PowWow

Who this is between

The platform is operated by Great Lakes IT Inc. Each community that runs an event here decides what its forms ask, who on its team can see the answers, and what appears publicly. In the language of privacy law the community is the one accountable for the information and we are the service provider holding it for them.

That means two things for you. Questions about why something was asked, or a request to correct or remove it, are answered fastest by the community running your event. Questions about the software itself — where the data is stored, who at our end can reach it — are ours, and are answered below.

What is collected

What a community asks for varies, because a community builds its own registration form. What the software stores is:

• Registration details — name, the name you want shown publicly, contact details, address, age, and the categories entered.
• Guardian and emergency contacts, where a participant is a minor or where the community asks for one.
• Consent records — what you agreed to, when, and the exact wording you were shown at the time.
• Documents a community asks participants to supply, and whether a staff member has checked them.
• Results — scores, placings, and any prize or payout recorded against a name.
• Answers to the community's own form questions and surveys, which can be anything the community chooses to ask.
• Account information for organisers, judges and volunteers — name, email, and sign-in credentials.
• Ordinary technical logs generated by serving a web page.

Photographs and cultural content

Photograph consent is recorded at registration along with the wording you agreed to, so a later change to that wording cannot rewrite what you actually said yes to.

Regalia, dance style, songs and ceremony are not treated as ordinary files. They belong to the person and the nation they come from, and a community can restrict what is photographed, what appears publicly, and what is retained. If you want a photograph of you or your child taken down, contact the community running the event; if you cannot reach them, contact us and we will act on it.

Who can see it

Access is by role, and roles are granted by the community. A registrar sees registrations. A judge sees only what they are scoring. A treasurer sees payouts. Someone checking people in at the gate sees a check-in list and nothing else.

Publicly, a community controls whether participant names, scores and prize amounts appear at all. All three are private unless the community turns them on.

At our end, a platform administrator can enter a community's workspace to provide support. Every entry is recorded, and the screen shows it is happening. We are changing this so that the community grants that access, sees a record of it, and can withdraw it — until then, it remains access the community has not individually approved, and we would rather say so here than not.

Where it is stored

The platform runs on Cloudflare. The database is served primarily from eastern North America, which in practice means facilities in the United States.

We do not claim Canadian data residency, because it is not available to us: Cloudflare's database and file storage do not currently offer a Canadian jurisdiction. Cloudflare is also a United States company, so United States law can reach data it holds regardless of which country the servers are in. That is a real limitation and we would rather state it plainly than describe our hosting in a way that implies otherwise.

During an event, a community may run the platform on a computer at the venue so that registration and scoring keep working without internet. For that period a copy of that community's event data is physically at the venue, in the community's hands.

How long it is kept

Event records are kept so that results, prizes and payouts remain verifiable after the weekend is over. How long is a decision for the community running the event, not for us, and is set in our agreement with them.

A community can require us to delete its data. When that happens we delete it, including from file storage and backups, within the window stated in that agreement, and we send written confirmation that it is done.

What we never do with it

These are commitments, not current practice we might revisit:

• We do not sell it, rent it, or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not combine one community's information with another's, or publish comparisons between communities.
• We do not use it to train any artificial intelligence system.
• We do not use it in marketing, case studies or proposals without written permission for that specific use.
• If our business is ever sold, your community's data does not transfer with the sale.

Other companies

The platform uses no third-party analytics, advertising, error tracking, or artificial intelligence services. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, and no session recording on this site. Email is sent through Cloudflare rather than a separate email marketing provider.

This is unusual and it is deliberate. Every service added later is a decision about whose hands the information passes through, and it is treated as one.

Your choices

You can ask to see what is held about you, to correct it, to withdraw a consent you gave, or to have information removed. Start with the community running your event — they hold the decision. If you cannot reach them, or the request concerns the software rather than the event, contact us.

Some information cannot simply be erased while it is still doing work: a published result or a recorded payout is a record the community and other participants rely on. Where that applies we will say so rather than quietly refuse.

Children and youth

Many participants are minors. Where a community's form asks for a guardian, guardian consent is required and is recorded alongside the registration. A guardian can exercise every choice above on a child's behalf, including withdrawing photograph consent.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially we will change the date at the top and tell the communities using the platform. We will not apply a new policy retroactively to information already collected under an older one.

Contact

Great Lakes IT Inc. — greatlakesit.ca. For a question about a specific event, contact the community running it; their details are on their own page on this platform.