At the beginning of 2018’s Brighton Ruby, during the introduction, I wanted to ‘get into’ what having a Code of Conduct means. I hadn’t seen anyone do this, and it’s a topic I’d been thinking about a lot this year.

It’s important to be introspective, as an organiser, about the impact of your event and your own responsibility to include people into our communities. We all have responsibilities and expectations about our behaviour toward each other, this is my take on what it means, for Brighton Ruby at least.

I don’t think I did a brilliant job, it’s difficult to be clear, and I still have my blind spots.

However, the amount of positive feedback I’ve had about this ‘impromptu lightning talk’ indicated that I should share this and encourage other organisers to think about what they are doing to make sure that they are making the Code of Conduct a living thing and to ensure they are hearing about the stuff that people might otherwise ignore.