[Chapter-delegates] Sad news from ISOC Poland

[Marcin Cieslak]

Tommi Karttaavi wrote on 2011-11-18 07:57:
> Anyway, I'm going to like the page, because the news wasn't any sadder
> that that, if for no other reason :)

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011, Klaus Birkenbihl wrote:
> (though privately I use FB to stay in touch
> with a few friends and comment on FB policies
> once and a while ...)
>
> but fb and ISOC? Just for some visibility?
> I think Tommy had a perfect comment on this at the
> Bucharest meeting.

That's actually very interesting approach. I still refuse to use
Facebook personally, but it seems that you both have decided it is
fine your you (personally) and a no-go for the chapters.

My current personal stance is the reverse: I don't see any value
in pushing my personal stuff out via Facebook; however 
a public page for the organisation might be useful,
given there are people who volunteered to run this.

One of the rules is that Facebook needs to be non-exclusive,
i.e. the information we post there should be available
via usual channels. The problem is, unfortunately,
while our posts are visible to anyone, the discussion
that might follow - is owned by Facebook.

That's why (in short) the news is sad.

I have had a discussion with a volunteer to run the FB page
and we wanted to solve two particular problems:

(1) Out-of-country potential members

AMS tells us, there is a non-negligeable number of people
from out of country (mostly Eastern Europe) who indicated
our chapter as the one they are willing to join, and also
because there is no chapter in their country or nearby.
We have considered various approaches to reach out to them
(including a Russian-language mailing list for ISOC members)
but for now we have found that this is the fastest and
the easiest way to stay in touch with them.

(2) Reaching out to other chapters about us and
European affairs.

We decided to start in English (not Polish, and not
Russian despite the previous problem) because we feel
we have a need of reporting about some particular issues
and events happening around the Internet in the country.
Some of them do not relate directly to our activity, so
items like, for example, ISOC newsletter, are not the proper
place for this. We lack good tools to exchange
this information among us in a timely manner, and it
seems that the wall-like concept (as contentless as it
sometimes turns out to be) may work for us.

Our friends from Romania are experiementing with setting
up something like that for us without the need
to use third-party platforms like Facebook:

http://www.anuntul.eu/

especially

http://www.anuntul.eu/wordpress/

I would really like to switch to the platform that 
is hosted and operated by the chapters; however
even if we have this problem solved (good internal
platform) there is still a question of outreach and
engagement. People or media don't get involved overnight 
and an internal platform isn't going to solve this easily.

Of course, I am happy to try other solutions to 
the above problems if you have some handy!

//Marcin