The YAPC North America Perl Conferences of
the past couple of years have held an event I like quite a bit. It's the first time attendees
mixer.
As of a couple of years ago, YAPC::NA organizers and attendees realized that
about half of t...
The YAPC North America Perl Conferences of
the past couple of years have held an event I like quite a bit. It's the first time attendees
mixer.
As of a couple of years ago, YAPC::NA organizers and attendees realized that
about half of the attendees of each conference had never attended a YAPC
before. That's between one and two hundred people whose main face to face
involvement with the larger Perl community may have been limited to a local Perl Mongers meeting. Yes, these attendees have
almost certainly used the CPAN, very likely participated in a discussion on a
Perl web site, mostly used a Perl mailing list (and not just the YAPC mailing
list), and have probably been on a Perl IRC channel, but they probably aren't
the people you think of when you think "Who are the best connected people in
the Perl community?"
As far back as I can remember (which, admittedly, is one of the YAPC::NAs in Chicago), an early morning talk has served as an introduction to YAPC, specifically intended to help new attendees understand the conference and its quirks and norms. That talk invites these attendees to the novice welcome meeting.
The organizers also grab as many of the well connected people in the
community—pumpkings, core developers, CPAN contributors, authors, project
leaders, anyone whose name you might recognize—and ask them to show up
and be willing to talk to people. That's it.
What I like about this system is that it welcomes people in two ways. First,
it acknowledges that it's okay to be new to YAPC or the Perl community in
person. If that's you, you're not alone. Half of everyone you're going to see
at the conference is like you in that sense.
Not only that, but you have permission to participate. You're welcome to
attend this little meetup that has an explicit place in the schedule—it's
an official part of the conference—and you're encouraged to talk to
people you might know only by reputation. They're there to meet and talk to
you. They're not there to hang out in little groups by themselves. They're
there to talk to you.
I've heard good things about this event. I've enjoyed it every time I've
gone. (As an introvert myself, I like having permission to talk to
people with a limit of a couple of hours.)
I feel the same way about a YAPC
Code of Conduct. I don't see it as a warning that "straying from a straight
and narrow path of arbitrariness will not be tolerated, so if you're not sure
if you might accidentally say or do something someone else doesn't like, stay
away!" I see it as giving people who aren't necessarily well versed in the
norms and ideals and messy politics of dealing with the Perl community every
day virtually and in person permission to believe that they should feel welcome
and important in the community.
It's about empathy.
I understand people disagree about the wording and even need for a code of conduct, and I don't mean to suggest that such concerns come from robots who lack empathy. By no means.
Yet put yourself in the shoes of someone who feels like he might not quite
fit in in a talk, because it's full of inside jokes and jargon and the kinds of
comfortable banter you only get after you've idled on a handful of Perl IRC
channels for months or years. (Imagine that person's an introvert, or at least
not as stubborn as I am.) Now imagine the speaker or someone else says or does
something that reminds that person that he doesn't belong there, that he
doesn't fit in, that he's different.
That's not necessarily assault. That's not necessarily a criminal act. But
it's probably unnecessary and hopefully unintentional.
(The best silly example I can come up with is a speaker saying "... and of
course, if you're a Windows user, no one cares about you until you man up and
get a real operating system." and half of the audience laughs.)
Sure, there are good legal reasons to have a code of conduct that suggests
that criminal activities such as assault, battery, and sexual assault are
int
