September, I went to pfCongres followed by a trip to Colombia to consult for a client. I particularly liked Michelle's talk on open source:

October

In October, I spoke at the fantastic PHPNW conference. During the hackathon the new version of joind.in's Android app was released by Rich. The talks were really good as usual and I was not the only one who paid attention in Ross' talk on models:

November

I went to two conferences in Novemeber: CodeConnexx and ZendCon Europe where I got my hands on a Red Elephpant!

December

I visited Colombia for a followup visit with my client which was great fun. The team introduced me to Aguardiente:

My company also did well enough to allow me to purchase a new retina MacBook Pro and monitor which arrived in the last few days to round off a very good year!

After nearly ten fantastic years at Big Room Internet, I have decided to take the jump and run my own business! Having concentrated on project management for the last year or so, I am happy to return to hands-on development. I also intend to provide training and consultancy services.

I'm really excited by this new phase of my career. I have created a shiny new company for interesting projects: Nineteen Feet Limited. If you want to hire me, then please get in touch.

Over the years, I've discovered that I most enjoy developing directly for a client and building solutions that meet their specific needs. I've had great success teaching at conferences (such as PHPNW and ZendCon) and am looking forward to providing bespoke Zend Framework training to developers.

If there's one thing Twitter is not good at, it's holding a discussion on something controversial. Sean Coates noted this problem when he said: "I’m not worried about having my opinion disagreed with; I *am* concerned that I will be crucified for something I don’t mean." I suspect this is because you don't have the space to develop an idea on Twitter. It also doesn't help that Twitter is a conversation which means that people are arguing before you've written your second tweet!

As Chris Shiflett wrote earlier this month, real writing happens on blogs. With a blog you have the space to write down what you mean and develop the idea. However, even here there is risk. Lorna Mitchell noted that comments make it easy to criticise. You can leave an quick "drive-by" insult anonymously for minimal effort. This can become a disincentive to write opinion pieces on blogs too.

Like Chris, I also strongly believe in owning my data. My blog provides information that I want to share and more important, information that I want to find again! I was caught out on my Automatic Apache vhosts post where I linked to an alternative solution which has subsequently been taken down. Information that I want to refer to again must be on my blog as otherwise I can't be sure it'll be there when I need it.

I will continue to share technical things on this site as I believe that my posts are useful to others. Over time, I intend to blog more opinionated pieces. My views on some topics should be shared and would be a useful reference to point people at. Sometimes, I will turn off comments and encourage others to respond by writing their on their own blog. In more than 140 characters and less anonymously.

As another year draws to a close, I continue my tradition of showing off some photos that recap our year.

January

January 2012 was a quiet month. I released Daily Jotter 1.3 and started using Sublime Text as my editor of choice for programming. Photographically, the highlight of the month was the Worcester Flickr Group's scavenger hunt.

February

It snowed in Feburary and I started publishing articles on ZF2. Again, a Worcester Flickr Group outing to the Panorama Tower, Croome D'abitot in Worcestershire provided the only interesting photographs that I took all month.

March

I was very much into Instagram and didn't take any photos with my DSLR this month!

April

In April, I went to the inaugural Whisky Web conference as an attendee, which was fun, especially as Josh used one of my photos in his keynote.

May

Both sons have their birthdays in May and a big family get together were the highlights of May.

June

Nick and Kerry were married this month.

July

A quiet month. I visited the PHPNW user group to see Jenny's first talk.

August

In August we went to the Isle of Wight on holiday and I managed to visit the steam railway.

September

Eldest's first day at high school!

October

October saw me speak at both the PHPNW and ZendCon conferences. I gave a tutorial with Evan Coury at both events which seem to be appreciated by the attendees.

Whilst in California, I managed to take a photo of the Golden Gate bridge.

November

After the busy-ness of October's travel, I had a quiet month in Worcester. I also got some Toyella business cards!

December

Last month of the year and the last month that my company's offices were in Birmingham as we moved to Worcester for the start for 2013. There was also a lot of rain!

All in all, another pretty good year. Next year, I intend to take more photos with my DSLR though.

As I did last year, I thought I'd continue my tradition of showing off some photos that recap our year.

January

PHPBNL 2011 happened in January. Also, my Mac OS X application, Daily Jotter was released onto the Mac App Store.

February

The first PHPucEU happened in Manchester which was great fun and, of course, the PHPUK conference in London. The biggest news for us though, was that we moved house in February!

March

I went to Canada for the rather excellent Confoo conference and watched a snowball fight!

April

A relaxed month after 3 months of conferences and a house move. There was a Royal wedding in the UK which resulted in a lot of merchandising!

May

May was the busiest month ever. Both sons have their birthdays in May and DPC in Amsterdam and php|tek in Chicago are back to back conferences! So many good photographs this month, but I have gone with this one of Jeremy Kendall as he took many excellent photographs at tek!

June

Our trip to the zoo this year was in June when we went to Twycross Zoo.

July

We went to the beach in July.

August

In August we went to the Fleet Air Arm Museum.

September

Jon achieved his Grade 1 classical guitar certification this month.

We also went to a friend's wedding.

October

October saw the very excellent PHPNW conference return for its forth year and I was very glad to be asked to do a ZF2 tutorial which seemed to go well.

November

November was the month that John Arnold held his creativityex project. I particularly liked my effort for negative space:

December

Last month of the year and as part of the Worcester Flickr group, I got to take a photograph in a studio!

All in all, a pretty good year. One interesting thing I did notice was that I have a lot more good photos sitting in Aperture than I published. I think this is because Aperture is so slow to use on my old Macbook Pro. I was better at publishing photos with Capture NX2 and I thought that was slow; Clearly it wasn't that bad!