Idea: how to ensure awareness of Codes of Conduct

Loncon 3 seemed to do quite well with its Code of Conduct; it was available on the website and reprinted in the front of the convention pocket guide. As far as I'm aware, there were only a handful of incidents reported to the convention staff that required it to be applied.

However, I've seen discussion about the convention that suggests that some attendees still did not understand what the CoC was meant to set out in terms of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. I've been giving some thought to how we might ensure that everyone at a convention is clearly and unambiguously aware of the CoC, and more importantly, can be proven to be aware of it.

At Loncon 3, registration involved being handed your badge. How about if instead we handed over a sealed envelope containing the badge, printed up as below. (The box with my name in is an indication that there would be a sticker identifying whose badge was inside).



For this to work, you have to plan this from the outset, and ensure that:

- for online memberships, anyone joining has to click on a 'I agree with the Code of Conduct' tick-box in order to join;

- for direct sales, there is a 'sign to agree our Code of Conduct' box on the membership form.

This makes it absolutely clear both when you join the convention and when you pick up your badge that the Code of Conduct applies to you.

I've put in the refund option because I think this strengthens the convention's position: it allows someone a final chance to say 'no, I don't want to be bound by this'. Of course, as it excludes what we lawyers call consequential expenses (e.g. travel and hotel) I doubt that many people will exercise it, but the fact that it's there helps avoid arguments about the validity of the 'open the envelope and you're agreeing' notice.

(For those interested in the legality: this isn't a shrink-wrap licence situation, as the notice on the envelope is just confirming what members have expressly signed up to when they joined. Rather, it's actually adding an exit clause to the membership contract.)

Future Humanity: another take

I didn't manage to get to any of the Speculative Biology items at Loncon 3 (usual excuse: too few hours in day plus other commitments) so I had to settle for reading this very good write-up in Scientific American. That led me to the work of Memo Kosemen, who has put a huge amount of effort into imagining the fauna of Snaiad, a world where animals have evolved into ecological niches familiar to us but on the basis of a very different fundamental body plan.

It turns out that Kosemen also wrote All Tomorrows, a work rather in the vein of Dougal Dixon's Man after Man, although of rather greater scope. With Koseman's permission it's been made available online (large PDF); if I had to give a quick summary, it would be "Stapledon's Last and First Men as rewritten by Stephen Baxter and illustrated by the hybrid offspring of Wayne Barlow and H.R. Giger." Far more imagination than in a dozen bumpy-forehead-alien TV series, and these are all meant to be descended from humans.