[Chapter-delegates] Welcome on behalf of the Chapter Delegates to the Internet Society Canada Chapter

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hello to Ted and everyone,

First, thanks to everyone for their good wishes. We look forward to
becoming an active and valued member of the family of chapters. A full
media launch event is scheduled for April 15 in Toronto, immediately after
ICANN Beijing.

On Narelle's point about national versus regional chapters; the truth is
that we don't even know how deep is the interest in regional chapters
beyond Québec. Many of the proponents of the Canada Chapter have an
interest in domestic Internet-related policy advocacy; in Canada that is
mostly a national issue, however it's not absolute since consumer
protection is a provincial matter. The current core group includes
membership from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic.

I personally hope for more regional chapters in Canada, but for now we are
in "crawl before you walk" mode and need to see where the interest lies. It
was the PoV of the initial applicants that in a country with a population
as small as Canada's (about the same as California) we ought to start with
a national chapter, and see how things evolve. I am happy to have actively
involved ISOC Québec in our evolution, and indeed a number of issues it
recommended for our initial application were accepted without reservation.
As Ted says, we're not only structuring to work with regional chapters but
to welcome and encourage their formation as called for.

I would also like to agree with Alejandro's call for more and better
documentation related to chapter formation, both as matters of education
and institutional memory. Last week, at an Internet governance meeting in
Ottawa I was amazed to hear about the multiple unsuccessful attempts to
create a Canadian chapter over the years, seeming to date back almost to
the birth of ISOC. The current organizers knew nothing about these previous
efforts. I hope that our experiences -- and the unsuccessful ones of our
predecessors -- may offer educational value to yet-to-come chapters as well
as ISOC itself,


Evan Leibovitch
Interim President, ISOC Canada Chapter
evan at telly.org
sk: evanleibovitch
tw: el56
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20130305/4ba41096/attachment.htm>