Convention policies

Introduction

Members attending Odyssey 2010 agree to abide by each of the following policies while within convention areas and while participating in convention activities as a condition of membership. The committee have been authorised by the Chair to issue warnings if they observe any violations of these policies. Serious or repeat offenders will have their Odyssey 2010 membership revoked without refund, and will be asked to leave convention areas immediately. In any dispute over the interpretation or enforcement of any policy, the decision of the Odyssey 2010 Chair shall be final. We reserve the right to refuse membership to any person.

General conduct

Our conduct policy is intended to help everyone have a safe, sane, and fun convention.

The Odyssey 2010 committee asks that you show respect and courtesy toward your fellow Convention members, the hotel, and its other guests. Consideration for the safety, rights and feelings of others will help to create a positive experience for everyone.

Members must wear their convention badge at all times while in convention areas or participating in convention activities, and to display their badge upon request by convention staff. This includes but is not limited to gophers doing door checks, Green Room, Ops staff and any committee member. Badges may also be required for late night access to the hotel and may need to be shown to the hotel security staff on duty at that time.

There will be an admin charge for the replacement of lost badges so please keep your badge safe.

Laser pointers and similar devices are not permitted to be carried within the boundaries of the convention, except when required for use in a programme item.

Privacy

We take your privacy seriously and have set out below how we intend to use the personal data we have collected from you:

Email Address
We would very much appreciate it if you entrusted us with your email address. This will be made available only to a very restricted number of convention staff and will be our main (and cheapest) way to contact you. We will use your email address to:

  1. Contact you for convention related purposes. Only convention staff authorised by the Chair will have access to your email address and they will use the supplied email address to contact you on convention business only (unless they are friendly enough with you to already have your email address as a personal contact).
  2. If you have agreed to participate in the Odyssey 2010 programme (and thank you for doing so!), we will be supplying your email address to each of your fellow participants in that programme item to allow you all to discuss and prepare for the item.
  3. At the request of the 2011 and 2012 Eastercon committees, we will send you an email on their behalf telling you all about their Eastercon and invite you to join up. We will only do this once for each of them, with the 2011/2012 committees deciding when they would like the emails to go out.

You may opt out of items 2 and/or 3 above by emailing or writing to the Chair, whose contact details are listed on the Contact Us page. Do bear in mind however, that it adds to the burden of the programme team if they are unable to fully delegate programme item preparation to the participants or contact participants quickly via email when necessary. If you are unable to provide an email address that can be shared for programme participation purposes, you will not be able to participate in the programme.

I would also encourage you to allow us to email you regarding the 2011/2012 Eastercons. Future Eastercons benefit hugely from your early support, as do their members from being able to purchase a membership at a lower rate so please allow us to remind you to sign up for them.

Postal address
We require you to supply your full postal address as a condition of joining the convention, but access to this is restricted to a small group of convention staff that the Chair has authorised to have access to this information. We will use your mailing address to:

  1. Contact you for convention related purposes if you have not supplied us with an email address (or if emails to you bounce). Only convention staff authorised by the Chair will have access to postal address and they will use the supplied postal address to contact you on convention business only (unless they are friendly enough with you to already have your postal address as a personal contact).
  2. If you have requested a paper copy of the Progress Reports, these will be mailed to the address you have supplied.

There is no opt out on item 1 above as we need to be able to contact you, but you may opt out of receiving paper Progress Reports by accessing your membership record and un-ticking the box that indicates that you would like to receive paper Progress Reports.

Telephone number
It is very useful for us to have your telephone number, as an alternative or urgent point of contact. Only convention staff authorised by the Chair will have access to your telephone number and they will only use the supplied number(s) to contact you on convention business (unless they are friendly enough with you to already have your number as a personal contact).

Credit card details
We do not see or have access to any credit card information when bookings are made online. For offline bookings, we blackout credit card details on paper membership forms as soon as they are processed.

Full name and badge name
If you haven’t specified what you want your badge name to be, by default, your badge name will be your full name. You can change this by accessing your membership record and updating it to your preferred badge name.

On your membership form, we asked you to select what name we should show on our online and paper publications. Your options were:

  • Nothing
  • Badge Name
  • Full Name and Badge

If you didn't spot this at the time, or would like to change your selection, please access your membership record and update it for your preferred disclosure. For the sake of simplicity, we will be applying your selection to ALL our publications. For clarity, these publications are:

  • Online and paper versions of the progress report
  • Online membership list
  • Online and paper versions of any at-con or post-con souvenir book

Please do allow us to include your name in our publications; we are proud to have you as a member of Odyssey 2010. However, if you would like to withhold your name from our future publications (you don't need to give us a reason), please do so by accessing your membership record and updating your selection to reflect this. Again, for the sake of simplicity, regretfully we are unable to accept different selections for different publications and will not being able to apply your selection retrospectively.

Other personal information
If you have supplied us with hotel related information and requests (food allergies, room location etc), we will pass these on to the relevant hotel official at an appropriate time. The hotel liaison team will be monitoring the hotel's responses to your requests, so it is likely they will be also be accessing this information throughout the convention.

Membership records
Paper membership forms are retained in the custody of the membership secretary until after the convention. At that point they will be securely shredded. The membership database will be retained intact until the request from the 2012 committee to email a reminder to our members has been actioned or until the 2012 Eastercon committee has confirmed to in writing that they do not wish to send an email to our members.

Programme participation

We are anticipating having a large programme with several different strands and in order to effectively prepare for this we need all programme participants to be able to communicate with the programme team and their fellow programme participants via email. Regretfully, if you are unable to provide an email address that can be shared for this purpose, you will not be able to participate in the programme.

Programme participants will need to bring their own laptops if they require one for their programme item, preloaded with any software required, but a projector and screen will be provided as long as you let us know you need these items beforehand.

Care of children

Our overriding policy regarding the care of children at the convention is that parents and guardians attending the convention with their children remain responsible for their supervision and behaviour at all times.

To assist parents and guardians, we have drawn up a detailed policy, giving information on the classification of programme items, children's behaviour, and the professional childcare facilities that will be available at Odyssey. The policy is available as a PDF file here.

Photography and video

We reserve the right to restrict photography and video recording in any part of the convention’s function space. This includes but is not restricted to, the room designated as a crèche and any part of the masquerade event other than the publicised photo call. You are asked to restrict any flash photography to the first few minutes of panels and talks and to avoid blocking any aisles with your camera equipment. You may not take photographs during the masquerade; there will be a planned opportunity to photograph masquerade participants in their costumes during the event.

Except for these specific restrictions and any further restrictions we publicise at the beginning of any programme item, all members in attendance at Odyssey 2010 should be aware that they may be photographed or recorded at any time while in public areas. The term “public areas” covers all parts of the hotel other than bedroom space and washroom facilities.

We appreciate that some members are uncomfortable about appearing in photographs or video recordings and we will be offering these members a brightly coloured ribbon to wear on their badge so that photographers can easily spot them and have an opportunity to avoid including them in their photographs and video recordings.

We ask all our members to please be courteous and avoid taking photographs or video recordings of anyone who is wearing one of these ribbons or otherwise requests that their picture not be taken.

To help everyone easily locate photographs and recordings from Odyssey 2010, please tag any items you upload with “Odyssey2010.”

Odyssey 2010 is a private social function for members only, and as such, is closed to all press and media members and organisations. Making photographic, audio or video recordings of any convention event for investigative or commercial purposes is strictly forbidden.

Press and media members who want to arrange a statement, press release or interview with guests or members of the convention should contact our publicity manager at publicity@odyssey2010.org with their request well before the start of the convention. We are unlikely to be able to assist you without prior arrangement.

Weapons

No weapons or realistic imitations of any kind without permission of the ops manager are permitted on site at the Convention. Props for the masquerade that fall into this category must be wrapped when taken to and from the masquerade. The ops manager will say 'no' if they think there is any chance that your weapon can injure anyone or be mistaken for something that can injure. The chair will back the ops manager's decision in all cases.