[chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

[Christian de Larrinaga]

Veni, Rosa,

Sometimes "a crisis" can bring a genuine issue into the open and this can be
a big help in getting it resolved. However there have been boatloads of
issues coming forward so focus is needed if something useful is going to
come through at the BoT meeting.

Firstly I am concerned that the membership plan has stimulated (yet again) a
"them and us" debate. I think this lies at the core of what needs to be
addressed by the BoT. There should be one Internet and one ISOC mothership
with its chapters, organisations, individuals acting locally. The BoT needs
to establish a process to define a clear global identity with
inter-relationships that are mutually supportive and consistent.

Secondly ISOC is not a professional trade organisation. So a "professional"
member in ISOC would not infact denote any kind of tested professional
standing. The idea is that ISOC membership is felt to appeal in particular
to those who are professionally engaged in Internet activities, not that
membership actually denotes professional status. So we do have a
definitional problem that goes to the heart of the ISOC membership value
proposition.

Thirdly in the membership committee I took part in that looked at this some
years ago (was it three or four?) the suggestion for a "fellowship" was made
specifically so that the Internet community could award by peer review
recognition to those who make or have made important contributions to the
Internet and promotion of ISOC and ISOC's principles. A fellowship is the
only qualitative membership category if a fellowship can be called such that
has been suggested. Qualitative assessment reached by traditional means of
peer opinion.

Fourthly ISOC membership has been "individual" and this was reflected in the
BoT exclusively until 2000. The membership planning debate should focus on
whether ISOC restores a direct voting individual membership and what it is
called and how it is authenticated, identified, and audited.

There is no way that a free global membership as we have built up over the
last four years would pass scrutiny of an electoral audit for due diligence.
It was never intended to do so. So if we are to restore direct voting we
need a mechanism. Inevitably a voting membership is going to be a subset of
the global individual membership as the global membership is literally for
everyone.

The reason why a paying system was suggested, was not to raise funds for
ISOC as such but to pay its own costs and payment is a good way to identify
and authenticate electors. This may be a bad idea. If so then we need to
dump it and move on.

However I personally do like the idea of having a group of individual
members who have community peer accepted credentials with at least one seat
between them on the board. It gives the Internet Society as an organisation
a resource to identify key proven individuals and links these individuals
into the governance structure.

The only way I can so far think of incorporating this is to establish a
Fellowship. This could be free with or without voluntary contributions and
it could also be an electorate as it is readily auditable. It would also
obviate any need to re-establish a paying voting membership class.

Some way to populate this would be needed to get this up to a standing
population. But this should not be difficult as the BoT, each chapter and
organisational member, IETF area director, pioneer members etc could propose
people they consider to be Internet subject matter experts to a board
appointed fellowship committee and then once in place the Fellowship itself
would establish an election process to keep this topped up or expand it on
an annual basis.

warm regards,


Christian


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Veni Markovski [mailto:veni at veni.com]
> Sent: 08 March 2005 05:43
> To: Jacek Gajewski; chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] New Membership Level
>
>
> At 18:50 07-03-05  +0100, Jacek Gajewski wrote:
> >Dear Veni,
> >
> >>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.
> >Here I don't agree with You - I think we do have a crisis:
>
> Jacek,
> Actually here you agree with me - I said there IS a crisis.
>
> Best,
> Veni
>
>