So, we are now required to have Zoom accounts to be able to access the various rooms, is that correct?
This would be different from last year.
And
When accessing the forum, I first get an ‘certificate expired’ error message. According to this message, the certificate’s expiry date was 30 September. In Windows I can add an exception to access the forum. In Linux Mint I cannot (might also be the Firefox settings there, I haven’t troubleshot any further). Will/can this be fixed?
There was a problem with the forum that Richard knew about and handled quite quickly 
It’s already solved now (apparently, as I didn’t add an exception and I’m now able to open the forum as usual).
Hi Marc,
There was a technical problem with the Forum, but that has been resolved.
Logging into a Zoom account is more of a Zoom requirement than the conference’s requirement. Last year, in the middle of the conference, many of us found ourselves unable to log back into many of the live events, even though everything had worked fine the day before. I think that certain planets were affected but others weren’t, and the error message just said that the meeting was for authorized attendees, so there was some confusion as to what was causing the problem. I can only try to imagine the headache this situation must have been for Richard, trying to identify the problem and resolve it and answer all the emails and social media posts. He responded quickly, though, and it turned out to be a Zoom issue. Logging into Zoom’s website allowed attendees to participate as before. In other words, you can try to participate in the conference without logging into Zoom, but Zoom may prevent you from accessing some of the locations and/or events while not logged into their site. For this reason, I would strongly recommend that everyone create a Zoom account if you don’t already have one, and stay logged into the Zoom website. Important: The FREE version of the Zoom account is fine for this conference; please do not feel obligated to get a paid version of a Zoom account just for the conference.
Yes, I am not experiencing any issue with the forum anymore, either.
Regarding zoom: you wrote ‘strongly recommend’ and I read ‘very useful, but not entirely necessary’.
However, access without a zoom account still did not work. I then found a Youtube video in which Richard explained that a zoom account is required, so I’ve now signed up.
Access for me works now.
