[chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

[Veni Markovski]

Dear Jacek, dear colleagues,

>Yes,  ISOC certainly has  a plentiful  of  tasks to discuss and solve, 
>which are much more important
>then discussing  how to collect and manage fees, which (compared to .org 
>money) are practically not needed at all.
>
>But to solve those real problems ISOC needs plentiful of skilled and 
>passionate members - that is why we cannot
>understand why ISOC HQ:
>- has deeply offended  the majority of its membership by naming them
>'associate' members
>- has created a clear divide between the rich and the poor ISOC members.


ISOC members are either passionate and skilled or not. The fact that they 
are being called "associate members" would not change their skills. It may 
change their passion, but only to some extent. ISOC chapters are good 
exactly for this - they bring passionate people who are skilled to work for 
the good of the Internet in their countries. It's not obligatory that those 
people are also ISOC members, as long as they do the job on the ground in 
the country.

I think we need to build a process within ISOC for better communications 
between chapters and Reston. We also need to have a process for preliminary 
consultations on important decisions, concerning chapters. We need to 
define a process that keeps HQ accountable for all aspects of ISOC 
activities - standards, education and policy.

While I may agree or disagree with some of the points in the mailing list, 
I think we're facing one of the many crisis, but we don't have crisis 
management - neither chapters, nor ISOC HQ. Of course, in an ideal world, 
there will be no crisis between chapters and HQ, but we don't live in such 
a world.

I think that me, Patrick and Rosa will raise that question in Minneapolist 
this coming Friday, but this will be another "ad-hoc" work, without proper 
process how to handle this. In fact, when chapter-elected Trustees do 
something like that, this may raise the question about that very fact - 
since although elected by chapters, why do we raise that problem, etc.

I believe that the best outcome after solving the current problem, would be 
if we build a process of building proper communications and procedures for 
working with chapters.

What do you think?

veni