Summary

  • Ahead of RIPE 93, the Chair Team has reminded participants that recording requires consent, while inviting people who rely on smart glasses for assistance to discuss their use with organisers.
  • The meeting's yellow lanyards make photography preferences visible. They do not settle every question about audio, video or wearable devices.

At the registration desk for RIPE 93, a participant who would rather stay out of photographs can ask for a yellow lanyard. It is a small, legible request: please leave me out of the shot. No explanation of a private reason is needed to understand the signal.

The photography policy asks attendees to respect it and not take or publish photographs without express consent. It also asks them not to post videos of yellow-lanyard wearers. The official photographer promises to try to avoid photographing them, not that every unwanted image can be prevented.

Now consider a device worn on someone's face rather than held up for a photograph. A lanyard can express a preference, but it cannot tell the other person whether that device is recording. Nor does wearing smart glasses prove that recording is happening.

That is the practical tension behind a short passage in Mirjam Kühne's 15 October preview. The RIPE Chair reminds attendees that the meeting's media policy and Code of Conduct do not allow recording without consent. In the same passage, the Chair Team invites people using smart glasses for assisted purposes to explain their use to organisers during the meeting.

The invitation matters as much as the reminder. It leaves room to discuss a person's need without assuming that every wearable is being used to record others. It is not an automatic exemption from consent, and the note announces neither a new device ban nor a new policy.

Permission belongs to the person, not the badge

RIPE 93 also has a separate media-accreditation policy. Accredited representatives must identify themselves and obtain explicit permission before publishing private conversations, interviews or photographs. Those conditions govern media access. The Code of Conduct reaches further, covering participation online, in person and at associated social events.

A press badge is therefore not another person's permission. Neither is a meeting ticket. And the absence of a yellow lanyard should not be read as agreement to any recording someone might choose to make.

The published pages do not describe a wearable-specific consent signal, a separate notice for audio-only recording or the mechanics of the assisted-use discussion. That does not establish that organisers have no arrangements. It means participants cannot infer those details from these pages alone.

RIPE 93 runs in Sofia from 26 to 30 October, still ahead at the time of writing. There is no meeting outcome to grade yet. The immediate task is more ordinary than deciding whether smart glasses are good or bad: make it possible to ask, understand the answer and respect it.