[chapter-delegates] Results of the board discussion on membership (redux)

[David McAuley]

Dear Irwan:

I saw your note to Jim and thought I would reply. You had two sections to
your note, clarification and suggestion.

As to the clarification portion here are my observations:

1.	The staff understands, and I believe the board does as well, that
the major objection to the new program is not necessarily about money
abstractly but about ability to pay, as you say. I believe some comments to
the list did object on principle to any amount of money but I sense that
what you say is true of a larger number. Yesterday we asked for ideas on how
to handle the payment levels and the names of the membership levels and we
hope to get helpful insights to be able to adjust these areas to more
suitable results. 
2.	While I cannot speak formally for the board, it seems apparent to me
that they have given considerable thought to how to best enable individual
members to vote and that to date the best vehicle to do that is to have a
paying level of membership. I expect we will try to enlarge this group's
potential size by adjusting the payment level but let's see what suggestions
we get. 
3.	I suppose that any system can be subject to abuse and we should be
alert to such attempts and address them as they arise. We will do our best
to watch for trends that one or more organization member is trying to
massively purchase individual memberships and through that attempt to
'purchase' another board seat. You characterize that as being easily done -
I doubt that as we would likely notice signs of such an effort. But your
concern is not noted and understood and we will watch this area. 
4.	I apologize for this nomenclature - we on staff did not mean for
this to be a downgrade of any sort and the word 'Associate' caught me by
surprise as to its offensiveness in some areas of the world. There was no
directive or necessity to downgrade membership levels and no intent either.
Hopefully we will get better terms to use in the coming discussion.
5.	Irwan, we do have financial information available at
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/fin/index.shtml. 
6.	Jim's statement would not, I believe, be correctly translated as you
suggest - ISOC is larger than its organization members - both chapters and
individual members are important parts of it. Obviously we have not been
communicating well and hopefully we will make progress in this area of
communication. 
7.	While we may not have communicated well we do believe we are trying
to communicate. We do not have an agenda which we want to hide from chapters
- far from it. 

As for your suggestion it appears to me that ISOC Indonesia has set up a
very good structure and offers outstanding programs - we commented on your
professional certification programs at the board meeting. Your chapter is an
excellent example of an outstanding chapter. The various membership levels
make sense and they obviously work for your chapter. As far as the ISOC
membership structure goes, the board has put a structure in place and wants
to give it time to see if it works - it's intent is to give voice to ISOC
governance in some fashion, as well as possible, to individual members. 

Best regards,
David 

David McAuley
Membership Director
Internet Society
703-326-9880, ext 104
703-963-5887 (mobile)
mcauley at isoc.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Irwan Effendi [mailto:hero_tsai at mainsyscon.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 12:38 AM
To: James M Galvin
Cc: chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] Results of the board discussion on
membership (redux)

Dear James,

I would like to re-submit my idea regarding membership clarification, as
well to re-clarify all discussion on the list. I will do this point per
point basis to minimize misunderstanding, therefore please respond point per
point too.

Clarification section:
Do Board and Staff understand that:

1. Chapters do not reject the program because of the money, but because the
program will violate the rights of those who either:
- can not afford to pay USD 75 per year
- does not have a credit card
- have a national credit card which can not be used in internet transaction

2. Chapters sincerely want to know which one is the genuine intention of the
Board :
- to enable all individual members to vote, yet currently does not have any
better solutions on validation rather than credit card
Or
- to ensure that the Board and the Staff are not being ordered around by
people who cannot afford to pay the costs of their requests, thus giving
votes only to people who can afford it, and only from countries that has
close financial and trade link with U.S. (their credit cards accepted in
U.S.)

3. Chapters want to know how the new system will handle massive vote
purchase, which can easily be done if any one of the organization member
feels the need to hold one more trustee chair. This is very likely to
happens and will have serious impact on the trusworthiness of the Board in
the eye of Chapters

4. Chapters want to know why it was necessary to downgrade their status from
global member to associate member, while even in the minutes of the meeting
of the BOT, there is no such recommendation. The recommendation, as it
states, is to develop a new professional level membership, not to downgrade
existing one. So far Staff has only submit apologies regarding this, yet no
explanation about why there was such necessity.

5. Chapters requests that HQ will open its accounting book. It is a widely
known fact that ISOC has utilized the existence of chapters and support from
chapters when bidding for the public internet registry from ICANN. Chapters
feels that by the virtue of cause and effect, chapters are entitled to know
how much money are coming in and how much are being used and for what
purpose. As to the management of this money, of course, Board has the right
as stated in the bylaws. Chapters only wants to see the report.

6. In your previous statement and I quote:
"Certainly we all want the
Individual and Chapter Programs to be a "good thing" for as many people
as possible, but they also have to be a "good thing" for all of ISOC.
ISOC is more than the sum of its Chapters and Individual members"

ISOC consists of:
Board
Staff
Organization members
Chapters
Individual members

Since Staff works based on Board instruction, and Board is actually part of
either Organization members or Chapters, the above statement will translate
as follows:

Certainly..... but they have to be a "good thing" for Organization members,
too.

There were several emails on this list assuming similar to the above.
Chapters want to know whether the translated statement is the truth.


7. Chapters believe that HQ has not been following its own commitments. The
openness of the standards, transparency, especially the "internet for
everyone" part. Chapters want to know whether HQ still willing to work side
by side with them or does HQ has its own agenda which HQ does not want
chapters to be aware of. As this is the summarizing point, this is the BIG
QUESTION and honesty and sincerity is absolutely required to helps clear out
misunderstandings.


The suggestion part:

As I have sent this previously, maybe HQ has missed it. I am resubmitting
idea about membership verification from Indonesia, and this will be point by
point to, and I wish that Board or Staff can answer point by point, which
one can be done and which one cannot be done. And if a point cannot be done,
please also explains why.
For the background information, this is not a new build-it-from-scratch
system. In Indonesia, I also reside as officer of public bureau for an
association of alternative healing foundation, which currently has 12
organizations and over 78.000 members in 16 islands in Indonesia, and this
was the system I develop for that association, which I adjusted for
Indonesian chapter, changing snail mail with e-mail and application letter
with online application form. For this discussion purpose, I already
adjusted the system to suit HQ.

1. Registered Members
Anyone who has email and register their email and their name at our system
(HQ already do this)
Registered Members received newsletters, participate in local discussion,
etc, but can not vote.

2. Verified Members
Any registered members who has either attended a physical meeting or sent in
a copy or scan of their valid ID card. Verified members received member card
and may vote on local elections

3. Profiled Members
Any verified member that has sent in a picture of them wearing their member
card (this way, there is no old pictures in record, fake I.D. etc)
Another requirement is to send in a short biodata (date of birth, last
education, etc...).
Profiled member MAY and MUST vote on general elections. This is done so that
the number of voters participating in any elections will be high. If
Profiled Member does not vote on 2 subsequent election, their membership
status degrades until they re-verify their commitment.


4. Donating Member.
Any registered member who donate money to the cause. Donating members
receive recognition and receive souvenir(s) and discounts depending on the
amount donated.

5. Pioneer Members
Any members who has been known to actively involved in furthering the cause
of organization in the past. Pioneer Members are also Profiled Members, with
no possibility of being degraded.

---
We currently have professional certification programs, online study
materials, etc. We also hold seminars and workshops frequently, and plan to
assist in job placement, R&D efforts, etc. These things are not free, and
available to the public in the above class at the same price. We realize
though, that there are people who would like to be our regular, and for that
we created the 6 th member class:

6. Subscription Member
Any Profiled Member who has paid subscription fee. Subscription Member is
entitled to discounts, free entries, magazines and so on, depending on the
current list of benefits.


All member levels may inspect the books (financial report) of the chapter,
and submit ideas for further developments and enhancements


Herein closed my email.

Best regards,

Irwan Effendi

----- Original Message -----
From: "James M Galvin" <galvin at elistx.com>
To: "Andres Oliva" <aoliva at isoc-cat.org>; <chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 5:43 AM
Subject: RE: [chapter-delegates] Results of the board discussion on
membership (redux)


> [[ THIS IS A RESEND BECAUSE I MADE AN ERROR IN MY PRIOR POSTING. ]]
>
> Andres,
>
> Thank you for your suggestions.  Here are my comments about each.
>
>
>
> --On Monday, March 14, 2005 5:49 PM +0100 Andres Oliva
> <aoliva at isoc-cat.org> wrote:
>
> > To eliminate the "pay for vote" system for the individual membership.
>
> I regret to say that this is not an option.  Individual members have
> always been an important community to ISOC and the Board has made it
> clear that it wants to continue that principle.  This includes making
> individual members eligible to vote in the direct election of Trustees.
>
>
> > To re-establish the downgraded "associate members" to the "global or
> > chapter members" level.
>
> We will do this.  Do I understand your specific suggestion to be that
> instead of using the label "Associate Member" you would like to be called
> "Chapter Member"?
>
>
> > To work together with the chapters in order to research, discuss,
> > test and apply identification systems to launch the individual
> > membership level, guaranteeing that every interested citizen will have
> > the right to one, and only one, vote (for free, of course).
>
> I encourage you make suggestions on how we could do this.  I have been
> involved in extended technology discussion about how this might be done
> and we have never come up with a practical system.
>
>   [[ THE ERROR WAS FORGETTING TO SAY "never" IN THE PRIOR SENTENCE. ]]
>
> Keep in mind that a critical component of the system is control to the
> extent that it is not possible to bias an election.  That feature is
> nearly impossible to achieve unless you *trust* the Chapter.
> Unfortunately, although 99% of all the Chapters can be trusted, it only
> takes one to bias an election.  And I will point out that this very
> nearly happened in prior ISOC elections.  Thus, we need a system that
> does not require trusting Chapters.  It is sad that that is a requirement
> but that is where we are.
>
> Jim
>
>
>