[Chapter-delegates] ISOC Business Rules

Mon Oct 15 09:26:19 PDT 2007

Vittorio-

Thank you for sharing your views, you raise many interesting points.  I did
want to take this opportunity to comment:

I hear your frustation with how things have operated in the past.  The ISOC
Global chapter team (myself, Anne Lord and Sabrina Wilmont), with the
support of Lynn St. Amour and the ISOC Board, is committed to moving in a
new direction, one built on trust and collaboration.  Of course, those are
just words, and the proof will be in our actions...and to be successful
requires that each of us (ISOC Global and ISOC Chapters) is agreeable to
collaborate and to have a relationship built on trust and mutual respect.
It is our hope that you will give us the opportunity to demonstrate our
commitment to ISOC chapters and to changing for the better the working
relationship.

As to your specific points:

1) For the foreseeable future, ISOC Global membership will remain free,
though in the context of these business rules, it is not clear what impact
if any that has, since the rules talk more about relationships, and more so
in the context of how those relationships would impact the membership system
(i.e., if chapters and/or ISOC Global charges for membership, then that
becomes an issue as we revise the membership system).

2) Several chapter delegates have raised the issue of having a distributed
membership system, and that is something we will examine as we move forward
with the review of the membership system. 

3) Yes, the goal is to continue the move towards automated, online
membership sign-up and renewal. Streamling the system this way (rather than
having paper applications or emails to ISOC global, which then require
retyping the information into the system) will speed up the process and also
minimize errors. 

4) Regarding the principle of reaffirming membership, we would expect that
could occur as spelled out in 2.1 of the busienss rules (for renewal
dates)...again, the point here is that we are trying to simply the process,
so if one chapter wishes to have its members reaffirm in January, and
another in March, that is fine with us, provided all individulas reaffirm
their membership annually.

5) Regarding email, as it is our primary means of communications with
members, it is importance that the information be accurate.

Let me know how I can be of further assistance and thanks again for
participating.

Regards,

Terry Monroe
Director of Development and Membership

-----Original Message-----
From: chapter-delegates-bounces+monroe=isoc.org at elists.isoc.org
[mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces+monroe=isoc.org at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf
Of Franck Martin
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 9:52 PM
To: Vittorio Bertola
Cc: Terry Monroe; 'Chapter Delegates'
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] ISOC Business Rules

Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> Franck Martin ha scritto:
>> With a free Global membership, I think cost is not the issue anymore. 
>
> Is this a guarantee that global membership will be free forever?
Only death and taxes are guaranteed. But I was one of the first to ask
for free membership to ISOC, and you can count on me to push to keep it
that way. However I'm not the only one to make these decisions, but if
you are involved in ISOC, then you can ensure that global membership
stays free.
>
> I think that there should be a clause in these rules that recognizes
> the possibility for members joining through a chapter to opt out of
> any paid global membership. Members join ISOC Italy because they want
> to support our local activities, almost all of them are not interested
> in financially supporting the HQ (if they were, they'd have already
> joined the global supporting membership).
Are you telling me that your members do not support ISOC mission and
principles? So why being a Chapter of ISOC then? Our Chapter had this
question at one time, it was not pretty, but I'm glad we sticked with
ISOC and got seriously involved.

Terry, I think, in the BRIMS, you may want to add there is a free Global
Membership to ISOC.
>
>> I think we all know that Membership to ISOC for an individual is
>> mandatory before you are a Chapter Member. However we sometimes took
>> the liberty of not enforcing it, for the simple reason that fees
>> collection was real cumbersome and that sometimes we did not have the
>> feeling of participating in ISOC policy process. As a trustee, I
>> wonder how many chapters read the board minutes and provide feedback
>> to trustees...
>
> I think it's a matter of establishing better cooperation between the
> HQ and the chapters. Until now, apart from chapter people who were
> interested in getting to the Board of Trustees, there has not been
> much interaction between chapters and HQ. A better interaction will be
> valuable to everyone, as long as it is an interaction and not the HQ
> attempting to impose more and more rules onto chapters.
I understand there is some history here, but I don't think this new team
in ISOC HQ acts on purpose that way, so we need to help them get the
whole of ISOC to move forward.
>
>> With a free Global membership, I think cost is not the issue anymore.
>> Data privacy may be one, but then, ISOC follows privacy laws,
>
> of which country?
>
> Privacy is a highly sensitive matter for our members, and in general
> for everyone who is active over the Internet in Europe. I see it
> likely that many of them would not like their information to go to the
> US, where the protection granted by law is much lower than in Europe.
>
> Could ISOC consider having a distributed system, storing the
> information  of European members (global and chapter) inside the EU?
ISOC and the Internet should be countryless, it is an utopia but we
should be compliant enough with rules of most democracies.
>
>> and if you join, then you agree to a certain number of policies and
>> even code of ethics. This is something that will have to be even
>> clearer on the new membership system. I'm not even sure that hosting
>> the data in Geneva is the solution, because I think ISOC servers are
>> not in Reston nor Geneva but co-located where Internet is fast.
>
> Geneva is not in the EU, anyway.
>
>> Also, I'd like to point out, ISOC membership is unique, but take
>> three other organisations that shape the Internet:
>> -www.ieee.org
>> -www.itu.int
>> -www.w3c.org
>>
>> You will see that their membership rules are not as permissive as the
>> ISOC ones and everybody goes along with them.
>
> But they are not mass organizations, and they deal with technical
> issues, not with sensitive policy and political ones.
Not sure what ITU does then?
>
>> At the moment we have 20,000+ individual members, but I don't know if
>> ISOC can say they have the support of so many people. If we prune a
>> bit, so be it, as long as we keep the ones that support the whole of
>> ISOC and all its principles (no chery picking here or we may give up
>> on say freedom of speech on the Internet).
>
> I would expect this to be a discussion. Saying, as you do, that if
> some members disagree with you then you're happy to force them to
> leave ISOC certainly makes me more concerned.
Not sure why you are trying to make it personal ... I'm not forcing
anyone, but everyone in ISOC abide by its rules, principles and mission
or leaves. The alternative is to abide and try to make them change
(smarter, I would say).

ISOC has a board, the board decides, now if you want the board to decide
correctly, you must get involved positively.
>
>> We sure need to go via a transition period, but I don't see the new
>> membership system ready before the end of the year, so time to move
>> step by step and be involved in the whole process.
>
> Ok, so can I please get answers to a few practical questions about how
> the new system would work:
>
> - would all of our members be required to subscribe or renew their
> membership online, through the new system, or could we do it by other
> means (paper forms, shake of hands, emails to secretariat etc.) and
> then have our secretariat register the information into ISOC's database?
>
> - when the rules say "Individuals are required to re-affirm
> periodically their ISOC Global and Chapter memberships", would the
> chapter be free to define how, or would that be through a procedure
> defined by the HQ?
>
> - does the system support membership in more than one chapter at the
> same time?
>
> - about rule 3.3, why don't you just say that ISOC will use Unicode
> for all its membership management activities?
>
> - what does it matter to ISOC if someone's email address doesn't work
> any more?
These practical questions will be answered after the BRIMS is adopted.
You are mixing principles and operational. As Terry explained, first the
BRIMS, then the membership system can be developed with its procedures.
We will sign on the procedures later.
>
> Thanks,

-- 
Franck Martin
ICT Specialist
franck at sopac.org
SOPAC, Fiji
GPG Key fingerprint = 44A4 8AE4 392A 3B92 FDF9  D9C6 BE79 9E60 81D9 1320
"Toute connaissance est une reponse a une question" G.Bachelard

_______________________________________________
Chapter-delegates mailing list
Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates