During the week of KubeCon North America 2024, several people complained in person about one community member. The complaints described repeated unwanted advances at two evening events. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hired an external investigator, found a violation of its code of conduct and barred the person from all CNCF events for the rest of 2025. The foundation published an anonymised summary in its public transparency report.
The case illustrates why a conduct policy needs a response process behind it. People should know where to report a concern, who will assess it and how decisions will be implemented. This guide covers the policy itself, reporting arrangements and on-site responsibilities, including the roles of moderators, MCs (masters of ceremonies) and speakers.
What a conference code of conduct is, and what it is not
A conference code of conduct is a public document that explains expected behaviour, gives examples of unacceptable conduct and tells people how to raise a concern. It also describes the possible responses. Whether you call it a code of conduct or an anti-harassment policy, these elements make it easier for participants and staff to understand how the policy works.
It is not the same as your terms and conditions or the venue’s house rules. Terms and conditions cover tickets, refunds and liability. House rules cover the building. The code covers how people treat each other, and it applies to the whole programme, including the parts that happen outside the venue.
Good templates exist, and you do not need to start from a blank page. The Conference Code of Conduct template is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence and based on earlier work by JSConf and the Ada Initiative. Its own notice says that the template is not enforceable as it stands and that each event should publish its own version. That is the honest summary: the template gives you wording, and you still have to supply the people and procedures behind it.
Why associations and scientific societies need more than a template
At an association or scientific congress, professional relationships can make reporting difficult. Early career researchers may depend on senior colleagues for reviews, funding or future work; exhibitors and buyers may have ongoing commercial relationships. Your policy and reporting process should account for those concerns, including situations in which the person reported holds influence over the person making the report.
Take a director of meetings at a professional association. She is planning an annual meeting for 1,200 delegates, with a 40-stand exhibition and an awards dinner. Her board asks whether a code of conduct is worth the effort when the website already has a respect statement. The research gives her an answer.
The starting point
Codes are often missing, and incomplete when they exist
The conference study is from 2019 and covers one discipline, but the pattern matters. A code without a reporting route asks people to complain without telling them where. A code without consequences tells them nothing will happen.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) survey explains why that second gap is so costly. Almost 23 per cent of employed people worldwide had experienced violence or harassment at work, and only half of them had told anyone. The most common reasons for staying silent were that reporting seemed a “waste of time” and fear for their reputation. Both reasons apply at a conference, and your code has to answer both. It must show that reports lead somewhere and that a report will not damage the person making it.
What to put in your code of conduct
The code has to answer those two fears in writing, before anyone needs it. Seven elements do that:
- Scope: all sessions, the exhibition, poster sessions, receptions, the awards dinner, official social events, the event app, its chat and any online sessions. For places outside your control, such as a hotel bar after the dinner, state the code as an expectation.
- Expected behaviour: respect, consideration for people’s boundaries, accepting a “no” the first time, and respect for names and pronouns.
- Unacceptable behaviour, with examples: sexualised comments, unwanted physical contact, intimidation, following someone, photographing people who have asked not to be photographed, repeated contact after a refusal, discriminatory remarks and abusive messages in the app.
- How to report: a staffed desk, a phone or text number that works during every programme hour including the evening, an email address and an anonymous option. Name the roles, and ideally the people, who receive reports.
- Who decides: a small conduct committee, not one person. Say that members with a conflict of interest step aside, and that a report about a committee member goes to someone else.
- Consequences: a range from a conversation and a warning to removal from the event without refund and exclusion from future events. Speakers can lose a session or the publication of their recording.
- Equal application: the code applies to delegates, speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, volunteers and staff alike, and sponsorship or status does not change the outcome.
The last point is the one boards hesitate over. It is also the one that answers the question a delegate asks before reporting a well-connected senior member. Leave it out, and people assume the opposite.
Publish the code where people already confirm something: the registration form, the exhibitor contract, the speaker agreement, the event website, signs at the entrance and the app. For exhibitors, the right place is the section on rules and conduct in your exhibitor manual, because their stand staff often never see the registration page.
Reporting channels people will actually use
Make it possible to report a concern privately. A busy registration desk may be an uncomfortable place to describe an incident, particularly with other attendees waiting nearby. Offer several contact routes and make clear when each is staffed:
| Channel | Staffed when | Who answers |
|---|---|---|
| In-person desk with a quiet room nearby | All programme hours | Trained conduct team members, ideally two |
| Phone or text number | All programme hours, including evening events | Conduct team member on duty |
| Email or online form | Monitored during the event, checked daily afterwards | Conduct committee |
| Anonymous form | As above | Conduct committee, for patterns and follow-up |
Response time matters at a live event, because the person reported may still be in the building. The response guide from the Write the Docs community says that at conferences “the ideal response time is typically a few hours at most”, and urgent cases need faster action. A report that receives a reply on Monday morning, after a Saturday incident, comes too late to help on site.
Reporting also has to leave control with the person who reports. In another CNCF case from KubeCon Europe 2024, an attendee reported unwanted romantic and sexual attention from several people but did not want to take part in an investigation. The committee could not investigate without names, and it said so in its report. That is the right outcome for a code that respects the reporter’s choice. Keep a record, watch for patterns, and do not pressure the person to name anyone.
How to enforce the code on site
Once a report arrives, the next step is a process the team already knows. Improvising makes a difficult situation worse. The following six steps draw on the Write the Docs response guide and on the 2019 handbook “How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports” by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner, published under a Creative Commons licence.
When a report arrives
Six steps from report to follow-up
- First minutes Receive Listen, thank the person, promise no outcome yet, and ask what they need right now.
- First minutes Make safe Offer a quiet room or an escort. Call venue security or police without consent only if someone is in immediate danger.
- Same hour Record Note time, place, what was reported and who was involved. Collect only what you need.
- Within hours Decide At least two committee members review the report, declare any conflict of interest and agree the response.
- Same day Act Speak to the reported person in pairs, then choose: no action, a warning, restrictions, cancelled session or removal.
- After the event Follow up Tell the reporter what was done and why, review the case and publish an anonymised summary.
Two points in this process need attention before the event starts.
The first is who sits on the committee. The director of meetings should not decide alone, and nor should the team that sold the sponsorship. Picture a delegate reporting that a sponsor’s sales director followed her from the awards dinner to the hotel bar. If the decision sits with the person who signed the sponsor’s contract, the outcome looks bought, whatever it is. Name a committee of three: someone from the events team, a board member or ethics officer, and someone without commercial contact with exhibitors.
The second is the boundary with security. Your conduct team listens, supports and recommends. Removal from the venue is enforced through your rights as organiser and by the venue’s security staff. Agree with the venue in advance how a removal works, who gives the instruction, and how the badge is deactivated.
After the event, an anonymised transparency report closes the loop. CNCF publishes one; so do many developer conferences. It shows delegates that reports were handled, without exposing anyone. It also gives your board the evidence that the code works.
The role of moderators, MCs and speakers
Moderators, MCs and speakers also help put the policy into practice. Their preparation should cover how to respond to inappropriate comments or behaviour during sessions and how to involve the designated response team.
Speakers are bound by the code like everyone else, and they should know it before they arrive. In December 2024, the board and organising committee of NeurIPS, a large machine learning conference, said that remarks in an invited talk at NeurIPS 2024 had violated the conference’s code of conduct. They announced that they would communicate the code clearly to invited speakers in future. The lesson for any organiser is to send the code with the invitation, and to make acceptance part of the speaker agreement, not an afterthought on the day.
Moderators have a narrower but important job. They decide who speaks in the Q&A and for how long. When a question becomes a personal attack on the speaker, or a comment about a panellist’s appearance, the moderator is the person who can step in within seconds. Brief them on a short, calm line for that moment, such as “Let’s keep to the topic, next question please”. Agree when they should call the conduct team. Our guide to panel moderation covers how to run audience questions so that they stay useful.
The MC sets the tone at the opening. In the housekeeping block, the host says that the code applies, where to find it and how to reach the conduct team. A sample line for exactly that moment is in our MC script for a B2B conference. Thirty seconds at the opening tells every delegate that the code is enforced, not just published.
Staff, exhibitors and the legal frame
Your code protects delegates. Your own staff, temporary staff and volunteers are also at work during the event, and in some countries employers carry specific duties towards them.
In the UK, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 has required employers since 26 October 2024 to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. Guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says this includes harassment by third parties, such as clients and customers. A tribunal can increase compensation by up to 25 per cent if the duty was breached. For an event organiser, that makes stand visitors, sponsors and delegates the third parties your own team meets all day. For exhibitors, the duty towards their stand staff sits with them, which is another reason to put the code into the exhibitor contract.
Records need care too. Incident notes often contain sensitive personal data. Decide before the event who can read them, where they are stored and when they are deleted. Under data protection rules such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you should collect no more than you need.
This guide is planning support, not legal advice. Laws on harassment, employment, data protection and exclusion from events differ by country. Have your code, your removal procedure and your record keeping reviewed by a lawyer who knows your jurisdiction.
Build the code into your planning
A procedure only works when it appears in the documents your team already uses. That means three stages.
Before the event, the code sits in registration, the exhibitor contract and the speaker agreement. The conduct team is named, trained and on the staffing plan, with its phone number in the app and the printed programme. Its shifts, the quiet room and the escalation contacts belong in your run of show, so they do not live only in the head of the director of meetings.
On the day, the evening needs the same cover as the programme. Awards dinners and receptions combine alcohol, less supervision and a blurred line between work and private life. The CNCF case at the start of this guide happened at two evening events. When you plan the evening format, as described in our guide to the conference evening, plan conduct team presence, good alcohol-free drinks and a safe way home too.
Arranged one-to-one meetings also need a place. A meeting between an exhibitor and a delegate belongs at a numbered table in an open meeting area, not in a hotel suite. Solution: if you schedule one-to-one meetings with Converve, confirmed meetings are planned without overlaps and assigned to tables and rooms in the meeting area you define. Each delegate sees the time and table in their personal agenda. The platform does not handle conduct reports. It makes it predictable where meetings take place. Our page on B2B matchmaking shows how meetings are scheduled.
After the event, ask in the post-event survey whether delegates felt safe and whether they knew how to reach the conduct team. Review the anonymised cases with the committee and update the code, the staffing and the venue plan. A one-page summary for the board closes the cycle.
Conclusion
A useful conduct policy combines clear expectations with a response process that the team can carry out. Provide staffed reporting channels, define who makes decisions and address conflicts of interest in advance. Apply the same expectations to attendees, speakers and sponsors, and ensure staff know how to seek help when an incident occurs.
When the board asks the director of meetings whether all this is worth it, she can point to the numbers. Only half of people who experience harassment at work tell anyone, mainly because they doubt it will help. A code that is visibly enforced is how you change that answer at your event.
You are planning a congress with an exhibition and arranged one-to-one meetings and want times, tables and meeting areas to work together? Get in touch with Converve.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a conference code of conduct include?
A conference code of conduct should include its scope (sessions, exhibition, social events, app and online sessions), expected behaviour, concrete examples of unacceptable behaviour, reporting routes including an anonymous option, who decides on reports, a range of consequences up to removal, and a statement that it applies equally to speakers, sponsors and staff. A 2019 study in PNAS (Foxx et al.) found that 26 per cent of conference codes listed no way to report a violation.
How do attendees report a code of conduct violation?
Good conferences offer several routes: a staffed desk with a quiet room nearby, a phone or text number that works during every programme hour including evening events, an email address or form, and an anonymous option. The Write the Docs response guide recommends replying to reports at conferences within a few hours at most.
Who enforces a code of conduct at a conference?
A small conduct committee decides, usually two or three trained people with no conflict of interest and no commercial relationship to the people involved. Removal from the venue is enforced through the organiser’s rights and by venue security. Police are involved without the reporter’s consent only if someone is in immediate danger.
What happens if a speaker violates the code of conduct?
The same process applies as for any delegate. Possible consequences range from a private conversation to a cancelled session, a recording that is not published, or removal from the event. Organisers should send the code with the invitation and make it part of the speaker agreement. After an invited talk at NeurIPS 2024 that its board said violated the code, NeurIPS announced it would communicate the code clearly to invited speakers.
Is there a free conference code of conduct template?
Yes. The Conference Code of Conduct template at confcodeofconduct.com is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Its own notice says it is not enforceable as it stands, so you need to add your reporting routes, your conduct team and your consequences. For handling reports, the handbook “How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports” by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner (2019) is available free under a Creative Commons licence.
Is a code of conduct legally required for conferences?
We are not aware of a general legal requirement to publish a conference code of conduct. Obligations can come from other sources, for example employers’ duties towards their staff. In the UK, employers have had to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees since 26 October 2024, including harassment by third parties according to EHRC guidance. Have your situation reviewed by a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
