June 15th, 2026, New Jersey, U.S.

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Our 2026 Annual Conference took place virtually on June 11, 2026. Congratulations to all the presenters who shared their inspiring work with our community that day.
 

Early into the conference, we experienced a Zoom bombing incident that temporarily disrupted the event and exposed attendees to disturbing content. We offer our sincerest and most formal apology to our speakers and attendees — particularly those most affected by what they witnessed. This should not have happened at an event our community trusted us to steward, and we are deeply sorry.
 

We are sharing this statement not only to be transparent with our own community, but in the hope that our experience will prompt other organizations to review and strengthen their own virtual event security practices. Zoom bombing has become a growing threat, and we believe the field benefits when organizations speak openly about what happened and what we've learned.
 

Prior to the conference, our team had implemented precautionary measures based on Zoom's recommended best practices and lessons learned from similar incidents affecting other organizations. Attendee permissions were intentionally restricted: participants were unable to share screens, unmute themselves, activate cameras, use recording features, or access collaborative tools. Only the chat function was enabled for interaction and Q&A. Screen-sharing access was reserved exclusively for speakers, who were granted co-host status solely for the purpose of delivering their presentations.
 

Despite these safeguards, unauthorized individuals — or AI-generated impersonations of individuals — were able to compromise a speaker session and display offensive content for a matter of seconds before our team intervened.

Because our mission is rooted in making educational spaces as accessible as possible, the conference was offered free of charge and registration was open to anyone who wished to attend. We stand by that decision. It also means, however, that those who registered with the intent to disrupt were admitted through the same process as every other attendee — a tension we must now navigate more carefully as we design future events.
 

We also want to acknowledge a structural decision that contributed to the vulnerability: our choice to host the conference in a meeting-based format rather than a webinar-only format. This was a values-driven decision. Our intention has always been to foster meaningful interaction and connection, including space for attendees to participate more actively when appropriate using the chat function. We continue to believe in that commitment to engagement — and we are now actively evaluating how to honor it while building in stronger protections.
 

To that end, we have made the decision to move away from Zoom and transition to a more secure platform for future large-scale virtual events. Immediately following the conference, our Founder published a post on LinkedIn acknowledging what had happened and addressing it directly with our community. We also filed a formal complaint with Zoom regarding this incident as well as reported it to the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

We are currently editing the conference recording to remove the disruption and finalize presentation materials. A post-event email containing the edited recording, conference resources, and a formal written apology will be shared with all attendees on Tuesday, June 16. Additionally, our keynote speaker, John Sutherland from Tourism Cares, has generously offered to re-record his keynote presentation, which will be shared with attendees later this week.
 

We are a small, volunteer-run nonprofit organization, and we are continuously learning as we grow. Our commitment remains unchanged: to create safe, respectful, and engaging spaces for learning and dialogue — and we will keep doing our best to honor the trust our community places in us.
 

Last but not least, what stands out most from this conference is not the disruption itself, but how our community responded. Attendees, speakers, and volunteers remained understanding, supportive, and adaptable throughout. The grace and patience shown by everyone involved were extraordinary.We are grateful to our community for your trust, feedback, and continued support as we carry this experience forward.

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RISE Travel Institute Leadership Team