Why we have a Baltimore Innovation Week Code of Conduct

Baltimore Innovation Week, the third annual open calendar of events celebrating technology and innovation in the Baltimore region, is nearly upon us.
We’ve organized more than 40 events and are expecting thousands of attendees. But before we go crazy with the promotion, we wanted to start things off right.
That’s why the first thing we’re highlighting is the Code of Conduct (found on the BIW FAQ page). We’re asking all event organizers and attendees to abide by it.
The pledge doesn’t stem from any specific incidents. In fact, the Baltimore tech community has a fairly strong reputation for striving to be inclusive, but the technology sector nationally still has a reputation for being something of a boys club.
Most specifically, the goal of having this Code is so that we all think about the goal of having a big week of events crammed together: to give attention to worthy people and pursuits, and to serve as an entry point for new people in our community.
We should all be particularly interested in bringing new voices into the conversation that we’re all working to strengthen. That goes for all events — though we are additionally focusing on these subjects at the second annual Baltimore Women in Tech Summit and our Diversity Happy Hour during Access Day.
Here is our Baltimore Innovation Week Code of Conduct:

Baltimore Innovation Week is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.
All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.
Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for Baltimore Innovation Week. Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave events without a refund at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.
Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly event for all.

This Code of Conduct was forked from PyCon’s Code of Conduct Policy, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Shout-out to Corinne Warnshuis, our former events coordinator who first initiated this Code of Conduct before moving on from Technical.ly to become the first executive director of Girl Develop It.