[chapter-delegates] suggestion for voting, payment system and membership names

[James M Galvin]

Irwan,

I want to thank you for your suggestions.  You have clearly put a lot of 
work into this.

Here are my comments.



--On Wednesday, March 16, 2005 8:41 PM +0700 Irwan Effendi 
<hero_tsai at mainsyscon.net> wrote:

> The primary purpose of ISOC is to finance IETF

This is not an accurate characterization.  Although ISOC does provide a 
"home" for the IETF and ensures its financial stability, financing the 
IETF is not a primary purpose of ISOC.


> Therefore ISOC would like to present the opportunity for individual
> members who are willing and can afford to, a way of donating money to
> ISOC, and in return, ISOC gives them the right to vote to elect people
> that they want to see to be seated in BOT (for whatever reason they
> have).

The individual membership program is an activity independent of all 
others.  It does not logically follow from anything else.  Of course, it 
also happens to fit well with all of ISOC's other activities, but that is 
not the primary reason for doing it.  ISOC is doing it because it is 
appropriate for its mission and purpose, and because there are 
individuals who have asked ISOC to do it.  That does not mean we can do 
everything we are asked to do, but this is one thing that could do.


> In other word, everyone
> should be able to vote without any restriction.

I believe that everyone is eligible to vote.  There is the "restriction" 
that to vote you have to join a Chapter, but it can be done.

I believe what you mean to say is you want all members, particularly the 
free members, to be eligible to vote directly for Trustees.  I would 
welcome detailed proposals on how this could be implemented, with all the 
appropriate checks and balances include.


> Enlarge the current organization structure by adding  an adhoc comittee.
> This adhoc comittee will be elected directly by all individual members,
> that way each member does have a voting right. The comittee will
> directly answer to BOT, and its duties is to determine what is the
> current demands from individuals from around the world and report the
> summary to BOT.

Setting aside the issue of how we conduct the election, this is an 
interesting suggestion.  On the one hand, ISOC does have someone who has 
this job, that being David McAuley.  Having a committee of volunteers 
(instead of just one, myself) would have certain advantages.  On the 
other hand, volunteer jobs can be pretty thankless activities.  Are you 
sure we would be able to find a new set of volunteers, every year or 
perhaps every other year?  And find a set of volunteers to be on the 
nominating committee?


> This comitte can also be tasked to judge which project
> proposals should be funded by ISOC, or to perform specific tasks upon
> the demand of members, under the limitation of the available budget set
> by BOT.

One thing that concerns me here is the possibility for a conflict of 
interest.  One of the advantages of staff handling the projects is that 
others are free to submit or help in the creation of proposals for 
review.  If they are on the committee not only would that be difficult 
but being part of any decision involving a project of theirs would be 
problematic.


> Names
>
> sugestion:
> non paying
> global member or regular member
>
> paying
> premium member or funding member (both premi and fund specifically says
> money)

Thanks for these suggestions.  There have not been too many others 
forthcoming so perhaps it is time to call for a consensus.


Thanks again for your time.  I am interested in what others think of some 
of the things you said.

We are changing the name and I know that David will follow up on the 
issue of payments (I didn't include your text on that in this message). 
We will consider the committee suggestion, but we really need to resolve 
the voting issue first.

Jim Galvin
VP Chapters and Individual Membership