Wait are we currently roasting two different tech events over not having safety policies?
I'm in 
If you really want to go hard on this, a question you need to be asking is "I need to protect myself....if I am chosen to speak, will this event support me in requiring masks be worn in the room while I'm speaking?"
If that answer isn't yes, you've just drawn a very important line for others, and I hope you'll share that answer. The assumption is that if you're providing programming for a conference or event that you're under its protection. There are many shades of safety between universal mask-wearing and nothing at all.
covid, personal risk evaluations
@pamela my line is personally at universal mask wearing outside of specific designated areas bc i don’t trust an institution that doesn’t have that strict of a policy is going to 1) make sure the filtration is good enough that people masking shortly before i showed up would actually be a meaningful risk reduction 2) actually ensure everyone who is asked to mask has a mask they can wear that works for them
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@pamela yeah that seems like a much better / more reasonable policy! its similar to what a convention i (virtually, but the convention is hybrid) volunteer for has done the last two years — con spaces are everyone masks but public spaces may include non-masking congoers so be careful in lobby, hallways etc & DIY filtration in areas with lots of people (corsi-rosenthal boxes) which was a bit of an accessibility tradeoff bc of the noise but
I think 2022 infections were pretty low and almost entirely people who reported going to the hotel bar as part of track and trace, so there was an extra warning about that in this spring’s Covid packet
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@pamela i still wasn’t willing to risk the travel but i still trust them as an org and want to keep supporting them, which is a big diff from some other cons
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@Satsuma yeah the effort is so important there! And understanding thought processes can be so valuable. Even if people just drop things entirely, I want to know why. I want to know they've thought about it, and considered the problem areas, and communicated about those problem areas to first time participants. Even if you can't go then you'll know they aren't just winging stuff.
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@pamela yeah exactly! and even if eg. going to their online between con things would have the same risk level regardless not having an underlying subtext of “making sure you don’t die seems like too much effort” vastly improves the experience
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@Satsuma shocked that more people don't want to just take that easy win tbh
re: covid, personal risk evaluations
@Satsuma yeah bsdcan is everyone masks, everyone in an N95, except that for lunches we didn't have a safe place to put everyone except the lobby so the hallways are a risk we try but can't really avoid. Which means some people still can't go, myself included, because you have to know to kind of back into the venue to avoid those areas. We tried to be really open about that this year....that we didn't know yet how good the ventilation is, that there's a table with coffee in the lobby, etc., and we're not meeting every need, and these are lower numbers safe, not properly safe. Now we have more information to provide, at least, about what CO2 levels we were getting and how people behaved.
The bar is on the damn floor, though. "We know this one room is ventilated well and only the speaker is allowed to remove their mask except to drink within the classrooms" is miles above the "we will follow all local regulations" we're getting elsewhere.