Some activities or events at conferences, or conferences themselves, are known to come with a high risk of harassment occuring. This page is a non-exhaustive list of these, and suggests some mitigation you can do.
Note: not all the mitigation strategies are simultaneously possible. You will have to decide which ones are right for your event.
Photography competitions
Photography at geek events is often a concern for women, as they are disproportionately chosen as subjects and sometimes find themselves stealth-photographed. Photography competitions increase the incentive to take eye-catching photographs of the conference, which increases the pressure on women.
Strategies:
- make it clear in your event policy what kinds of photography aren't allowed (eg, photography without asking, photography continuing after the subject said to stop)
- don't run a photography competition
- run a competition focusing on the local area or sights or other non-human attractions
- limit it to crowd shots
- require that any person in a portrait (non-crowd) shot be explicitly asked for consent for a competition photo, and provide a feedback mechanism to ask for shots to be removed
- separately seek a model release from any person who you intend to use in promotional material (eg, next year's website, slide decks about your amazing conference)
Costume and cosplay events
Events where delegates are intoxicated
Intoxication (usually drunkeness) both genuinely lowers inhibitions and provides people with an excuse for acting badly even if they genuinely knew better. Additionally, intoxication affects people's ability to defend themselves, and some intoxicants including alcohol cause amnesia. Women may be deliberately invited/coerced into drinking a lot of alcohol especially to make them more vulneable.
Strategies:
- make it clear that your event policy covers social events
- don't serve alcohol or other intoxicants
- serve alcohol or other intoxicants only at some of your events
- serve a substantial meal before serving (much) alcohol
- don't serve alcohol or intoxicants to seated people at tables
- limit the servings of alcohol and intoxicants in any of: number of serves, type of serve (eg wine and beer but not spirits)
- have an appropriate number of sober, empowered duty officers, conference staff and security staff at social events (your local jurisdiction may provide ratios, but 1:50 is probably a minimum)
Beach, pool and sauna events
Beach, pool, sauna and similar events involve people wearing less clothes than most usually would, and are environments where people have been trained to be very aware of how their body looks. (See Body image.) In addition, some people may regard the event as a sexual one, feel that they are sexualized, or simply feel uncomfortable doing something that they usually reserve for lovers or close friends (if from cultures where one doesn't routinely sauna, for example).
Strategies:
- make it clear that your event policy covers social events
- don't hold beach, pool, sauna or similar events
- have a nearby well-resourced space where people can wear their street wear and feel that they are still participating (such as a barbecue or a game on a large lawn near a pool)
Challenge, dare or auction events
These events are where people are asked to do things in front of an audience that are unusual, difficult, confronting, out-of-character and so on. Sometimes this is done as a charity auction, for example.
Strategies:
- make it clear that your event policy covers social events
- don't hold dare events
- hold alternative fundraisers like raffles or online donations that don't make people choose between doing something they are uncomfortable with, and raising less money for the cause
- hold such events at a time when participants and the audience are (fairly) sober
- ask for volunteers well before the event, rather than pressuring people into it during the event
- ask participants to specify their own challenge before the event
- pre-plan your event and each challenge so that people aren't being pressured by an audience into something they haven't had time to think about
- don't have challenges that play to common concerns about appearance, attractiveness and sexualization (examples might include, eg, "pretend you are taking a shower", or "pretend to have an orgasm" or "take your clothes off"!)
- don't allow photography of the challenges