[chapter-delegates] ISOC site chapter section

[David McAuley]

Veni, the chapter delegates list we all know of. The chapters at isoc.org is an
internal staff list (Jim as VP of membership and myself, Nelson and Terry)
which we use for planning. We have regular meetings each week via phone to
discuss chapter/member matters and we follow up through this list.

Best regards,
David


-----Original Message-----
From: Veni Markovski [mailto:veni at veni.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 2:12 PM
To: chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
Cc: chapters at isoc.org
Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] ISOC site chapter section

off the topic - why are there two email addresses - one "chapter-delegates" 
and one - "chapters at isoc.org"?

At 13:34 31-03-05  -0500, Carlos Vera wrote:
>Is there somebody taking care of the Isoc site?
>
>It seems no at all.

Carlos,
as you are probably well aware, there's a person doing that: 
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/general/staff/
I don't think she hasn't updated the information. Most probably this has to 
do with the fact that there's the monthly news feed...

On a broader scale, though, this may serve as a good lesson where exactly 
do the chapters stay in the value scale of ISOC. That's something that we 
all need to focuse for change. The relations between ISOC HQ and the 
chapters require more work, if we want to believe they can change for the 
good.
I've been trying to push that forward. So have done some of the other 
trustees. However, we need to have a majority of the Board to think that 
way. Perhaps you could approach your countrymen who are also Trustees, and 
see if you can make them understand better the chapters' views? However, 
many of the Trustees are not associated or related to a chapter - mainly 
the people from the US. And that's half of the Board...  On another issue, 
just looking at the board list - 
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/general/trustees/board.shtml - there's only one 
person coming from the developing world, and that's me (I don't count 
Desiree, and hope she will not get angry at me for that:). That's also not 
good. What could be of concern for chapters is not only that more than half 
of the board has no chapter related to him/her, but they are all coming 
from business environment (again, with only a couple exceptions).

You can't expect more attention to chapters from the Board. What we need to 
have is to have a process of how to work with chapters, so that we don't 
relay on Trustees, who happen to be chapter presidents, or chairmen. If the 
process was not only created, but working, and if the chapters were 
responding to inquiries from Trustees, this could have been easily 
achieved. BUT, if I remember correctly, last year when me and Patrick asked 
a few questions, we received only 18 responses. That's still better than 
the responses Fred Baker received earlier that year, when he asked some 
questions on that very same mailing list.

Now, if there are only 18-20 active chapters, why do we have listed more 
than 70? If the other 50 are not interested in participating in 
discussions, why not ask them what are the reasons? There are speculations, 
that some chapters have stated that they don't want to participate, because 
they will be blamed by the developing countries' chapters as being 
"westerners" and "people who don't care about the rest of the world". Is 
that true? Is there anyone on this mailing list, who would claim such?

best,
veni