The following summary is intended to help the community understand what kind of Code of Conduct (CoC) incidents we received reports about in the year since the previous conference, and how the CppCon CoC team and organizers responded.

Overview

Again at CppCon 2023, staff and volunteers participated in CoC training prior to the conference.

The Code of Conduct team for CppCon 2023 was Colleen Passard (chair), Gillian Faith, and Jacqueline McCauley. Colleen Passard additionally served as on-site Ombudsperson. 

The code of conduct for CppCon 2023 was published here, inclusive of commits up to and including 8a19fad9f158007663317c3945de20c0d5ab1b64.

Summary of reports at CppCon

At CppCon 2023, two incidents were brought to the attention of the CoC team:

(1) An attendee reported a Code of Conduct (CoC) violation by a conference speaker. The reporter made a request through the onsite Ombudsperson, that the reported party not approach for the remainder of the conference or in the future, to which the reported party agreed and complied.

During the investigative process, the reported party took full responsibility for non-professional conduct and boundary-violating behaviors and offered an apology which was communicated to the reporter by the Ombudsperson. The reporter accepted the apology but expressed a lack of trust and reiterated the request for the reported party not to approach at the conference or in the future. 

The CoC team has implemented a proactive measure: The team will be notified if the reported party is registered for a future CppCon conference or event. The reported party is required and has agreed not to approach the reporter at any CppCon conference or event ever again, as non-compliance will result in immediate consequences.

(2) A Code of Conduct complaint was received regarding a metaphor in a keynote that was perceived by an attendee as sexist. Upon review of the keynote and in concurrence with other audience members the CoC team has determined that the metaphor used was benign, and no further action is required.  

Other reports regarding past/other conferences

Between CppCon 2022 and 2023, there were two other reports to the CoC team.

(3) A reporter who does not currently attend CppCon reported that another person had sexually harassed the reporter in the past elsewhere (not at CppCon), and was concerned whether the reported person should be excluded from CppCon under the CppCon safety policy.

• The CoC team replied that because the reported person had not attended CppCon for years, and would not be attending this year, this did not currently fall under their jurisdiction. The CoC team thanked the reporter and informed them that the information would be considered if the reported person attempted to attend CppCon in the future.

(4) A person reported that a CppCon 2022 speaker made comments on social media favoring one side in an active war. The comments were not made during CppCon and were not related to CppCon.

• The CoC team replied that because the report was about behavior unrelated to CppCon, this did not fall under their jurisdiction. They confirmed that the CoC applies also to speakers, and that speakers are reminded of that each year before the conference. The CoC team directed that a sentence be added to the CoC emphasizing that the CoC applies to speakers, and applies to electronic communications related to the conference. This was done here.

CppCon has always been committed to be a welcoming conference for the entire C++ community, and having a Code of Conduct (CoC) and the best possible CoC report handling team is an essential part of making the conference feel welcoming and inclusive for everyone. The leadership of CppCon and of the Standard C++ Foundation want to thank all of the community volunteers who have stepped up to be on the CppCon CoC team over the years: Thank you! We appreciate your hard work that has made our conference better.

As times change, we want to make sure we adapt to keep our events welcoming and safe. Tech conferences (including ours) have tended to use community volunteers to handle CoC reports, but in recent years we have seen this increasingly create stress on those valuable community members when new and difficult situations come up. The stress comes in two main ways: First, community volunteers are tech experts, not professional investigators and mediators, so they often end up unfairly stressed from doing work they’re not trained for. Second, community volunteers often know many attendees personally, so they have to work harder to avoid bias, and any decision they participate in is more likely to dissatisfy someone they know which could create personal tensions. For the past year, we have been exploring ways to reduce the stress on our community volunteers and let them retire from CoC duties so they can fully enjoy the conference with all the rest of us technical attendees.

We are pleased to announce two new changes, effective today and for CppCon 2023:

• We have hired and appointed a new CoC team composed of qualified outside independent professionals. They bring many years of experience, and are trained and certified in investigation, conflict resolution, and mediation. Because they are from outside the C++ community, they are not distracted by the technical program and are free of bias about people in our community. As always, the CoC team continues to be empowered to apply the CoC policy and the safety policy that help all of us enjoy a safe and productive time at the conference.
• To provide support beyond direct CoC issues, CppCon 2023 will have an Ombudsperson with a physical office on-site at the conference. The Ombudsperson, who is also the CoC team chair, will be available to provide additional personal and emotional support for attendees in addition to taking actual CoC issue reports. Having an Ombudsperson in addition to a CoC team will directly support our safety policy’s first priority, that our attendees not only be safe, but also feel safe and have support for their mental and emotional well-being.

The new 2023 CppCon Ombudsperson and CoC team are:

We expect to add additional independent professionals to the CoC team in the coming months.

Additionally, looking beyond just this year, we are supporting an industry initiative now in the formative stages toward creating a neutral independent body to help with CoC matters across the tech industry. Its aims would include setting high-quality industry standards for Codes of Conduct, providing formal compliance certification that an organization’s CoC meets the standards, and providing independent professionals like the ones we are now using above as CoC handling resources to many tech conferences and other organizations — not just to C++ or even programming language conferences, but to many events and organizations, from meetups and conferences to online associations and open source projects. We hope these efforts will succeed in creating such a new independent industry body, and we applaud and support the people who are working hard on the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting needed to make it become a reality. As those efforts bear fruit and such a new body becomes operational, at CppCon we intend to: update our CppCon CoC (which is currently a fork of the PyCon CoC) as needed to be certified for compliance with the new body’s CoC standards; continue using independent professionals for CppCon CoC handling along with embracing other best practices the new body may recommend; and encourage other tech conferences to do the same.

Once again, we thank all our past CoC team volunteer members for their service to this point! We appreciate their good work very much. Now we look forward to letting those volunteers focus on enjoying our conference’s technical content along with all of us during October 1-6 at CppCon 2023! We look forward to seeing many of you there again in person this year.

In late December 2022 and January 2023, the CppCon Code of Conduct (CoC) team and the Standard C++ Foundation board learned of serious allegations against a member of the CppCon organization. The CoC team and Foundation take all allegations seriously and prioritize the physical and psychological safety of our attendees. The accused person agreed to voluntarily recuse themselves from CppCon matters pending investigation. Because the members of the CoC team and of the Foundation board all have personal or professional relationships with the accused, they recused themselves from participating in an investigation into the allegations. CppCon hired an independent attorney investigator with over 26 years’ experience to perform an impartial and thorough investigation of the allegations, with no constraints on whom to interview or directions to pursue. That investigation took three months and produced a 62-page report which concluded that “a preponderance of the evidence did not support the allegations against [the accused].” Because the report gave no basis to continue to restrict or take action against the accused, the CoC team members and the Foundation board members unanimously agreed that the accused should have all restrictions removed.

The CoC team and Foundation will consider sharing additional details regarding this matter confidentially with other conference and organization Code of Conduct teams on a case by case basis as needs may arise. Such teams can request additional information by contacting admin@isocpp.org.

The following summary is intended to help the community understand what kind of Code of Conduct (CoC) incidents we received reports about in the year since previous conference, and how the CppCon CoC team and organisers responded.

Overview

Again at CppCon 2022, staff and volunteers participated in CoC training prior to the conference.

The Code of Conduct team for CppCon 2022 was led by Guy Davidson and consisted of Sy Brand, Inbal Levi and Gabriel Dos Reis. Inbal and Gabriel were on-site, while Guy and Sy were off-site, in the UTC+1 time zone. (CppCon 2022 was a hybrid conference, with on-site and on-line talks and participants.)

The code of conduct for CppCon 2022 was as published here, using the August 10th 2022 commit.

Summary of reports at CppCon

At CppCon 2022, one incident was brought to the attention of the CoC team:

(1) An organiser was concerned that a speaker’s talk slides promoted favouring one side in an active war. There was no formal CoC report, but both the organiser and speaker notified the CoC team of the concern.

• Within 48 hours the CoC team replied that the specific statement violated no provision of the Code of Conduct. In future, the CoC team, conference organisers, and Foundation directors will consider whether to provide any suggestions or policy for speakers about non-technical content on slides.

Other reports regarding past/other conferences

Around the same time as this year’s conference, there were also one report regarding a past CppCon conference, and two reports regarding non-CppCon conferences:

(2) A past speaker complained that at a previous CppCon conference an organiser had approached others, including women, in a way they felt was sexually suggestive and that discriminated against non-speaker men.

• The CoC team had witnessed several occasions of the interaction being complained about, and decided that whether it was suggestive or discriminatory was a matter of opinion. However, the organiser was informed of this complaint so that they could be aware of the additional perspective.

(3) A past speaker complained about the conduct of a CppCon organiser at another non-CppCon conference.

• Even though the complaint was about events outside CppCon and so not under the CppCon CoC, because it could call into question a CppCon organiser’s judgment, the CppCon CoC team and (different) CppCon organisers reached out to the CoC team of the other conference. The other conference said they had investigated the same complaint regarding their conference and had decided to take no action.

(4) A past speaker complained about the aggressive conduct of a member of the community at another non-CppCon conference.

• In our investigation, the CppCon CoC team reached out to the CoC team of the other conference. They were able to confirm the incident. We noted their response; since the behaviour took place outside of CppCon, there is no action to answer here. However, we have recorded the reports and decided to monitor the behaviour of this community member at CppCon in the future.

Restriction enforcement

Finally, before CppCon 2022 an incident arose that was not a CoC report but was enforcing a preexisting restriction:

(5) After the call for submissions for CppCon 2022, a person who is restricted and not permitted to work in the conference nevertheless responded to a prospective speaker who inquired for help with their talk submission.

• The organisers realised that they had overlooked removing the restricted person from the speaker help request email list. The organisers removed the restricted person from that list; they checked all the email lists again to ensure the restricted person was removed from all of them; they reminded the restricted person that the restricted person was not allowed to participate any conference roles; they informed the prospective speaker that the restricted person did not represent the conference and arranged for someone actually from the conference to assist the speaker; and they informed the CoC team about this enforcement of the existing restrictions.