[chapter-delegates] Re: Memebrship presentation

[Franck Martin]

All these issues about membership are brought because Individual members 
need representation and vote to ISOC BoT which has been removed from 
them when the free membership came into effect.

The free membership must stay with the same right as a paid membership 
in term of democracy and representation.

I let people figure out how to add value to a paid membership. I had 
suggested earlier to give people access to award programs (like 5% 
discount on software/hardware or specialised magazines).

How do we get the free membership to vote. We need to make sure there 
are no "dogs" amongst us (even if some behave like them ;) )

I would suggest that we have a waiting period of one year before a 
member can vote. This would allow a cool of period, stopping mass 
registration before any vote.

In this one year period, we could identify the member by various means. 
The first one could a web of trust through chapters. Chapters would have 
to identify their members and ISOC the members which are not affiliated 
to a chapter. One way to identify would be to have each member to fax an 
ID card (passport, driver license,...) or to meet face to face with a 
chapter delegate. We could run a couple of checks using the web and 
directory services like www.whitepages.com in every country.

I'm not sure the process above is fool proof, but we could think of a 
simple scheme, and refine it as people find ways to cheat the system... 
Also some people on this list more used to identification could find 
better mechanisms. I think the identification method from Indonesia was 
loking good...

Cheers.

Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

> W. Majewski said the following on 11/03/2005 03:28:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> the current version of my presention in  different formats is 
>> available here:
>>
>> http://isoc.org.pl/2005/membership/
>>
> Dear Jacek,
>
> Thanks for this hard work. I will keep you updated on the results of 
> the discussion later today.
>
> One observation:
>
> ISOC currently has 21.177 individuals  members, whatever name we give 
> to this category. Of this, only 57% are  also members of chapters.
> With the current policy of indirectly electing BoT members through 
> chapter delegates, the remaining 43% of members have no representation 
> whatsoever, which is an issue.
>
> Becoming a non-paying member is as easy as filling an online form and 
> the only thing ISOC can verify is that the e-mail address does not 
> bounce back. As some put it, even my dog could be a member of ISOC, as 
> long as it has an e-mail address.
>
> We need also to present ISOC and its chapters as ONE entity by 
> collecting all fees at one place. But there should a possibility for 
> members to not join a chapter, if only because there are  places where 
> there are no chapters.  Collecting fees locally makes a lot of sense, 
> since credit cards are not as common as some would think.
> I also agree that a membership fee should provide some benefits, a 
> return on investment if you like.  Since activities happen mostly on 
> the local level, it makes sense they should be used locally.
>
>
> patrick


-- 
Franck Martin
ICT Specialist
franck at sopac.org
SOPAC, Fiji
GPG Key fingerprint = 44A4 8AE4 392A 3B92 FDF9  D9C6 BE79 9E60 81D9 1320
"Toute connaissance est une reponse a une question" G.Bachelard

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