Privacy and terms

Who we are

Festival of Thinking is organised by Asociația Noetic Ark (Noetic Ark Association), Bucharest, Romania, and presented with ICR New York. Noetic Ark decides how the details you give us are used. Write to office@festivalofthinking.com about anything on this page.

What we collect

• Call for projects: your full name, email, age, city and state, your project (title, category, stage, description) and your pitch deck.
• Registration: your full name, email, your organisation and role if you add them, and the sessions you pick.
• Both forms: your answers to the checkboxes, with the date and the wording you agreed to.
• To stop abuse: a one-way code made from your IP address (not the address itself), used to limit repeated requests from one connection, and an automated check against bots (Cloudflare Turnstile).
• In your browser: your cookie choice and two short-lived flags for the opening animation. No analytics or advertising cookies are switched on.

What we use it for

• To read your application, choose up to 20 projects, tell you the decision and, for the selected projects, plan the masterclasses and the 1:1 meetings with the mentors.
• To run the guest lists: the day before each session, your full name goes to its venue (ICR New York, One Vanderbilt or Scandinavia House), so you can get into the building.
• To send your confirmations, calendar invites and practical updates about the sessions you picked.
• To keep the forms safe from spam and abuse.

We use your details to do what you ask us to do (apply, register) and to keep the forms secure. We don't sell them and we don't use them for advertising.

Photos and video

The festival is photographed and filmed for our records and our reports to partners. We use images in which you can be recognised to promote the festival (website, social media, press) only if you tick the photo box in the form. You can change your mind at any time: write to office@festivalofthinking.com and we stop using images of you to promote the festival.

Who sees it

• The festival team and, for the selected projects, the mentors they meet.
• The venues: your name, for the sessions you picked.
• Partners and funders: totals, and attendance lists where their rules require them.
• The companies that run the services we use: Hostinger (website and database), GoDaddy (email) and Cloudflare (the bot check).

The festival takes place in New York, so the guest lists go to venues in the United States. Some of the services above may handle data outside the European Economic Area, with the safeguards the law requires (such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses).

How long we keep it

As long as we need it to run the festival and to report on it to partners and funders. After that we delete it or keep only anonymous totals. You can ask us to delete your details sooner.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, export or delete your details, object to how we use them, or withdraw a consent at any time: write to office@festivalofthinking.com. You can also complain to the Romanian data protection authority (ANSPDCP, dataprotection.ro) or to the authority where you live.