> Certainly her employers don't deserve any blame, though
To be clear, SendGrid is her employer and that's exactly who sergiotapia sent an e-mail to saying he was going to boycott and recommended that others do the same.
I'm clear on that. This whole issue is deeply entwined with philosophy which makes it all a bit amorphous. From one perspective, you could argue that it's moral to boycott SendGrid if it leads to "positive" consequences, for example.
Are we really arguing that people should keep silent when things like this happen? When a rule is violated? That they should only respond after it's taken place?
Personally, and I think this might be the case with most people here, I'm most worried by the public shaming of the two individuals. Them being kicked out of PyCon isn't as much a concern to me.
I think the culture that she's implicitly promoting is ultimately a suspicious and hostile one where there is no principle of charity but instead there's the inverse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity). And not by the fact that she reported it to PyCon organizers, but by the fact that she then escalated it to the public. In this instance, I think she should have kept their identities anonymous in her tweets and blog post.
There are instances where I can imagine revealing their identities would be the right thing to do, but this doesn't come close to it by my judgement (for all that's worth).
I am no fan of the behavior ascribed to these guys, but the PyCon code of conduct also says no "harassing photography or recording" and, in my book, her blasting a photograph to multiple thousands of followers is an intentional invocation of a shitstorm to attempt to harm them. PyCon also is on record as not being down with the "public shaming" thing, too; see their policies regarding it.
The two guys are unprofessional assholes. 100% agreed. But by my lights, she is too.
Her initial response was a twitter message with the pycon hashtag and a picture of the "culprits". It was demanding a lynch mob resolution. She never directly replied to or messaged pycon staff, though she had the wherewithal to search up the code of conduct.
To be clear, SendGrid is her employer and that's exactly who sergiotapia sent an e-mail to saying he was going to boycott and recommended that others do the same.