1. SCOPE

Welcome to Vancouver Start Week’s privacy policy. Vancouver Startup Week is operated by the non-profit, volunteer-driven Vancouver Startup Society (“VSW”).

This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of VSW so when we refer to “We”, “Us”, or “Our” in this Privacy Policy, We are referring to VSW.

VSW is committed to protecting your personal information. We invite you to read this Privacy Policy, which explains the types of information collected and created in connection with Vancouver Start Week and its related events, how and why we use such information, who we share it with, and your legal rights.

Unless indicated otherwise, this Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information we collect or use in relation to the following services (collectively, the “Services”):

• Vancouver Startup Week and its related events;
• VSW’s website and any VSW applications;
• online surveys relating to Vancouver Startup Week;
• emails sent via the Vancouver Startup Week newsletter;
• messages sent via the Vancouver Startup Week support portal; and
• Vancouver Startup Week official social media channels.

Personal information processed in connection with the Services is controlled by VSW.

2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

When we provide the Services, we collect and receive information in several different ways. In many cases, you choose what information to provide, although some information is required for us to provide you with the Services.

2.1. Directly from you, or approved third parties.

We collect a variety of information from you when you provide it to us directly, when we request it from you, or when you give us permission to get it from a third-party source.

• Attendee registration information. When you register to attend Vancouver Startup Week, you must provide us with basic information such as name, email address, company, job title, the primary reason for attending VSW and the industry you are in. We also give you the option to provide additional information.
• Volunteer registration information. When you register to volunteer at Vancouver Startup Week, you must provide us with basic information such as name, address, email address, and telephone number. We also give you the option to provide additional information.
• Payment and credit card information. When purchasing tickets to attend Vancouver Startup Week, you must provide our payment providers with your name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card, debit card or bank information. This information will only be shared with third parties such as our ticketing provider, Stripe, Square, and Whova, who perform tasks required to complete the purchase transaction.
• Vancouver Startup Week app profile information. To attend Vancouver Startup Week, you may download a Vancouver Startup Week app. You will have the option of providing us with additional profile information in the Vancouver Startup Week app, such as name and email address, and whether you want your profile information to be discoverable within the app by other attendees and partners of Vancouver Startup Week. Certain profile information may be included on our vanstartupweek.ca page.
• Vancouver Startup Week survey responses. We may ask you to participate in optional surveys regarding your experience at Vancouver Startup Week in order to help us improve the event and for related commercial purposes.
• Attendee Support customer messaging software. So that we may provide customer services and respond to and resolve any enquiries or complaints.
• Third-party social media accounts. If you choose to connect your social media account(s) with Vancouver Startup Week’s social media account(s), we may receive certain information from that account, such as your title, picture, and other information you authorize.

2.2. From your browser or device.

We automatically collect certain information from your browser or device when you use certain Services or read a message from us.

For example, we collect:

• data regarding the device you are using, such as its unique identifier and operating system; logs will be recorded by our servers based on the information sent from your app or browser;
• information automatically as you navigate through our websites using cookies and other tracking technologies. (Information collected automatically may include usage details, email addresses, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies).

Information may be recorded by cookies and similar technologies when you use the Services.

2.3. From public sources.

We also collect publicly available information from your social media accounts, such as the number of followers you have on your Twitter account.

3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use your information in order to provide, operate, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services, including:

3.1. Providing and improving the requested Services.

We use your personal information as necessary to run Vancouver Startup Week, such as to register attendees, issue tickets, facilitate information sharing with partners, and provide you with relevant connections and content during Vancouver Startup Week based on this information.

3.2. Communicating with you.

We use your personal information to contact you regarding your registration to attend, volunteer, or speak at Vancouver Startup Week, to notify you of any changes to our policies and practices, for commercial, sales, or investment purposes, and to respond to any requests or inquiries you may submit to us. If you subscribe to marketing, such as newsletters, we will use your information as described below. To opt out of our newsletters, please click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of marketing emails from us or alternatively email us via the contact info below. We may collect information from these communications to improve our Services and for the training and development of our staff.

3.3. Marketing.

If you opt-in to receive marketing communications from us, we will use your personal information for outreach and marketing, such as to send you information about our future Events and to exhibit attending companies. You can opt-out of these communications by using the unsubscribe links in our communications or by changing your Vancouver Startup Week app settings. We may also use your information in order to market the Events. For example, we sometimes use your image in our published list of Events attendees. If you want to object to this use, please contact us here via the contact details at the bottom of this page.

3.4. Cookies & Web Beacons.

We may use information from beacons and cookies collected from your use of our website and app to target your online activity, browser, or apps, with certain advertisements. We may also use these tools to determine the popularity of certain content or advertisements on our website.

3.5. Third-Party Tracking.

We may use third party tools such as Facebook Advertising, Facebook Pixel Remarketing, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and Google’s remarketing technology. These tools allow us to understand and deliver ads and make them more relevant to you. The collected data remains anonymous and we cannot see the personal data of any individual user.

3.6. Advertising.

We use your personal information to be able to show you advertising on other websites. Please also review our cookie policy for your options to control how we use cookies and similar technologies for advertising.

3.7. Combining your data for personalized direct marketing.

To help us form a better, overall understanding of you as a customer, we combine your personal data gathered across our cookies, form submissions, and chat functionality on our websites and from our app, for example when you request to receive email communications from us. In order to do this we also combine the data that we collect directly from you with data that we obtain from third parties to whom you have given your consent to pass that data onto us. These third parties may include Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter. If that combination permits you to be identified, we will treat the combined information as Personal Data for as long as it is combined.

4. LEGAL BASES FOR PROCESSING YOUR INFORMATION

We rely on a number of bases to lawfully process your personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. We process your personal information:

• when necessary to perform the Terms and Conditions or to provide you with the Services;
• where you have consented to the processing, which you may revoke at any time;
• when necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to exercise and defend legal claims;
• when necessary to protect your vital interests, or those of others, such as in the case of an emergency;
• where you have made the information manifestly public;
• where necessary in the public interest; and
• where necessary for the purposes of our, your, or a third party’s legitimate interests, such as those of partners or other attendees or volunteers.

5. OUR LEGITIMATE INTERESTS

As indicated above, in certain cases we use your information where necessary to pursue our, your, and others’ legitimate interests, including where necessary to:

• Keep the Services safe and secure. We use your information as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests, or those of our attendees, our volunteers, or our partners in ensuring Vancouver Startup Week is a safe and secure event, such as enforcing our Terms and Conditions. We also act in the legitimate interests of these parties with respect to our Vancouver Startup Week website, app, and other Services, such as by implementing and enhancing security measures and protections and protecting against fraud, spam, and abuse.
• Provide, develop, and improve the Services. We process your information as necessary to pursue our legitimate interests in improving Vancouver Startup Week and our other Services, such as our Vancouver Startup Week websites and apps. For example, we use your information in order to conduct access control and enforce security at the Events. We also use your information to conduct data analysis and analytics across our Services. In certain cases, and where you have not objected, we may record sales and other calls to you for our business interests in the training and development of our staff.
• Market the Services. We process your information in accordance with our legitimate interests of marketing Vancouver Startup Week and the Services to you. For example, we use your information to market future Events to you and to exhibit attending companies. We may also use your image in our marketing materials in order to highlight the attendees participating in our Events. We also use photos and audio-visual footage from past Events which may contain your image or voice. If you want to exercise your right to object to any of these uses please email us via the email at the bottom of this page.

6. SHARING WITH THIRD PARTIES

We share information with attendees, service providers, affiliates, partners, and other third parties where it is necessary to perform the Terms and Conditions, to provide the Services, and for other purposes described in the Privacy Policy.

6.1. Marketing.

In order to further our legitimate interests in marketing the Services, we rely on third-party marketing platforms and service providers to assist us and perform certain marketing services for us.

If you share your email address with us we might use the information we hold about you to tailor sponsored content on social media sites, like Facebook, Google, or Twitter. We securely match encrypted email addresses via our third party processor. The social media site can only see an email address if it’s already used for an account on their site. We don’t provide any new data on users.

6.2. Advertising.

We share your personal information with common advertising platforms such as Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn to show you advertising when you use those services. Please also review our cookie policy for your options to control how we use cookies and similar technologies for advertising.

6.3. Third-party service providers.

We may share your personal information to help us operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services. These third parties provide us with services including for customer support, data storage and website hosting, ticketing and payments processing, legal advice and compliance, and marketing and data analysis. These third parties are contractually required to use it only to provide their service to us, and are prohibited from using it for their own purposes.

6.4. Business reorganization.

In instances where we are subject to a reorganization, such as a merger or acquisition of some or all of its assets, we may, in accordance with our legitimate interests, need to share information in the course of the transaction. In such circumstances, your information may be disclosed, where permitted by applicable law, in connection with such corporate restructuring, sale, or assignment of assets, merger, or other changes of control or our financial status.

6.5. Legal and safety reasons.

We may retain, preserve, or share your personal information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) respond, based on applicable law, to a legal request (such as, a subpoena, search warrant, court order, or other request from government or law enforcement); (b) detect, investigate, prevent, and address fraud and other illegal activity, security, or technical issues; (c) protect our rights, property, or safety; (d) enforce our Terms and Conditions or any other agreements we have with you; or (e) prevent physical injury or other harm to any person or entity, including yourself and members of the general public.

6.6. Aggregated information.

We may also share aggregated or de-identified information, such as counts of attendee job titles or their affiliated companies, with companies we do business with, including our advertisers, partners as well as other organizational members.

7. DATA RETENTION

We will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary, up to a period of three years after such information is collected, to achieve the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, such as to provide you with the Services. We may also need to retain some of your information for a longer period to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our Terms of Service.

8. DATA TRANSFERS

As a Canadian business with a global reach, we access and transfer information from around the world. If you are based in the EU, this means that we access and transfer your personal information outside the EU. The privacy protections and the rights of authorities to access your personal information in some of these countries may not be the same as in your home country. We transfer your personal information in accordance with law, and take steps to ensure that your information is appropriately protected.

In particular, where we transfer information to countries that are not viewed as providing adequate protection, we generally rely on an approved mechanism known as the “standard contractual clauses” to protect the information transferred. These are template contracts published by the European Commission containing approved commitments to protect the privacy and security of the information transferred. To request a copy of the clauses, please contact us.

9. YOUR RIGHTS

You have a number of rights in relation to your information that we process. While some of these rights apply generally, certain rights apply only in certain limited cases. We describe these rights below.

9.1. Access and Porting.

You can access much of your information by logging into your Vancouver Startup Week profile. If you require access to additional information, or you do not have Vancouver Startup Week profile, please contact us. Where legally required, we will provide your information in an easily accessible format and assist in transferring some of this information to third parties.

9.2. Rectify, Restrict, Delete.

If you provide information to any of our third-party service providers, such as Whova or Stripe, you will need to contact them directly to rectify, restrict, or delete any applicable data in accordance with their policies and applicable laws.

9.3. Object.

Where we process your information based on the legitimate interests described above, or in the public interest, you can object to the processing in certain circumstances. We will generally stop processing your information unless we have compelling grounds to continue processing, such as where needed for legal reasons. Where we use your information for direct marketing, you can always object using the unsubscribe link in such communications, changing your profile settings, or by contacting us.

9.4. Revoke consent.

If we have specifically asked for your consent to use your information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. For example, if we ask for your consent for direct marketing purposes, you can revoke your consent using the unsubscribe link in such communications, changing your profile settings or by contacting us.

10. SECURITY

The security of your personal information is important to us. We strive to use appropriate technical and organizational skills to protect your personal information. Despite these measures, the Internet is not a fully secure environment and we cannot guarantee that your personal information won’t be intercepted or improperly accessed.

11. CHILDREN

Attendees under 18 years of age may attend Vancouver Startup Week if accompanied by an adult or guardian, depending on the age of the attendee.

12. HOW CAN YOU STOP THE USE OF PERSONAL DATA BELONGING TO YOU FOR DIRECT MARKETING?

There are several ways you can stop direct marketing communications from us:

• Click the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email communication that we send you. We will then stop any further emails.
• In our apps, you can manage your preferences and opt-out from one or all of the different push notifications by selecting or deselecting the relevant options in your phone's Notification Settings’ section.
• Email us at the contact details at the bottom of this page.

Please note that you may continue to receive communications for a short period after changing your preferences while our systems are fully updated.

13. CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

CALIFORNIA CONSUMER PRIVACY ACT (CCPA)

California residents may ask us to provide them with a list of the types of personal data that we have disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes, and the identity of those third parties. If you would like such a list, please contact us via the contact details at the bottom of this page. with subject field: “CCPA”. If you exercise your rights, we will not charge you different prices or provide different quality of services. We don’t sell personal data to third-parties. Once we receive your request, we may verify it by requesting information sufficient to confirm your identity, including by asking you for additional information. If you would like to use an agent registered with the California Secretary of State to exercise your rights, we may request evidence that the agent has valid written authority to submit requests to exercise rights on your behalf.

14. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time so please review it occasionally. If we make material changes, we will take steps to notify you. The date of the most recent revisions will appear below.

Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices generally, or if you would like to exercise your statutory rights, you can contact us at: connect@vanstartupweek.ca.

Updated April 16, 2023