Managing Your Privacy at #OpenEd24
The 2024 Open Education Conference is an opportunity to connect and share with fellow members of the field. The conference has been designed with many opportunities to see and interact with other participants while also making space for those who prefer to participate more privately.
This post is dedicated to providing information about what to expect in terms of the technology at the conference and how participants can manage their privacy.
SCHED
The primary conference platform is Sched. You must be logged into a Sched account in order to access session links and videos. Your Sched account uses the name and email you provided at registration by default and you can choose to share additional information about yourself by adding a profile. Read Sched’s Privacy Policy.
Attendee profiles are private by default for new accounts. If you have an existing account under the same email address, your previous settings and profile information will apply.
To edit your Sched profile, use the following steps:
Hover over your profile image next to the menu.
Click “Profile” to update your profile information, including name, bio, and social links.
Click “Settings” to make your account public and enable features such as chat.
If you choose to make your profile public, others will be able to see you in the public attendees list, view your profile information, and see which sessions you have added to your schedule (email addresses are not shown in your profile). We encourage making profiles public for those that feel comfortable doing so, since it is a great way to network and share with others. It also allows you to engage in Sched’s built-in chat feature.
Note to speakers: All speaker profiles will display publicly on the speakers list regardless of your profile visibility setting. However, your personal schedule and attendee activities will remain private.
Zoom & Recordings
All live hybrid and virtual conference sessions will be held using the video conferencing software Zoom. Concurrent sessions will be held as Zoom meetings. Plenary sessions will be held as Zoom webinars. Read Zoom’s Privacy Statement.
When joining a live session, you may be asked to “register” for the session in Zoom by entering a name and email. This is entirely separate from your conference registration, and you may enter a screen name or alternate email during this step if you wish. If you need to change your display name in a Zoom session, you can change it yourself by following these instructions, or you can send a private message to the host.
Most Zoom sessions are recorded and published, but your video and audio will not be captured on the recording unless you choose to unmute your camera or microphone. There will be clear notifications when recording is turned on and off. Cameras and microphones are automatically muted upon entering each meeting. Do not enable them unless you consent to being recorded.
Chat transcripts ARE NOT considered part of the Zoom recording. The chat will not be published after the session (unless otherwise clearly specified at the start of the session), but you are welcome to copy and paste any information you would like to save for personal use.
Note: The conference is aware of concerns raised about whether Zoom is using meeting data to train artificial intelligence. While Zoom has addressed this in a blog post, others believe the response may not be sufficient. The conference has decided to continue using Zoom this year but will remain cognizant of the implications of AI in our technology decisions.
YOUTUBE
Pre-recorded session videos and live session recordings are published in YouTube, which is a Google product. Read Google’s Privacy & Terms. Videos are embedded in Sched, and do not require either creating or logging into a Google account in order to view them. However, because of how Sched encodes the YouTube embedding, YouTube may still use some cookies. We have submitted a feature request to Sched to permit the use of YouTube’s “Enhanced Privacy Mode.”
DISCORD
Discord is a private social space that attendees can optionally join. While this year’s conference platform, Sched, offers a built-in chat feature, the conference will continue to support Discord as an alternative social space as we have for the last three years. Read Discord’s Privacy Policy and Carl-bot’s Privacy Policy.
Messages you send in Discord are available to anyone who is a member of the server. The invitation link will only be shared with registered attendees, although the conference does not formally verify that those who join have a valid conference registration. Messages you send will be available at least through December 31, 2024. You may delete your messages at any time.
You are in control of your username and profile photo in Discord. The conference strongly encourages the use of your real name for this server so that others can identify you. However, we do not formally enforce the use of real names. The conference reserves the right to “kick” anyone from the server at any time for any reason, including suspicious activity.
Note that Discord offers both text and audio/video channels. While Discord only captures your audio if you are actively connected to a voice channel, we recommend keeping Discord on mute just in case. You are muted when there is a diagonal line through the microphone icon.
OUR PRIVACY POLICY
Last but not least, we want to remind you of the conference’s Privacy Policy. This policy is the overarching policy of the New Venture Fund—which is the legal entity that houses SPARC, the current administrative home of the Open Education Conference. Use of your data within the bounds of this privacy policy is governed by the Open Education Conference Board of Directors in accordance with the conference’s Strategic Vision.
Under the conference’s Sponsorship Policy, personally identifiable information about attendees is not shared as part of sponsorship agreements. While sponsors or other vendors may be able to access the information you choose to share with all attendees in the conference platform, the conference does not sell the personal information of attendees.
