<div dir="ltr"><img width="0" height="0" class="mailtrack-img" alt="" style="display:flex" src="https://mailtrack.io/trace/mail/18e72677ca99a76efca4d3de5e49bf18298e47a0.png?u=796692"><div></div>I wrote ISOC's AMS "help" on the membership "loss" issue a couple weeks ago and received a pretty dismissive response. Not sure if this change (and the supporting structures) are designed to actually <b>assist</b> small Chapters with limited resources to succeed and survive.<div><br></div><div>If this was a purchase, I would want a refund. <br><div><br></div><div>Very disappointing.</div><div><br></div><div>Rgds,</div><div><br></div><div>Tracy Hackshaw<br>Trinidad & Tobago<br><div><br></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 1:09 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <<a href="mailto:ocl@gih.com">ocl@gih.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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Hello all,<br>
<br>
I'd be interested in your comments, as I have realised (from the
feedback received on today's Chapter Advisory Council Steering
Committee) that the UK Chapter is not the only Chapter with
Membership software problems. Throughout the week, I have been
grappling with various problems brought forward by the new Internet
Society membership system. <br>
<br>
Leaving small problems to the side, there are two main problems that
the Internet Society UK England Chapter is facing:<br>
<br>
1. The inability to download a list of all our members in Excel
format. When we started using the ISOC AMS system, we transferred
all of our member's details to the AMS. We even registered with the
Data Protection Registrar, in case the details were going to be
leaving the UK. Whilst the Internet Society runs the AMS system, we
believe that we are the data controller. Now we cannot retrieve the
data of our own members and the question comes as to "who owns
members"? I remember this debate poisoned discussions in early 2000
when the Internet Society was about to collapse for lack of funds
and at the end of the day, the matter was dug into the ground and
full access to the membership records given to the Chapters about
their own members. Now the new system makes things a lot harder for
the Chapter to view and download records of its own members. This
simply cannot be the case.<br>
<br>
2. Emailing members using the system: here there are two main
problems: first, it is now impossible to email a subset of our
members, it's either all of them, or 1 of them, but there is no
ability to select a subset of members, for example living in town X,
and email them. Functionality loss - which I had already pointed out
during the demonstration calls a few months ago, but it appears that
someone has deliberately decided to ignore this important feature.
That's a technical thing that should be fixed easily.<br>
<br>
The second problem, possibly more of a problem because I do not
think that it is technical, but is a "feature" that was added, is
that we now appear not to be able to email all of our members. With
the decision of ISOC to go through the toughest regimes of GDPR
acceptance by asking for explicit acceptance of GDPR terms, we went
from 3400 to 1490 members. Whilst this is a pill that's difficult to
swallow, I understand the purpose and conservative direction that
ISOC took for this - the culture of "safety first" prevailing these
days. That said, we now have another challenge, in that out of these
1490 members, we appear to only be able to email 1098 of them -
because it appears that 400 of our "members" have "decided not to
receive emails".<br>
First, I think that the email opt out button is very badly marked,
as it cuts you off all communication and signs you off all of the
mailing lists that you might have subscribed to. In my test, I have
managed to sign myself off email mailing lists without being able to
find a way to put myself back on them - for example the Internet
Policy..... But worse still, I have found that my own colleagues in
the leadership team have opted out of emails - perhaps unwittingly.<br>
<br>
What good is a Chapter member that opts out of emails?<br>
<br>
How in the world will I get in touch with members that have opted
out of emails? Are these people completely cut-off from the Internet
Society? Are they receiving *any* communication at all from the
Internet Society, or is it only the Chapter that is blocked from
being able to email them? Do they know they have opted out?<br>
To me, these 400 people that the Chapter cannot email are as good as
dead wood - why not remove them from Internet Society membership as
well?<br>
<br>
I'd be interested in your comments if you are faced with similar
problems.<br>
Kindest regards,<br>
<br>
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond<br>
(personal views)<br>
</div>
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