[Chapter-delegates] Great opportunity for ISOC to influence the Internet governance debate - chapters' opinion needed

[Veni Markovski]

Dear Sally,
thank you for you continuous feedback on the ITU-related issues. Very 
helpful.

Dear everyone, 2012 is marking a historic year for the Internet, as we 
know it. Or may be not. The reason is that the ITU is having - for the 
first time since 1988! - a conference called WCIT 
<http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12> in December. And just before it, in 
November, they will have another important conference - WTSA 
<http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/wtsa-12/Pages/default.aspx>. For both 
conferences there are preparatory meetings, usually taking place in Geneva.

These conferences and prep meetings should be well attended by 
ISOC-related people. Now, we all know that ISOC is a sector member of 
the ITU, which gives your staff access to *some *of the meetings. Some, 
because you cannot be at meetings, that are "for member states" only. 
This includes meetings of the ITU Council.

However, ISOC could - or may be should?! - encourage chapters to go and 
talk to their respected governments, and see if they can ensure chapter 
representatives to be on the governmental delegations to the ITU. I 
would imagine that if ISOC agrees to cover the travel, stay and per diem 
of these chapter experts, then many governments would agree to include 
them in their delegations.

So, here's a proposal, and I hope it will be supported by the chapters: 
organize ISOC that it will immediately launch a program to provide 
travel grants for up to 50 people from chapters around the world (don't 
limit it only to developing countries) to try to go to the WTSA, WCIT 
and the preparatory meetings that will take place between now and November.

If you agree on that, I am sure chapters could come with some plan on 
how to make sure that they will be indeed participating at the meetings 
with best experts in the field.

I also think that for the transparency and better information of the 
broader Internet community, it will be awesome to have 50 people 
tweeting, blogging, and writing on what's going on at these meeting. 
This will be useful also for the ITU itself, so it's a win-win situation.

And you can invite other organizations, which could contribute with 
expertise on the chapters' efforts.

As someone, who has been involved with the Bulgarian governmental 
participation at the ITU for the past 10-12 years, I can assure you that 
expertise is badly needed at the ITU meetings. And I am sure that the 
chapters can provide it.

Hope you will support such an initiative.

Best,
Veni

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