Hackathons/Handbook/Emergencies

= Emergency Information = Make sure people know how to get help when something goes wrong! Pre-planning in this area is very important, and will save a lot of time, stress, and effort, in the event of an emergency.

Recommended Pre-plans

 * Publish a list of local emergency phone numbers on the event wikipage, and also distribute it to all event organizers.
 * Provide info about the nearest hospital - contact info, directions, and information on how they would deal with international patients.
 * Choose an emergency contact number, that will be given to all event attendees.
 * The number should be a local number that will be monitored 24 hours by a local organizer, or rotating shift of local organizers.
 * Event attendees can call this number if they become ill, have legal trouble, there is a sexual assault, they are lost in the city, etc.
 * Pre-plan how the organizers and attendees should respond in various situations:
 * Does your area have high probability for natural disasters? You should publish what to do in case of the event (examples: earthquake, flood, tsunami, hurricane).
 * Fire at the event.
 * Terrorist related event nearby.
 * Violence, a fight, or harassment taking place at the event.
 * Have all participants agree during registration to the Friendly Space Policy.
 * How will you communicate with your participants in the case of a larger-scale emergency (Telegram? IRC? email?)
 * You might consider assigning someone the role of "safety." Their job will be to think about the event from a risk management perspective.

Examples of emergencies from previous events

 * Participants needed to be taken to the hospital
 * Participants needed onsite doctors visits
 * Fire alarms in the middle of sessions
 * Fire alarms in the middle of the night

Specifics

 * Post safety information for participants. Example: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2017/emergency
 * Emergency phone number should be posted on the event page and emailed to participants
 * Every single participant agree in advance to the Friendly Space Policy
 * Have radios for organizers to find each-other and communicate easily
 * Have multiple types of insurance covering the event, know what types of insurance your venue has, different countries may have different legal requirements
 * Don't allow people who are not registered into the events or social events without approval from organizers
 * Require the venue to provide an emergency plan / information. If they don't have one created they should create one for your event.
 * Have an evacuation plan and announce it to participants during the event opening. Where are the exits? Where should people go?