---
layout: post
title: 'Program Committee Code of Practice'
status: publish
type: post
published: true
categories: news
tags: '2020'
---

The Program Committee is the group responsible for choosing and scheduling all of the great talks you enjoy at SeaGL. This year the committee steering the Program consists of:

* Nathan Handler
* Rachel Kelly
* Alison Yu
* Megan Guiney
* Bart Massey
* Lyz Joseph

## Code of Practice

This is what we believe in and how we operate as we go about our business of building the best possible program and schedule for [SeaGL](/).

As members of the SeaGL program committee and proposal reviewers, aside from the [SeaGL Code of Conduct](/code_of_conduct), we also agree to operate according to these values and statements:

### Values

We believe in the importance and power of free and open source software.

We believe in putting the needs of our audience and our community before our needs or those of our employers.

We believe in boosting the voices of others above our own.

We believe in mentoring and helping to create the speakers, leaders, and contributors of the future.

We believe in supporting diversity in thoughts and experiences in the talks and speakers we select for SeaGL.

We believe in creating and protecting a SeaGL environment that welcomes all people in safety and comfort.

### But what does that mean? Like, practically?

How are these values reflected in how we operate as program committee members and reviewers? There could be many different ways, obviously, but here are some examples of what we will do our best to do:

* Promote the CFP to all our communities
* Seek out unreached/underrepresented/underserved communities and advocate for them and their talks
* As time allows, assist people with their proposals, making it easy for them to propose and what they propose a higher quality
* Do our best to do all initial reviews without knowing who submitted them, within the constraints of the system
* Only vote on talks we feel qualified to review
* Abstain from voting on talks where we made substantial contributions to the the proposal (but we can advocate during the review call)
* As much as possible, don't allow our personal or professional biases (or those of our employer) to influence our talk reviews
* After proposals are accepted, and as time allows, assist people with their talks to help ensure that what they deliver is valuable to the audience

We're all pleased to have the opportunity to serve the SeaGL community and share this Code of Practice with you. It's our hope that we can serve as a model for other free and open source events, who can publish their own Codes of Practice.

To help with that, don't forget that everything published here on the SeaGL website is licensed [CC BY-SA](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). We encourage you to copy, modify, and redistribute this Code of Practice however you and your event need.
