Policies

Inclusion by Design

Scottish Summit is proud to be inclusive by design. Whilst inclusion isn’t something that can ever be ‘completed’ as such, we are proud to build it into our DNA and work towards ensuring everyone has a safe and positive experience.

As per our Code of Conduct, we do not tolerate racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, misogyny, ableism or other discriminatory jokes, language or beliefs. This includes but is not limited to the conference day itself, the preceding hackathons and workshops, the conference feedback forms and social media discussion around the event. Please note that if you find this onerous or otherwise difficult to adhere to, Scottish Summit is not the event for you.

We work with the venues we run to ensure maximum accessibility possible. If you may require assistance on the day, please let us know and we will accommodate you. Gender-neutral and disabled bathrooms are provided where possible based on the venues availability.Scottish Summit would like to remind all attendees that not all disabilities are visible, and that ‘bathroom policing’ in any form is not acceptable.

The venue will be very busy on the day, however, there are quiet areas available at the venue if you feel you need a quieter place.

We understand that large community events, particularly in tech, have a bad name when it comes to inclusivity and diversity, however, we are keen to change that. Not as a ‘box-ticking exercise, but because it is the right thing to do, and because when we involve people from all backgrounds, we learn more and become more.

If you feel your requirements may not be catered for, if you have any concerns or would just like to discuss this with us, please get in touch.

Code of Conduct

The Scottish Summit community is made up of a network of people with a common agenda, cause, and interests, who collaborate by sharing ideas, information, and resources. It is of utmost importance to the Scottish Summit that each and every person attending one of our conferences and events has a positive and rewarding experience and to that end, we invite all sponsors, volunteers, speakers, attendees, vendors, and others (“Participants”) to help us realize a safe, respectful, and positive experience for everyone. When you participate in an event hosted by the Scottish Summit you are contributing to the overall experience, which makes us all accountable to each other.

The Scottish Summit has established this Code of Conduct to provide guidelines to Participants and to ensure that all Participants understand what behaviour is expected, and what behaviour will not be tolerated at a Scottish Summit event. The Scottish Summit expects all Participants to abide by this Code of Conduct at all events. This includes conference-related social events at off-site locations, and in related online communities and social media.

The Scottish Summit is dedicated to providing a harassment-free and inclusive event experience for everyone regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, age, religion, or other protected category. Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR

The Scottish Summit expects those community members will:

  1. Be considerate and respectful to all community members.
  2. Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior, materials, and speech.
  3. Speak up if they observe anything at an event that conflicts with this Code of Conduct. If you are being harassed or feel uncomfortable, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of the Scottish Summitvolunteer staff immediately.

UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR

Unacceptable behaviour from any community member will not be tolerated. Unacceptable behaviour includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Intimidating, harassing, abusive, discriminatory, derogatory, or demeaning speech, materials, or conduct by any Participants of the event and related event activities. Many event venues are shared with members of the public; please be respectful to all patrons of these locations.
  2. Violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person.
  3. Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  4. Personal insults, particularly those related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability.
  5. Photography or recording.
  6. Taking of photos within the event environment for use on social media, without the prior permission of the individuals or owners of the content therein.
  7. Any boisterous, lewd, or offensive behavior or language, including but not limited to using sexually explicit or offensive language, materials or conduct, or any language, behavior, or content that contains profanity, obscene gestures, or racial, religious, or ethnic slurs.

Failure to obey any rules or regulations of the event venue.

CONSEQUENCES OF UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR

Unacceptable behaviour will not be tolerated. Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behaviour is expected to comply immediately. If a Participant engages in unacceptable behaviour, the Scottish Summit may take any action it deems appropriate, including warning or expelling the offender from the event with no refund. For more egregious behaviour, the Scottish Summit may, in its reasonable discretion, temporarily ban or permanently expel a Participant from the event.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU WITNESS OR ARE SUBJECTED TO UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR

If you are subjected to unacceptable behaviour, notice that someone else is being subjected to unacceptable behaviour, or have any other concerns, please notify Scottish Summit Volunteer staff or contact the Event Organisers Mark Christie or Iain Connolly as soon as possible. Scottish Summit Volunteers staff will be available to assist those experiencing unacceptable behaviour to feel safe for the duration of the event. All reports will remain completely confidential.

SESSION RECORDING

Our speakers put significant time and effort into creating and delivering their sessions. Attendees must respect the ownership and originality of that work.

Unless a speaker has given their express permission, attendees must not record, transcribe or substantially reproduce a session for publication or redistribution. This includes using audio or video recordings, transcription services, AI tools or similar technology to turn a session into a blog post, article, social media content, training material or other published work that substantially reproduces the speaker's presentation.

Taking personal notes and sharing brief quotes, ideas or commentary with appropriate attribution is welcomed. The issue is not discussing or sharing what you learned from a session, but reproducing the speaker's work without their permission.

Giving credit to the original speaker does not, by itself, constitute permission to reproduce their session or content.

Recording or transcription for personal use or accessibility purposes is permitted where appropriate, but must not subsequently be published, distributed or used to substantially reproduce the session without the speaker's consent.

Where you are unsure, please ask the speaker first.

ATTRIBUTION

This Code of Conduct is the product of the Scottish Summit’s commitment to create and nurture a welcoming, respectful, and collaborative community, and we thank our Participants for sharing our commitment. The framework of this Code of Conduct was inspired by the Open Source Bridge Code of Conduct, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, and the Google Anti-Harassment Policy, licensed under the Creative Commons Zero License.

Website

Who we are

Our website address is https://scottishsummit.com/

Privacy

Scottish Summit does not use this website to collect or store attendee personal information.

We do not operate user accounts, comments or advertising tracking through the website. Basic technical information may be processed automatically by our website hosting and security providers where necessary to operate and protect the site.

The website may link to external services used for event registration, speaker submissions or other event activities. Information submitted through those services is handled separately and is not collected by this website.

If you have any questions about privacy, please contact contact@scottishsummit.com.

Selection

Volunteer Selection

Scottish Summit depends on volunteers to be able to bring you our events. We have an open volunteer policy that allows anyone to volunteer. During the volunteer recruitment process, the online form is shared via the website and social media. Every person who applies will be accepted into the team. During the process we only gather information on Name, Preferred Track and Email Address, thus giving us volunteers from all backgrounds.

Speaker Selection

Scottish Summit has created a diverse pool of volunteers who will review all sessions in their designated track.

Round 1: Review of sessions by track volunteers. This is a masked process, where the volunteers will only see the session title and description. No names, ages, locations, religion, race or orientation is made available. The sessions will be reviewed and if there is a clear top 10 then these sessions will be approved.

If there is a tie, then the top sessions will be moved to Round 2

Round 2: The previous review process with masked sessions is reviewed by the overspill volunteers who will score the sessions. If there is a clear top 10 these sessions will be approved.

If there is still a tie then the sessions will be moved to Round 3

Round 3: The event organisers will review all information on the tied sessions. This includes the speaker’s details, full session details as well as the promotional video. This will then be scored without bias or prejudice from the event owners.

This will give a final top 10 (or more if the track has more than 10 allocations)

Suitcasing

Suitcasing and Outboarding Policy

Scottish Summit depends on our exhibitors and sponsors for successful events. As such, we are mandating increased measures to protect our exhibitors/sponsors from “suitcasing/outboarding” at our conferences and meetings.

Statement of Intent

In order to protect our valued exhibitors/sponsors and the investment they make in the event, thereby supporting the Scottish Summit mission, our rules strictly prohibit solicitation, “suitcasing” or “outboarding” by attendees who transact or promote business at our conferences and meetings and do NOT have exhibit booths or sponsor investment.

By suitcasing or outboarding the show, an attendee gains an unfair competitive advantage over exhibitors/ sponsors that have invested money and other resources to participate in the events.

What is Suitcasing and Outboarding?

“Suitcasing” and “Outboarding” are unethical parasitic business practices in which non-exhibitors and non-sponsors attempt to gain access to conference attendees. This is either by walking the show promoting/selling products or hosting off-site events during the period of time Scottish Summit is in a given area.

“Suitcasing” refers to those non-participating companies or persons who go to conferences as an attendee but “work the aisles” form their suitcase and solicit business in the aisles, session rooms, or even the lobby area. Examples of this include the distribution of samples, flyers, and other materials to attendees.

“Outboarding” refers to non-participating companies that set up meetings, parties and demos at offsite locations such as hotel hospitality suites or restaurants, and encourage show attendees to leave the conference and show and spend time with them without the prior approval of Scottish Summit.

Examples may include but are not limited to:

  • A non-exhibitor sets up a hospitality room outside the show and/or invites attendees to leave the show and visit their suite.
  • A non-exhibitor sends out alerts to potential customers that while they will not be participating this year they will have personnel walking the show and/or will be offering demos or show specials.
  • A non-exhibitor branding themselves at the event to give the impression that they are an exhibitor or sponsor.
  • A non-exhibitor puts together a webpage with the conference logo and solicits meetings with attendees.
  • A non-exhibitor piggybacks on the activities of a third party such as a vendor or partner who is exhibiting.

What are the Consequences of Suitcasing or Outboarding?

Please note that any attendee at a Scottish Summit conference or meeting, who is observed to be soliciting business in the aisles or other public spaces, or uninvited attendees in another company’s booth, will be asked to leave immediately.

Likewise, known commercial activity conducted from a hotel guest room or hospitality suite, a restaurant or any other public place in proximity to Scottish Summit conferences by non-participating companies, will be shut down if utilizing properties with whichScottish Summit has an agreement. Companies that violate this policy will be given a warning upon Scottish Summit management finding out about said outside event, and potentially run the risk of being banned from participating in future Scottish Summit events.

Data Sharing Policy

Scottish Summit is made possible through the support of our event sponsors. Their support allows us to heavily subsidise the cost of the event and keep it affordable and accessible to the wider community.

As part of our sponsorship arrangements, we may share limited attendee business contact information with event sponsors. We rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis for this sharing.

  • Legitimate Interests: Our legitimate interests are in operating and funding Scottish Summit sustainably and maintaining sponsor relationships that help make the event possible. Sponsors also have a legitimate commercial interest in engaging with relevant business contacts attending the event. We have considered these interests against the privacy rights and reasonable expectations of attendees and provide attendees with a straightforward right to object.
  • Data Minimisation: Only limited business contact information, such as name, email address, company name and job title, may be shared. We do not share accessibility requirements, dietary information or other sensitive or special category personal data with sponsors.
  • Purpose: Sponsors may use the information for relevant follow-up connected with their participation in Scottish Summit and for appropriate business-to-business communications. Each sponsor is responsible for ensuring that its use of attendee information complies with applicable data protection and electronic marketing laws, including UK GDPR and PECR.
  • Security and Sharing: Sponsors must keep attendee information secure and must not sell it or pass it to unrelated third parties.
  • Right to Object: Attendees have the right to object to their information being shared with sponsors at any time. To object, please email contact@scottishsummit.com. This will not affect your ticket or your ability to participate in Scottish Summit. Where information has already been shared, we will pass your objection to the relevant sponsors.
  • Retention: Sponsors should only retain attendee information for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was provided. They may retain minimal suppression information where necessary to ensure that an attendee who has objected is not contacted again.

You can find details of the organisations sponsoring Scottish Summit on our website. You can also contact us at contact@scottishsummit.com to ask which sponsors have received your information. Each sponsor is responsible for its own processing once the information has been received and may provide its own privacy information explaining how it uses your data.

Scottish Summit may revise this Data Sharing Policy from time to time. Where a change materially affects how attendee information is used or shared, we will take reasonable steps to make attendees aware of it.