PyCon 2013 forking and dongles incident

PyCon 2013 was held in Santa Clara in March 2013. The conference had a code of conduct in place (as did PyCon 2012, and the Python Software Foundation now requires it of their conferences).

PyCon attendee and exhibitor employee Adria Richards publicly shamed and reported inappropriate behaviour to PyCon organisers publicly via twitter, including a photo of the attendees in question:

Yesterday, I publicly called out a group of guys at the PyCon conference who were not being respectful to the community. ...

I tweeted a photo of the guys behind me: Not cool. Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles. Right behind me #pycon

I publicly asked for help with addressing the problem: Can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I’m in lightning talks, top right near stage, 10 rows back #pycon

PyCon organizers spoke with the attendees and issued them with a warning but did not expel them or take other action. One of the attendees, "mr-hank" on Hacker News, endorsed both PyCon's actions and Adria's decision to report his comments to staff and verified that no sanctions were imposed by PyCon. He also stated that he was let go by his employer -- later confirmed in a blog post from them -- and claimed that his comments on "forking" were not intended to be sexual in nature.

Responses

• "It’s only been a year or so…" by dnoller, Jesse Noller's wife. She talks about the incident.
• On PyCon, SendGrid, and sexism: a linkspam with commentary by kaberett
• On PyCon2013 and Equality by Jason Stirk
• On PyCon, Sexism, and Responsibilities by James A. Rosen
• "Good for +Adria Richards for speaking up about inappropriate humor..."  by Avdi Grimm
• Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost by Amanda Blum
  • Response to the above post stating that the Tone argument is being applied to Richards' actions, even by apparently supportive parties, because she is Black
  • Some Of Us Are Brave, Honest, & Transparent: The Adria Richards Edition by Robert Mitchell: "The real issue isn't that Richards named and shamed two people. The real issue here is that Richards made foes along the way and those foes smell blood"
  • Digging Beneath the Surface: That Amanda Blum Article on Adria Richards is Not What It Seems - Gayle L. McDowell finds that Blum's assessment of Richards' personality is not backed up by an impartial review of the evidence
• On the Pycon Incident by D. Keith Robinson
• Apparently We're Not Ready to Be Adults About Anything - chriszf's posterous
• Bold Ideas Uttered Publicly - Christie Koehler
• How Adria Richards Spoke for Me - Dani Alexis

Backlash

TRIGGER WARNING This article or section, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

MORE INFO WANTED re reports of the incident on 4chan, Reddit and Hacker News and resulting backlash. This may be worth its own page.

• Racial slurs: a Twitter user (NOT involved) stated that other Twitter users were tweeting racial slurs to Richards.
• Threats of violence:
  • a Twitter user (NOT involved) paraphrased threats of violence towards Richards which were apparently later deleted by Hacker News.
  • Adria's home address was posted on twitter, along with a death threat and a grisly photoshopped image. (severe trigger warning: news report; original tweet; account has been suspended)
• DDOS: SendGrid, Richards employer, was DDOSed. An unattributed paste claims that Anonymous has obtained SendGrid's client list and initiated a campaign of harassment against SendGrid and others to whom they have financial ties. SendGrid later reports on the downtime, categorically denying that there was any breach of customer data.
• Dismissal: On 21 Mar, SendGrid announced on their blog, twitter account, and Facebook page that Richards had been fired. They follow up with a second blog post about the "Difficult Situation":

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs. What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. ...

A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

Media Coverage

• "Adria Richards fired by SendGrid for calling out developers on Twitter from Venture Beat
• Daily Dot: 'How a "big dongle" joke brought out the worst of the Internet'
• Feministe: Standing with Adria
• 'Sexism' Public-Shaming Via Twitter Leads To Two People Getting Fired (Including The Shamer) - Forbes
• SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas - Mashable
• Why Asking What Adria Richards Could Have Done Differently Is The Wrong Question - Forbes
• The Firing Of Adria Richards Looks Like Kneejerk Appeasement To The Troll Armies - Rachel Sklar writing for SFGate
• Adria Richards' Story Shows How Sexual Harassment Endures in Tech Community - Valerie Aurora in Slate
• Donglegate: Why the tech community hates feminists
• "'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the internet shaming of Lindsey Stone" (The Guardian) has a section about the incident interviewing both sides about the incident and the aftermath.

Richards' reaction

• On 27 March, 10 days after the original incident, Richard issued a statement of her own, calling for dialog to address the problems surrounding diversity in tech.

See also

• PyCon 2013 expulsion incident an unrelated incident other than that it occured at the same conference and attracted far less public commentary.