[Chapter-delegates] OneWebDay and Drumbeat

[Joly MacFie]

The news has come on Tuesday that OneWebday is to be folded into
Drumbeat - a year-round effort from the Mozilla Foundation.

http://bit.ly/d7sJEJ.

The announcement runs: "While we will no longer be organizing
OneWebDay events on September 22, the effort to protect and expand
access to the open web goes on.  Through Drumbeat, Mozilla will be
supporting the development of several new projects every year and
helping people organizing local events.  I hope you'll familiarize
yourself with these programs and ask questions.  We're jut building
the initiative - a great time to get involved and help shape it."


Personally I find this a disgusting development. All the work we've
put into establishing Sep 22nd gone down the drain.

The background of this is that founder Susan Crawford got co-opted by
Obama in late 2008 and gave up Chairmanship, which eventually passed
to Mitch Kapor (Mozilla, co-founder of eff). There was hope of major
funding from the Ford Foundation, a small advance was forthcoming and
Nathaniel James - a professional activist- was hired as Executive
Director.  Aided by Kapor workers James moved the website, disposed of
the wiki, and set up a ning social network. The ning was clunky and
not totally effective, but it did enable people to enrol. When the day
actually came around here was very little co-ordination of the various
events worldwide - it couldn't be automated - compared with the
previous year - when I added them all manually to the wiki.  As we are
we are well aware on this list there were also some ruffled feathers
amongst IETF types about disparaging references to "technical elites"
in the OneWebDay pledge.

Here in NYC, without Susan at the helm, it was ISOC-NY who organized,
financed, operated and webcast the OneWebDay event which was
successful. It was a fair amount of work. In local discussions with
board member Kaarli Tasso afterwards she talked enthusiastically about
expanding OneWebDay into a year round activist effort. I, myself,
refused to go along with this. My feeling was, and is, that all
efforts should be concentrated on establishing the day as a global day
of recognition for the Internet, and activism should be left to other
organizations. I also strongly made the point about the Internet
Society's inclusive ethic as expressed in "The Internet is for
everyone" that should mean that it should be a day for all users,
engineers, public, professionals, everybody - my prime hope has always
been that it would become a day when schools internationally would
teach Internet awareness and do hook-ups etc. Besides which, our
resources were limited.

So what it appears now is that the even the purveyors of the
year-round concept have realized that it's an ill fit for OneWebDay
and, with more Ford Foundation $$ evidently not forthcoming, and Susan
Crawford still recovering from her year in the White House, OneWebDay
is for the dumper.

In the FAQ they say:

<quote>
Should I plan to organize an event or project for OneWebDay, September 22, 2010?

OneWebDay is your day.  While no one will stop you from organizing
OneWebDay events, we need your active participation in this new phase.

Going forward, there is no central support for any future event or
project using the “OneWebDay” brand.  We believe that OneWebDay values
can be enacted best by working within the Drumbeat initiative.  We’re
here to help you have powerful open web events any day of the year
that works for you and your community.  We hope you will join
Drumbeat!
</quote>

and what's more

<quote>
What will happen to OneWebDay.org and my.OneWebDay.org (the Ning site)?

We will keep the main site up and running to document OneWebDay’s
history and link to the new Drumbeat projects and events.

We will also keep up the Ning site, but we will be changing its name.
Also, we will likely turn on the advertising option so that the site
can remain free to use for as long as people need it.  You have built
an impressive social network on my.OneWebDay.org.  We hope you can
continue to use this resource to share your work, find like-minded
people all over the world, and self-organize your own collaborations.
If you would like to join a small administration team for the Ning
site, please let us know.
</quote>

Now for a kick off, unless I'm much mistaken, ning is free. I set up
onewebday.org myself with free hosting via Dreamhost. So there are no
expenses.

But mores to the point, a vast majority of the work in establishing
OneWebDay has come from ISOC Chapters - do we want to be co-opted into
Drumbeat? Do we want to let it die?

Would it not be a better plan, if the OWD board of directors no longer
have any interest in offering "central support", for them to resign
and let others take it on and do the job?

I would think so.

Comments?

joly

ISOC-NY
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Joly MacFie  917 442 8665 Skype:punkcast
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