1. What These Terms Cover
These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your participation in Rock Region Create, the community service available at rockregion.truststone.io, including Rocky, My TrustStone, and the other participant features offered through the service (together, the "Service").
Rock Region Create is a community deployment powered by TrustStone and operated by TrustStone LLC ("TrustStone," "we," "us," or "our"). Rock Region Create is a program and service name, not a separate legal entity.
These Terms apply to the Rock Region Create participant experience only. The public TrustStone marketing website at truststone.io is governed by its own separate Terms of Use. Other TrustStone deployments and customer environments are governed by their own agreements.
Questions about these Terms may be sent to info@truststone.io.
2. Agreeing to These Terms
You agree to these Terms when you create a My TrustStone profile or first save information to one. Your agreement is recorded together with the version of the Terms you accepted and the date of acceptance.
When you agree to these Terms, you will also be asked, as a separate step, to acknowledge the Rock Region Create Privacy Notice. Agreeing to the Terms and acknowledging the Privacy Notice are two distinct actions, and we record them separately.
Once you have agreed to the current Terms, we will not ask you to accept them again each time you save something. We will ask you to renew your agreement or acknowledgment only when there is a material change to the Terms, a material change to the Privacy Notice that requires renewed acknowledgment, a materially new use of your information outside your existing agreement, or a legal requirement to do so.
If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create or save a My TrustStone profile. You may still use the public parts of the Service that do not require one, as described in Section 3.
3. Using the Service Without an Account
You can visit Rock Region Create, browse public resources, explore the available pathways, and talk with Rocky without creating a profile or account.
Starting a conversation with Rocky does not create an account and does not create a saved personal record. Nothing you tell Rocky is saved to a personal record unless you choose to save it and have a My TrustStone profile to save it to. If you end a conversation without saving, your conversation is not kept as part of a personal record.
Pre-account use may include asking questions, selecting a pathway, describing interests or needs, exploring an idea, discussing what you can contribute, and browsing public resources. Because there is no profile to save to, this activity is not carried forward for you unless and until you create a profile and choose to save it.
Like most online services, the Service processes limited technical and session information needed to operate, secure, and improve it. The Privacy Notice describes this processing.
4. Age
You must be at least 18 years old to create a My TrustStone profile or to save any persistent information to the Service. Before anything is saved to a profile, you will be asked to confirm that you are 18 or older.
If you are under 18, you may use the public, non-saved parts of the Service, such as browsing public resources and permitted public conversation. You may not create a profile, and the Service will not save a persistent personal record for you, including ideas, needs, capabilities, contribution offers, or connection requests.
The Service does not currently offer a parental-consent or youth-account pathway. If we learn that a persistent personal record belongs to someone under 18, we will close or remove it as described in the Privacy Notice.
If youth participation is offered in the future, it will be introduced under separately reviewed terms and safeguards.
5. My TrustStone and What "Private" Means
My TrustStone is your private place to keep what you choose to carry forward. You decide what gets saved. You can use it to keep ideas, needs, capabilities, contribution offers, and other information you want the Service to remember, and to carry your activity forward over time.
Your profile is private in this sense: it is not published, it is not displayed in any public directory, and it is not searchable by other participants or by the public by default. There is no public people directory on the Service.
Private does not mean invisible to the people who run the Service. Authorized TrustStone and Rock Region Create personnel may access and review saved information as needed to operate the Service, provide participant support, maintain records, route your requests, identify possibly relevant opportunities for you, and carry out legitimate platform administration. The Privacy Notice describes who may access information and why.
You can review and update your saved information through the tools the Service provides, and you can ask us to correct information you cannot change yourself by contacting info@truststone.io.
6. How Saved Information Is Used
The Service uses the information you save in three ways.
Your private profile. Your saved information is kept at the individual level for you and for the authorized personnel described in Section 5. It is not publicly displayed or searchable by default.
Community-level understanding. Rock Region Create may use collective and appropriately de-identified information to understand the community as a whole, including community capabilities, interests, learning needs, business and organizational needs, ideas, demand for support, contributor capacity, ecosystem gaps, and participation and outcomes. This community-level work does not present your identifiable profile as part of any public community map or report.
Internal opportunity identification. TrustStone and Rock Region Create may use your saved information internally to identify resources, programs, events, organizations, opportunities, and possible human connections that may be relevant to you. Identifying a possible opportunity is an internal step. It does not by itself disclose you or your information to any outside person or organization.
7. Sharing That Identifies You Is a Separate Decision
Agreeing to these Terms does not give TrustStone blanket permission to share your identifiable information in the future.
Before your identifiable information is used in a materially different way, you will be asked to decide, through the applicable step in the Service or another recorded authorization, whether to proceed. This includes disclosure to a specific person, disclosure to a specific organization, an introduction, public visibility of information from your profile, publication of your name or story as an example, and any other materially different identifiable use.
If you decline, the Service will not make that disclosure, and declining does not affect your ability to keep using the Service.
8. Communications
We may send you service communications related to your use of the Service, such as responses to your requests, updates on things you have saved or asked about, and notices about your profile or these Terms.
Agreeing to these Terms is not consent to marketing communications, and it is not consent to any separately regulated channel such as SMS or messaging services. Where a channel or communication type requires its own permission under applicable law or under the design of the Service, we will ask for that permission separately, and you can decline or withdraw it without losing access to the Service.
9. Rocky and AI-Assisted Features
Rocky is a guided, conversational interface powered by TrustStone. Rocky and related features may use automated and AI-assisted processing to help interpret what you are looking for, suggest possible next steps, and organize what you choose to save. Suggestions may be based on what you share and on the records available to the Service.
Rocky is a guide, not a decision maker or a professional adviser. Its outputs may be incomplete, incorrect, out of date, or unavailable, and they are not guaranteed to be appropriate for your situation.
Where Rocky summarizes information you provided, you will have the opportunity to confirm or correct the summary before it is saved, and your confirmation is what makes it part of your record. TrustStone does not represent AI-generated summaries or suggestions as independently verified facts unless they have been separately validated.
Certain steps in the Service, including the connection steps described in Section 11, include review by a person.
10. Resources, Programs, and Events
The Service may surface public and validated records such as classes, events, organizations, public programs, resources, and support offerings.
A surfaced resource is information about something that may help you. It is not a guarantee of availability, a determination of eligibility, an approval, an enrollment, an endorsement, a funding decision, or a selection. The organization that offers a resource remains responsible for its own offerings, terms, eligibility rules, pricing, availability, advice, and conduct.
If you pursue a resource, your relationship regarding that resource is with the organization that provides it, not with TrustStone.
11. Connections to People
The Service may identify possible human connections, such as mentors, experts, collaborators, service providers, and other participants whose interests may be relevant to yours.
Where the Service is designed to suggest a specific person, that suggestion is reviewed by a person before it is surfaced to you. There is no public people directory, and no one can browse or search for you through the Service.
An actual introduction, or any sharing of contact information, happens only through the applicable authorization step, in which the people involved agree before identifying information is shared. Identifying a possible connection internally does not disclose you to the other person.
TrustStone does not guarantee any person's suitability, qualifications, licensing, availability, performance, responsiveness, or the outcome of any connection. You are responsible for deciding whether and how to communicate, meet, share information, or work with anyone you are connected to, and for independently evaluating them where the relationship matters to you.
12. Contributing and Mentoring
The Service lets you express interest in contributing to the community, including through mentoring, sharing expertise, volunteering, helping with events, offering resources, and making connections.
Expressing interest is the start of a conversation, not an appointment. Contributor and mentor participation is subject to human review and prequalification. TrustStone and Rock Region Create may determine eligibility, ask for additional information, limit the scope of participation, or decline participation.
The Service does not promise that a contributor or mentor will be matched with anyone, or that any particular volume or type of participation will be available.
13. Contributed Support and Paid Services
Some support available through the community is contributed: offered without a fee by mentors, experts, and other contributors. Some needs may ultimately point toward paid professional services offered by third-party providers.
TrustStone keeps these distinct. Unless TrustStone has separately contracted with you in writing to provide a service, TrustStone is not the provider of any service you receive, whether contributed or paid. TrustStone does not currently process payments as part of the Rock Region Create service, does not set or negotiate fees, does not hold funds, and is not a party to any engagement between you and a provider.
Any paid engagement is agreed directly between you and the provider, and you are responsible for evaluating the provider's qualifications, scope, fees, licensing, insurance, and suitability before you engage them.
A contributed interaction is never an obligation to purchase anything. Providers may not use contributed access to the community primarily to pressure participants into paid engagements, and you may report that conduct to info@truststone.io.
14. Your Ideas and Your Content
You own the ideas and content you submit to the Service, subject to rights held by others. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of your ideas or content to TrustStone.
So that the Service can work, you grant TrustStone a limited, nonexclusive license to host, store, reproduce, process, analyze, and display your submitted content as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, support, and improve the Service, to carry out the uses described in Section 6, and to comply with law, consistent with the Privacy Notice. This license does not permit TrustStone to publish your identifiable story, name, likeness, or content as a testimonial or example without your separate permission, as described in Section 7.
Submitting an idea to the Service does not create confidentiality or trade-secret obligations beyond the commitments in these Terms and the Privacy Notice, and it does not establish patent, trade-secret, copyright, or other intellectual-property protection for the idea. TrustStone does not provide intellectual-property protection services. If protecting an idea matters to you, obtain advice from a qualified professional before sharing it broadly, and share with the Service only what you are comfortable sharing within the framework these documents describe.
If you give us feedback or suggestions about the Service itself, we may use them to operate and improve the Service without compensation to you, and we will not publicly attribute them to you without your permission.
15. Business and Organizational Help; No Professional Advice
The Service can help you describe a business, organizational, or project need and identify resources or possible human routes that may help.
TrustStone does not provide legal, financial, investment, tax, accounting, medical, or other regulated professional advice through the Service, and nothing in the Service, including anything Rocky says, is professional advice. When a decision requires professional advice, consult a qualified professional.
Third-party providers, including professionals you may be connected to, remain responsible for their own services and advice.
16. No Guarantee of Results
Rock Region Create exists to help people find useful next steps. It does not guarantee outcomes. Without limiting that general statement, TrustStone does not guarantee funding, investment, customers, employment, business success, mentor availability, introductions, program acceptance, community outcomes, project success, or any specific response time.
Steps in the Service that involve review by a person take the time that review takes. These Terms do not create a service-level commitment or a promised response time.
17. Your Account Responsibilities
If you create a My TrustStone profile, you agree to provide accurate account information and keep it reasonably up to date, to protect your sign-in credentials, and to tell us promptly at info@truststone.io if you suspect unauthorized access to your profile.
You are responsible for activity that occurs through your profile unless it results from unauthorized access you could not reasonably have prevented and reported.
18. Acceptable Use
You agree not to:
- use the Service for unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, or abusive purposes;
- harass, threaten, exploit, or harm another participant or any other person;
- impersonate any person or organization, or misrepresent your identity, experience, or affiliation, including any affiliation with TrustStone or Rock Region Create;
- attempt to access another participant's information, another account, or nonpublic parts of the Service without authorization;
- introduce malicious code or interfere with the operation or security of the Service;
- scrape, harvest, or systematically collect information from the Service where prohibited, or attempt to build a directory or dataset of participants;
- circumvent an authorization, consent, review, or access control in the Service; or
- use TrustStone or Rock Region Create names, logos, or branding in a way that falsely suggests sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation.
TrustStone may take proportionate action to protect participants and the Service, as described in Section 21.
19. TrustStone Property and Third-Party Material
The Service itself, including its software, platform, designs, interface, documentation, trademarks, and content created by TrustStone, is owned by TrustStone or its licensors and is protected by applicable law. These Terms do not transfer any of those rights to you, and you may not copy, reverse engineer, resell, or commercially exploit the Service except as permitted by law or a separate written agreement.
Content you submit remains yours, as described in Section 14. Material belonging to third parties, including resource listings and third-party program information, remains subject to those third parties' rights.
20. The Privacy Notice
TrustStone's collection, use, retention, disclosure, and protection of personal information through the Service are described in the Rock Region Create Privacy Notice and in contextual notices presented in the Service.
The Privacy Notice is a separate document that you acknowledge separately, as described in Section 2. It describes our practices; it is not incorporated into these Terms as a set of contractual obligations, and your statutory privacy rights are unaffected by these Terms.
21. Suspension, Restriction, and Closing an Account
You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may request deletion of your profile as described in the Privacy Notice, which also explains what may be retained and why.
TrustStone may suspend, restrict, or close a profile, or limit access to the Service, when reasonably necessary to protect participants, the integrity or security of the Service, or legal compliance, including for violations of these Terms. Where practicable and appropriate, we will tell you what happened and how to respond.
Provisions of these Terms that by their nature continue after your profile closes, including Sections 14, 16, and 19 and Sections 22 through 27, continue to apply.
22. Service Changes and Launch Status
Rock Region Create is a new service that is actively being developed. Features may be added, changed, limited, or removed, and some capabilities described in the Service may be introduced in stages. The Service is designed to state truthfully what is and is not available rather than to imply capabilities that do not exist.
TrustStone may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service. If a change materially affects your saved information, the Privacy Notice and Section 7 govern what happens to it.
23. Disclaimers
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. TRUSTSTONE DISCLAIMS WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AVAILABILITY, AND RESULTS, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY.
TRUSTSTONE DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, THAT INFORMATION SURFACED THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL ALWAYS BE ACCURATE OR CURRENT, THAT A RESOURCE OR CONNECTION WILL BE AVAILABLE OR APPROPRIATE, OR THAT ANY THIRD PARTY, INCLUDING A MENTOR, CONTRIBUTOR, PROVIDER, OR ORGANIZATION, WILL ACT LAWFULLY, PROFESSIONALLY, SAFELY, OR AS EXPECTED.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of the above may not apply to you.
24. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, TRUSTSTONE AND ITS MEMBERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AGENTS, AND LICENSORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OPPORTUNITY, OR BUSINESS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, A CONNECTION, A RESOURCE, A PRIVATE AGREEMENT, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, THE CONDUCT OF ANOTHER PARTICIPANT OR THIRD PARTY, OR RELIANCE ON AGGREGATED OR AUTOMATED INFORMATION.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE TOTAL LIABILITY OF TRUSTSTONE FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID DIRECTLY TO TRUSTSTONE FOR THE SERVICE DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM OR (B) US $100.
These exclusions and this cap do not apply to liability that cannot legally be limited, and nothing in these Terms affects legal rights that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
25. Indemnification
This Section applies to participants using the Service on behalf of an organization, and to mentors, experts, contributors, and providers. It does not apply to an individual using the Service in a personal capacity, except for claims arising from that individual's unlawful conduct or intentional misuse of the Service.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, if this Section applies to you, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless TrustStone and its members, officers, employees, contractors, agents, and licensors from third-party claims, damages, losses, costs, and reasonable attorneys' fees arising from your unlawful use of the Service, content or information you submitted without authority, your violation of these Terms, your professional services or advice, or your violation of another person's rights.
TrustStone may control the defense and settlement of an indemnified claim, and you agree to cooperate. TrustStone will not settle a claim imposing nonmonetary obligations on you without reasonable consultation.
26. Responsibility for Other Participants; Release
Participants and third parties are responsible for their own conduct, services, agreements, and advice. TrustStone is not a party to agreements between participants and does not adjudicate private disputes, although it may review platform conduct and act under Section 21.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, you release TrustStone and its members, officers, employees, and contractors from claims arising from the acts or omissions of another participant or third party, a declined or unsuccessful connection, a private agreement between participants, or professional services or advice provided by someone other than TrustStone. This release does not apply to claims arising from TrustStone's own conduct, and nothing in it limits rights that cannot be waived under applicable law.
27. Governing Law and Disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arkansas, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles, except where applicable law requires otherwise. Nonwaivable rights you have under applicable consumer-protection, privacy, or other law are not limited by these Terms.
These Terms do not contain an arbitration requirement or a class-action waiver.
28. Changes to These Terms
TrustStone may update these Terms. The published Terms will state their effective date and version. If a change is material, we will notify you through reasonable means, such as a notice in the Service or a message to your account, and where renewed agreement is required, as described in Section 2, we will ask you to accept the updated Terms rather than relying on continued use alone.
29. Electronic Records and Acceptance
By using the Service, you consent to receive records, notices, and disclosures from TrustStone electronically, and you agree that your electronic acceptance of these Terms and of other acknowledgments in the Service has the same effect as a written signature to the extent permitted by applicable law. You may request a copy of the current Terms at any time at the address in Section 31.
30. Miscellaneous
These Terms, together with any additional terms presented for a specific feature, are the agreement between you and TrustStone governing your use of the Service. The Privacy Notice is acknowledged separately and is not part of this contract, as described in Section 20.
If a provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions will remain in effect. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without TrustStone's consent; TrustStone may assign them in connection with a reorganization, financing, merger, or transfer of the Service, subject to applicable law and notice obligations.
31. Notices and Contact
Notices to TrustStone about these Terms, and questions about the Service, may be sent to info@truststone.io.
TrustStone may provide notices to you through the Service or using the contact information associated with your profile.