[chapter-delegates] Dumb question

[Alan Levin]

Dear Fred,

On 15 Mar 2005, at 13:43, Baker Fred wrote:
> Please don't take this as either an offer or an announcement - it is a 
> question.

Many kind thanks for interacting with this group. I'm personally most 
encouraged.

> A few weeks ago, Ramon Morales said
>> I suggest we develop and implement a worldwide virtual community 
>> where blogging, instant messaging and discussion groups are set up 
>> for our use internally. Such a communications infrastructure will 
>> have a major impact on our ability to work together and support each 
>> other.
>
> I'm curious whether the following would be of interest and/or value to 
> the chapters.

I'm curious about some items that have been agreed by all on this many 
times yet appear to be ignored or overlooked by HQ.

1. Translations of the main pages on www.isoc.org?
2. A mailing list manager that integrates with membership management?

> We could very simply offer each chapter a domain name of the form
> 	chapter-name.isoc.org

We all have domain names already and the relationship between HQ and 
chapters is tenuous. Even the question sounds patronising.

> The names would each point to one of two things, at the chapter's 
> discretion: either a machine operated by the chapter, or a machine 
> managed by ISOC Reston/Geneva. In the latter case, right now the 
> machine www.isoc.org is physically located on the US east coast; we 
> could make that a tripartite mirrored service with machines in 
> colocation services in Europe, perhaps at RIPE, and in Asia-Pac, 
> perhaps in Sydney, Taiwan, or Hong Kong.

Is isoc.org mirrored as such?

>  The machines themselves might be relatively low cost Linux machines 
> with large disk drives running
>
> 	Apache		web services; give every chapter a web page that they manage
>                    and a gigabyte of space perhaps.
> 				http://www.apache.org/

I suggest that most of us already have a number of these.

> 	WordPress		open source, free, available for Windows, Mac, or Linux;
>                    basically PHP + MySQL, so should run under Apache. 
> A designated
>                    chapter member could manage it for the chapter.
> 				http://wordpress.org/

Neat software. I'm sure some will try this. Does ISOC hq use a content 
management system?

> Jabber		Instant Messaging software. Make sure the implementation is 
> configured
> 				to support SSL.
> 				http://www.jabber.org/

How come we didn't use jabber for our first face to face?
Does ISOC hq already one setup for us to use? Can we? How?

> 	Majordomo		mail relay
> 				http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

or mailman, yes, we all agree that we need this, but ideally with an 
interface that allows us to include names and addresses in addition to 
email address. A neat addition would be an interface that allows 
members the ability to subscribe to multiple lists whilst maintaining 
their profile (contact info) up to date.

> A web page I found interesting in poking at this problem: 
> http://www.whymarketersshouldblog.com/. It occurs to me that similar 
> thoughts might apply to ISOC itself - get a discussion going in a 
> blog, and get it into a the search engines. It might raise awareness.

Nothing wrong with one or many blogs. I think some thought should go 
into into structure and purpose. What purpose do you consider this for? 
(btw, all these posts are now in the search engines already ... 
although I'm not sure how much awareness it's created)

> Would a service of that type of interesting?

Interesting yes, useful, not as much as a good membership system and 
some translated web pages.  [There are a few other small items that we 
have discussed would be useful. As an example and relating to the 
membership system, as a temporary measure we need a channel in which to 
obtain our chapter membership lists (since we use your form).]

Both of these items have been expressed as a need many times - over and 
over - can you give us a definitive answer if ISOC HQ has any intention 
of of pursuing either of these needs?

regards,

Alan

---------------------------------------------
Alan Levin
Tel: +27 21 409-7997