The Code of Conduct

Every person in the room was selected. You were invited because someone vouched for you, and because the editorial committee agreed. The same is true of everyone you will meet. Treat that as the baseline assumption. The room is the product. You are part of the product.

noma operates off the record by default. Conversations, ideas, attendee identities, and anything observed inside the room remain inside the room unless explicit permission is given by the person involved.

This applies to everything: dinners, sessions, side conversations, and the hallway between them. It applies to social media during the edition, after the edition, and in perpetuity. It applies to messaging apps, group chats, and journalistic notebooks.

If you want to share something publicly, ask first. The default answer is no.

Members of the press attend noma as peers, not as observers. Their work is welcome; their reporting is governed by the same rules as anyone else’s writing. Coverage that names individuals, quotes private conversations, or describes the room without permission is a violation.

The editorial committee designates one journalist per edition with explicit access to write a single feature, published after the edition closes, with quote approval. All other coverage operates under the same confidentiality standard as the rest of the room.

We expect the room to be the best version of itself. That means:

• Disagreement is welcome. Cruelty is not.
• Curiosity is welcome. Performance is not.
• Selling is fine over coffee. Pitching from a stage is not — there is no stage.

Harassment, intimidation, and discrimination of any kind end an invitation immediately and permanently. We will not warn, mediate, or relitigate. The room is too small to negotiate with people who don’t belong in it.

Each member may issue a limited number of referrals per edition. A referral is not an invitation — it is a sponsorship. When you refer someone, you are telling the editorial committee that this person belongs in the room, and you are staking your judgment on it.

Members who refer people who violate this code will have their referral privileges revoked. Members who refer people who consistently elevate the room will be given more.

Violations of this code result in the revocation of the current invitation and any future ones. We will not publish names. We will not explain decisions to the violator’s network. We will simply stop inviting them, and the people who referred them, and we will trust the room to notice.

This is the only enforcement mechanism noma has. It is sufficient.

This document is short because the principle is short: the room exists because everyone inside it has agreed to protect it. The rules above are the floor, not the ceiling. The ceiling is your own judgment about what would make someone else regret being in a room with you.

We trust that judgment. That is why you were invited.