[Chapter-delegates] ISOC Elections result

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Marcin,

your email has some very specific things to think about. We haven't been 
able to pool our resources as chapter; many of us are in a situation 
similar to yours, in which a few people, with knowledge, commitment, and 
the international connection to others, are able to be well recognized 
in-country and to some extent outside it.

The best I can come up with right now is that we should all look into the 
documents prresented to the Board of Trustees in the latest meeting (in 
Philadelphia) and see what each of us would best get from the activities 
described there as ongoing or being planned.

This is in http://www.isoc.org/isoc/general/trustees/agenda-mar-08.shtml 
and I think that the main documents of interest are the departmental 
reports and the description of key initiatives.

Can we mmap them out to some of your key concerns? I.e. can we see if they 
are useful to decide whether ISOC should express itself in view of the 
censorship you mention (that was Armenia) or not, as an example?

Do note that I am not "taking personally" the criticism but am indeed 
assuming personally the responsibility. I thank you again for laying out a 
good route for dialog.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty


.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .
      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico

*Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
*LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
*Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614

---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
  Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


On Tue, 13 May 2008, Marcin Cieslak wrote:

> Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 01:32:00 +0200
> From: Marcin Cieslak <saper at saper.info>
> To: Alejandro Pisanty <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
> Cc: Chapter Delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] ISOC Elections result
> 
> Hi Alejandro,
>
>> thanks for this frank, open statement. As the candidate who did fail to 
>> respond to questions of yours, for which I apologize, I am reminded to be 
>> more attentive to your needs. In my partial discharge, I do point you to my 
>> very extensive responses to the Election Committee questions in the 
>> candidates' blog, which encompass in principle part of your line of 
>> questionning. This does not detract from having to be more responsive.
>
> Please do not take this personally. I just wanted to answer Franck's 
> question. It's not that we don't care.
>
>> I hope and assume that you are also watching the Board's agenda for the 
>> past and coming meetings. Are there any points there that cause you 
>> particular concern? Are some large-scale strategic issues missing there?
>
> How can we tackle large-scale strategic issues if we cannot agree on action 
> on some incidents in real life?
>
> I would like to propose  that we take a more bottom-top approach: let's have 
> a  look at some real-life issues and see how the ISOC community can get 
> involved. I think the `Sphere' project might be currently the best working 
> group to discuss this.
>
> For example, one of our chapters was involved in a very specific case of 
> Internet censorship that have been raised by some communities out there. Is 
> this case important to us? Or not? I am not saying what they've done is right 
> or wrong, the question is are we going is this something that ISOC should 
> work on? This actual case may be important to the ISOC image globally.
>
> There are plenty of people out there (both technical and user communities) 
> that deal with everyday policy issues on the net. And they are facing real 
> issues. Take a look at what Chaos Computer Club or Aktion 
> Vorratsdatenspeicherung are doing in Germany. What issues folks at NANOG is 
> discussing. What are the hottest political topics at the IETF. I don't see it 
> happening here with us.
>
> To give you an example: Bob Briscoe asked on the IETF Transport Working
> Group "What body is qualified to decide on Internet fairness?". This
> question was going far beyond the group's charter but this issue could be 
> picked up by the ISOC community.
>
> One of the role of the Internet Society could be to tackle those issues and 
> put them on a global agenda. And the reverse, we can communicate
> a strategic solution back to those communities. I believe that there is
> a tremendous potential in translating the tech talk to the language of 
> politics (and back).
>
> Small things we (ISOC Poland) have achieved at the local field this way:
> - we are recognized as a partner in every major IT discussion, both coming 
> from industry or from the government;
> - we maintain strong links with all major IT organizations in the country;
> - we have a strong relationship with IT companies like IBM, Sun and Novell 
> forming so-called Coalition for Open Standards;
> - our statements on issues like digital signature law and e-voting are 
> discussed widely. In March alone we've had few interviews to nationwide TV 
> and radio news channels. Sometimes even journalists are consulting with us 
> questions on Internet/e-governance issues before talking to
> the politicians.
>
> And all of this is done by a really small core group working for free, with 
> almost no budgetary spending. I know this is way not _that_ easy to do on a 
> global level, but most of our strength is that we have a CLEARLY defined and 
> focused agenda. And we have fun doing this!
>
> If we do not monitor development of the reality out there we risk being 
> irrelevant and eventually obsolete.
>
> -- 
>              << Marcin Cieslak // saper at saper.info >>
>
>
>