[Chapter-delegates] New ISOC MembershipSystem - Chapter setup and rollout

[James M Galvin]

Wladek,

You have forwarded the last in a set of messages exchanged between you 
and Nelson regarding the new membership system.  Unfortunately, this 
one message is missing some context that would help others on this 
mailing list.  I am going to respond instead of Nelson this time.

We understand that you are unhappy with the new membership system 
because you can not use your native character set during input. 
Several people have made this comment to us.  Unfortunately, when we 
were choosing between membership systems one of the compromises we made 
was to support only English at this time.  We are not asking you to 
like that decision but please do understand it was a very difficult 
decision to make.  We needed many features and services in this system 
and we simply had to choose.  No system had everything.  We started our 
review with almost 20 systems, several of which were open software.  We 
selected the best one we could find.

We are hopeful that Go will enhance there system to support this in the 
future.  It is probably the most significant comment we have provided 
back to them about the system.  But until they make this change this is 
where we are.

This is all visible to you because perhaps the most significant 
enhancement to ISOC's membership system is this new Chapter 
Administrator interface.  It provides you (and all Chapter Officers) 
the opportunity to not only manage your own membership but to see what 
ISOC has.  We have always worked with the limitation of using only 
English.  We always knew it was a limitation but we managed.

We are asking you to please work with us and to help us to get by with 
what we have for now.  This system has much to offer, even if it is 
only in English.

Thanks,

Jim Galvin
VP Chapters




--On Sunday, September 04, 2005 5:29 PM +0200 "W. Majewski" 
<wladek at majewski.pl> wrote:

> Nelson,
>
> > 1. I am sorry that you are not able to enter your name using Polish
> > language characters.
>
> (...)
>
>  > ... we think that the system is sufficiently ready to be rolled
>  > out to all members.
>
> Are you serious? How you imagine rollout of membership system without
> ability to input and store members' names and adresses?
>
> > 7. Most chapters will not be billing their members for chapter
> > membeship levels.  Do you have paying membership levels?
>
> Yes, we do. We want to send a coherent message to our members. I
> would prefer to avoid a necessity to explain to them why they need to
> pay chapter's duties after they went through registration at ISOC'c
> webpage and have seen a message saying "no  membership duties for
> this chapter".
>
> > We may be able to add additional description/text to clarify how
> > this works.
>
> So chapter's officers are not trusted enough to edit their own
> chapter's description by themselves?
>
> > 8. This is by design.  We expect individuals to maintain their own
> > profile data (name, email, postal address, etc).
>
> How that can be done without ability to enter one's proper name i
> address and with user interface in English only?
>
> > 10. Expire date. The expire date refers to a member's yearly
> > individual membership.  All memberships are yearly memberships and
> > they are renewed for an additional year.  You cannot change the
> > Expire date through the chapter administrator pages.  Chapter
> > memberships are automatically renewed by a back office process.
>
> Is there a requirement for yearly re-registration in ISOC's bylaws or
> rules of membership? If not please hide this field from public view.
>
> > 11. Member history is not available through the chapter
> > administrator pages.
>
> So what is the whole system for?
>
> > 12. We have back office processes to check for duplicate emails.
> > This is an ongoing process and duplicates get deleted and the
> > individual member contacted.  However, often times it is very
> > difficult to determine if individuals with exactly the same names
> > but different emails are duplicates.  For instance,  two people
> > with exactly the same names John Smith (common names in the US) but
> > different emails, could be different persons. The chapter
> > administrator is able to cancel members and that is also a way to
> > help us resolve duplicates.
>
> Did you ever maintained a database?
>
> During last 10 years I maintained several databases with 10.000 -
> 3.000.000 entries describing persons (including customers' databases
> of leading national webshops and teachers' database for Ministry of
> Education) and I have some experience in spotting duplicates and
> inconsistences. It is why I asked about "checks and warnings".
> Membership system should provide tools to spot suspected duplicates
> and errors and to report them to those who can validate them - in our
> case to membership officers of local chapters.
>
> > 13. The chapter administration pages have mechanisms to "export"
> > out to text formatted files.  These files can be used by the chapter
> > administrator to import to local systems.
>
> What for? Most chapters have more accurate and comprehensive data.
> There is no need to import members' data FROM central to local
> databases especially without their history and metadata included.
> What would be useful is mutual synchronisation or feeding the central
> resource from local frontends.
>
> >  In reality, we expect all individuals to sign up to ISOC
> >  membership  using the new Membership System.
>
> Are you serious? How can they do it without interface in their own
> language and without a support for proper spelling of their names and
> adresses?
>
> > To be member of a chapter, a member must first be a member of
> > ISOC and have properly registered using the new Membership System.
>
> "properly registered using the new Membership System" is an oxymoron.
>
> > 14. I am not sure I understand the need for the comments field.
> > Can you please explain where and how this would be used?
>
> I understand that it is your first attempt to use business machines
> to store the data. Do you use a "adress book" included in your
> mailer? Is there an "notes" field and is it usefull for you?
>
> In most registers you need a fields to store two kinds of free-format
> data: internal meta-notes by admins ("this field needs verification";
> "data validated by phone"; "name is in a female form but entered
> title is Mr.  Re-check required") and additional supporting data
> ("willing to help with Internet fiesta"; "works part time with
> Amnesty International"; "deep expertise in field of web availabity
> for blind users"; "gave an excellent speech during the camp for
> gifted kids and next day he was able to gain an attention of a
> campers from challenged families with a simplified version of the
> same talk").
>
> The most basic and urgent need is a way to mark a personal record
> with note about one's status in chapter's membership system: "member
> since XX.XXX"; "duties paid up to ZZ.ZZZ"; "not registred in local
> system, needs to be mailed" etc.
>
> > 15. The GUI is currently in English.  We will look into how this
> > can be enhanced for localizing the user interface.
>
> It is a basic feature not suitable to be considered for
> 'enhancement'. Either system is prepared for international use either
> or it is as useless as one you got after two years of efforts.
>
> > 16. You can update the chapter profile (name, address, email) in the
> > chapter administrator pages.
>
> That's all one can do about profile?
>
> In my opinion a failure of membership system project needs an urgent
> attention of ISOC board.
>
> Regards
>
> Wladek
>