Guidelines, Safety, and Security Measures for Virtual MOBTS
Disclaimer: By registering, attending, and participating in this virtual conference, each individual agrees to abide by the following guidelines and protocols in order to keep our conference and individual sessions as safe and secure as can be provided within our abilities while also promoting an active and engaging conference environment.
Statement on Participation in vMOBTS: Virtual MOBTS will be conducted utilizing Zoom. As we are all now well aware having been thrust into this virtual environment while amongst the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no absolutely secure system available when dealing with online engagement. We have all heard (and even some witnessed, sadly) terrible stories of ‘Zoom Bombing’. Just as MOBTS has attempted to be communicative and transparent since COVID-19 began impacting us in February, we desire to be the same throughout this conference and beyond. Thus, we cannot guarantee that such a ‘Zoom Bombing’ cannot nor will not occur. But what we can guarantee is that we are taking every step available to us to secure this process, to create so many walls and hurdles that anyone desiring to be deplorable and malicious would best spend their time looking elsewhere. Many of those steps that are being taken are listed below.
Please do not hesitate to contact Executive Director Brandon Charpied (brandon@mobts.org) should you have any questions or concerns.
Conference Guidelines & Safety Measures
- Conference Sessions on Zoom
- ALL SESSION TIMES ARE LISTED IN EASTERN TIME (EDT)
- All conference participants (presenters and participants alike) must register for sessions they desire to participate in prior to attending the conference. This safety measure will lessen the probability of untraceable ‘Zoom bombers’.
- On approximately June 15th you will be notified that the conference program has been updated with conference registration links. Those links will take you to a session-specific registration page.
- It is recommended that you manually open each desired session link in a new tab. The conference program software is not designed to open external links, thus a simple left-click on the link will take you away from the program and into the Zoom registration page.
- You must register for each session you believe you may attend. Zoom will not allow you to access a session you have not pre-registered for. Consider this your building of a conference itinerary. Please be aware that you may register for more than one session in each time slot if you are unsure a session is to your liking, to protect against a session not occurring as scheduled, etc.
- It is imperative that you register for sessions using the name you registered with for vMOBTS. This can be verified through the confirmation email you received upon registering for the conference. If the names are not identical, that registration will be rejected.
- After registering, Zoom will email you a confirmation notice and a link that accesses that specific session. You must keep these links available to you come conference time as each link is uniquely tied to your specific registration.
- There is no universal link that will gain you access to the room.
- It is highly recommended that you utilize the calendar features in the registration confirmation email to immediately place your desired sessions into your online calendars so as to not lose the links.
- With these links being uniquely tied to you, the registrant, you should not and cannot share these links.
- It is recommended that you either immediately save the link/invite to an online calendar (calendar/ICS links are provided in registration email) or keep a document of these unique links as you receive them. The email provided to you will be your only access point to those sessions.
- We understand that registering for 20-40 unique sessions individually may seem like a burden, but please trust us when we say that this is the greatest measure we can put in place to keep any deviants at a distance. To do less would be an injustice to the security and safety of our participants, conference, and organization as a whole.
The following video will walk you through the registration process if you require further assistance or would prefer to follow along visually.
- Conference Program
- vMOBTS is fully digital. With that, we will be utilizing our three traditional online variations of our program, but will not be providing a PDF/hardcopy of the program.
- Session registration pages can be accessed from each of the three programs
- ALL SESSION TIMES ARE LISTED IN EASTERN TIME (EDT)
- Your program options are:
- Full Conference Program – A grid style overview of the conference. Clicking on bold paper titles will bring you to the registration page. Clicking on the secondary paper title will bring you to the abstract and author page.
- Interactive/Mobile App – This works on mobile and notebook/desktop systems alike. There is nothing to download and it operates directly from your browser. Clicking on a session title will present you with a sub-page that contains the Zoom registration link.
- At-a-Glance Program – A bird’s eye view of the conference. There is no author or abstract information on this program, but clicking on the session title will bring you directly to the Zoom registration page.
- At no time is it ever acceptable to share conference Zoom links with any other individual. All registered attendees must access the links themselves and will be checked against our database before being given entry.
- It is recommended best practice to REFRESH your programs regularly in case any real-time changes have been made. Your programs will not update without a refresh of the page.
- Every single session will have its own unique link tied to its own unique individual. No two links will be alike, no links will ever be reused. Therefore, despite our virtual rooms being consistently named across concurrent session slots (ex. V-100, V-200, etc.), those ‘rooms’ will only exist for the very specific session it is tied to. Once that session in that room ends, that link will no longer be of use.
- To put this portion of our security measures into perspective, this means that vMOBTS is anticipated to have over 12,000 uniquely created links!
- Session Scheduling & Expectations
- Sessions are expected to be synchronous. Prerecorded asynchronous sessions are not in the spirit of experiential engagement of MOBTS, so please do avoid such.
- Sessions are scheduled within their requested 30, 60, and 90 minute time blocks.
- There will be four (4) to six (6) concurrent sessions in each time slot.
- There are 30-minute ‘breaks’ in between each session slot.
- Presenters are expected to enter their session rooms approximately 10-minutes prior to the start so that we can make sure that all rooms (up to six at any given moment) have sufficient time to be tended to as needed and requested.
- Sessions should not extend further than 10 minutes beyond the allotted time in the schedule, if they must at all. Please do everything you can to end a session on time as the room will shut-down automatically shortly thereafter.
- Should a session be desired to desire further discussion time, we may be able to establish a breakout room.
- In a session you are presenting in, you will be provided Co-Hosting permissions prior to the session starting. Please arrive early to your session to allow for such permissions to be provided in a timely fashion.
- Attendee/Participant Expectations
- Attendees must register with Zoom prior to attending any sessions by way of the links on the conference program (to be made available in the program on ~June 15th).
- Attendees will enter with video and audio on mute. They may enable both; however, please only unmute as needed and be respectful and courteous to the presenters.
- Attendees will be held in a waiting room until they can be cross-checked against our registration lists.
- Any name that does not match our registration database will not be admitted.
- Please make certain to have your FULL NAME correctly displayed prior to entering. Exceptions cannot be made for security reasons. First name or Last name only will not suffice.
- Attendees will be admitted into rooms no earlier than five-minutes prior to the start of the session. Please be patient in waiting for admittance as we will have a tremendous number of attendees across upwards of six (6) concurrent sessions to handle.
- If deemed necessary for security reasons, session rooms will lock 5-10 minutes after the start of the session (the lock will be determined by the conference team). This will prevent attendees from ‘walking in late’.
- Please be aware that you may register for more than one session in each time slot if you are unsure a session is to your liking, to protect against a session not occurring as scheduled, etc.
- Attendees are more than welcome to ‘browse’ sessions over the first few minutes; however, please be aware that you will have to wait for approval in the waiting room for each room you switch out of.
- Recording Sessions
- MOBTS will target specific sessions that it may seek to record. After receiving approval by the presenters, we will place such notification in the conference program so you know that upon entering the room you will be part of the session that is being recorded by MOBTS.
- While MOBTS will only be recording sessions designated as such, please be aware that any Zoom attendee can utilize third-party software to record any session. There is nothing that MOBTS can do to track such, nor are the prospects of this heightened in any way during vMOBTS v. any typical online meeting (across any platform) that you may have conducted.
- If you would like to request your session be considered to be recorded for future viewing, please email Executive Director Brandon Charpied at brandon@mobts.org. In doing so, MOBTS reserves the right to host and disseminate the recording as a resource to its members and the management education community at-large.
We thank you with your assistance on these measures. Our task force overseeing such has worked diligently over the past few weeks to be certain we can make vMOBTS as wonderful an experience as possible for all of our attendees. vMOBTS is projected to be one of our largest MOBTS conferences on record and we look forward to the positive contributions to be made by each and every one of you.
As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Best,
-Brandon