[Chapter-delegates] Announcement about the dissolution of ISOC-KH
Veni Markovski
veni at veni.com
Mon Nov 4 14:11:40 PST 2013
This is extremely bad news. I am so sorry to hear it, and to read also
you didn't get adequate support from ISOC HQ. This is, I believe, the
first time, when a chapter seizes to exist in such a way.
Veni :-(
On 11/03/13 21:26, Chantra Be wrote:
>
> *Dear All,*
>
> *On 26 October 2013, a meeting was held according to Article XII of
> the Bylaws of the Cambodian Chapter of the Internet Society:*
>
> *Article XII. - Dissolution of the Chapter*
>
> 1. Dissolution of this Chapter by consent of the members shall
> consist of unanimous agreement of all its officers together with a
> majority vote at a meeting which has been publicized in advance to all
> members of the Chapter for the purpose of taking this vote.
>
> *2. Should this Chapter be dissolved, its assets shall be transferred
> to ISOC International Headquarters.*
>
>
> The meeting had been called on 23 September 2013, stating:
>
>
> "It is to propose -- unless real and practical alternatives are
> identified within the following month -- to call a meeting of all
> members of our Chapter for the purpose of taking a vote to dissolve
> the ISOC Cambodia Chapter."
>
>
> *The meeting decided to dissolve the ISOC Cambodia Chapter; this
> decision becomes effective after the present Announcement will have
> been sent out:*
>
> * - to all members of the ISOC Cambodia Chapter
> * - to the Chapter Delegates list of ISOC
> * - to the Chairperson of the Board of ISOC
> * - to the ISOC Senior Director, Membership & Services (You had
> written: "If the Cambodian Chapter wishes to rescind its ISOC
> chapter status, a letter so stating to the APAC Chapter
> Development manager is sufficient" - would you please forward it
> there -- or also to other persons in ISOC beyond the APAC office
> who might want to know.)
>
>
> This decision was taken drawing together the conclusions of the
> correspondence with ISOC staff and ISOC Chapter leaders: we appreciate
> very much the many encouraging comments from other Chapters, and we
> regret that the expected correspondence from ISOC staff -- regional
> and central -- was late, or not forthcoming at all, and not proposing
> real and practical steps ahead.
>
>
> *The following is to be more specific:*
>
> In response to the "Interim Information: Serious considerations to
> dissolve the Cambodia ISOC Chapter" which we had sent to you and to
> ISOC Chapter leaders and ISOC staff on 16 Oct 2013, we received the
> following response from Ted Mooney - ISOC Senior Director, Membership
> & Services -- on 18 October 2013, under the Subject line
> "Communication and moving forward with the ISOC Cambodia Chapter."
>
> I quote /the mail from Ted Mooney here in Italics/, to distinguish it
> from comments from other Chapter leaders and from our own side.
>
> /Dear Chantra Be,
>
> I've followed with great interest the responses from Norbert Klein on
> the Chapter Delegates e-list. I want you to know that I and many of
> us at ISOC have thoroughly read your original email more than once and
> the subsequent messages from Mr. Klein. I have researched the claims
> made regarding the correspondences between ISOC Staff and the
> Cambodian Chapter and the outreach attempts made on both sides. It is
> evident that Staff has a different interpretation of the data than has
> the Chapter. It is, in my opinion therefore, not constructive to
> dwell on the past but to address the issues raised in your message,
> once again.
> /
> Ted Mooney refers again to outreach attempts supposedly made by ISOC
> staff.
>
> This is not the first time such claims are made, and therefore we had
> responded:
>
> - We do not know "what has been communicated to" the ISOC Senior
> Director, Membership & Services in this respect -- but the situation
> continues: neither the Singapore based ISOC ASIA PACIFIC staff, nor
> the ISOC Chapter Development Manager, Asia-Pacific, nor the ISOC
> Senior Director, Membership & Services have responded to the detailed
> content in the mail from our Secretary...
> *- But if such mail was sent and we did not receive it for whatever
> reason -- it would be appropriate to share it here on the Chapters list.*
>
> * *
> *
> * *Instead of using this opportunity to provide copies of such mail,
> we received again just the same baseless claims.*
>
>
> More serious is that he says /"It is, in my opinion therefore, not
> constructive to dwell on the past."/ - He had criticized our sharing
> of concerns about the non-responsiveness of ISOC staff with other
> Chapters and the Chairperson of the ISOC Board to be unprofessional.
> He is continuing to refuse to deal with serious problems. I repeat
> again our mail which related to one of the two staff at the Asia
> Pacific Regional Office:
>
> = = =
>
> *" Dear Thip,
> **After having received your mail, rejecting our request to serious
> discuss the crisis for our Chapter, created as a result of the general
> situation and legal requirements in Cambodia in the meeting, and the
> refusal to ISOC staff to positively pay attention to our situation, we
> do not think it would be appropriate to cooperate, as a Chapter, with
> organizing a meeting for your 1 - 2.5 hours event, for which you would
> like to invite the Members of the Cambodia Chapter and other
> non-Chapter members. To discuss fundamental problems within ISOC,
> affecting the whole membership, only among officers, as you suggest
> (which has been tried in vain by email so far) would not be in line
> with our history to promote and practice open communication -- high
> values regularly lifted up among the goals of the Internet Society
> world wide and in its slogan: the Internet is for everyone.**
>
> The situation and this response has been shared and discussed with the
> Members of the Advisory Board of our Chapter and is unanimously supported.
>
> Norbert Klein
> President, ISOC-KH
>
> * The five members of our Advisory Board at that time were
> (reflecting the stipulation of our Bylaws "The Advisory Board of five
> members, from important sections of the ISOC Cambodia Chapter
> membership"):
>
> - the Head of the IT in Education Section in the Ministry of
> Education
> - the Editor in Chief of a leading Cambodian daily newspaper,
> who is at the same time President of the Club of Cambodian Journalists
> - the President and CEO of a major broadband providing ISP
> - a senior staff member in the office of the Council of
> Ministers of the Government of Cambodia, and
> - one student.
>
> = = =
>
> We do not have much confidence in regional and central staff of ISOC
> that has damaged the formerly good name of ISOC in Cambodian society,
> and no word is seen from them to apologize publicly or to rectify this
> -- but instead it is considered that we are unprofessional to raise
> such unsolved problems. We do not think it is acceptable that ISOC
> staff visits a country, refuses to discuss the problems identified as
> important by a Chapter, holds her own meeting to which she invited
> some people who said they did not know an hour ago that ISOC exists --
> and she encourages them to become members and run for leadership in
> the elections one month later. And senior staff of ISOC just keeps silent.
>
> The Documentation Center of Cambodia - www.dccam.org
> <http://www.dccam.org> -- has in every mail originating from them the
> sentence:
>
> *"...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate
> memory of its own history."*
>
> The Internet Society would do well to consider this also for itself,
> on its way into a better future.
>
>
> Ted Mooney continues:
>
> /*1.* Chapter by-laws. From various correspondences and information
> sent to the Cambodia Chapter, including examples of by-laws from other
> chapters and stated flexibility to address the local needs dating back
> to 2011, I would like to re-iterate the flexibility of the Chapter
> By-laws template to assure that agreed Chapter By-laws account for all
> local laws and special circumstances with respect to jurisdiction,
> foreign affiliation and governance.
> /
> What he calls flexibility seems more to be a situation of confusion in
> ISOC operations. It is obvious from the correspondence on the Chapters
> list - that not all Chapters have been made to accept what is now in
> our Bylaws -- but these problematic elements continue to be on the
> ISOC website as "mandatory" elements. And while he informs us that we
> are free to flexibly apply the Chapters Bylaws template, at the same
> time "Renewal Chapter Charter letters" are going out to be signed and
> returned by 15 December 2013, including "chapter minimum standards"
> stating that if a Chapter does not meet "one or more" a process of
> "rejuvenation" will be initiated.
>
> One Chapter chair commented: "Somehow I miss all these in the ISOC
> by-laws, but may be someone can enlighten us?"
>
> There is obviously no clarity and broad agreement with Chapters at
> present about the content and role of Chapter Bylaws, as some of the
> Chapter Delegates mails show -- with reference to a lot of time spent
> for nothing in the past (*highlighting added* in our quoting):
>
> *-------- Original Message -------- *
>
> *Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Fwd: Renewal Internet Society
> Chapter Charter
> Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 15:44:09 +0200
> From: Klaus Birkenbihl <Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de>
> Organization: Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE
> <http://ISOC.DE>)
> To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> <mailto:chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
> <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> <mailto:chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>>
>
>
> ...I also don't foresee much change in practice if we sign the letter.
> Nevertheless it is the wrong thing at the wrong time. During the last
> years when chapters became more visible and active we discussed so
> many beautiful things that could give support and help to be more
> effective. E.g. Issue Trackers to identify issues and track their
> resolution, Wikis to support collaboration and many other things the
> Internet holds that other groups use to do better work. So next thing
> we expected to see was some progress here.
>
> But instead of picking up e.g. the prototype that was provided by
> Elena, we still lack reporting facilities for projects and problems,
> collaboration tools, we stick to the old work-intensive AMS to
> exchange our member data ... But what we get is another version of the
> Letter of Affiliation.
>
> Please keep in mind: it is effort, money and time that is provided by
> chapters members that is used to do the work.
>
> Financial support by ISOC is rather marginal. (Did you e.g ever manage
> to organize an event for $2000? For our last event even the fee for
> the room was higher.) Knowing that ISOC lacks the budget to pay them,
> chapters - though complaining once and a while - continue to work on
> this base.
>
> The Letter of Association says ISOC wants you to perform such and
> such, wants to define a maximum number of terms for office holders [is
> this really a mission related concern?], and you need ["we believe in
> numbers"] to have that many individual members, [can it be summed-up
> with corporations? - AMS still don't let me report corporate members]
> and so forth. Read this while keeping in mind that its chapters time,
> chapters money, chapters effort. Doesn't it annoy you?
>
> I don't say we should be against the Letters of Association but given
> the situation as it is - they should be the result of negotiations and
> not a headquarters dictatorship.
>
> Maybe the newly to be created Chapters Advisory would be the group to
> develop a template that fulfills 2 criteria:
>
> - it is balanced in terms of responsibility and control, benefit and
> achievements
> - it allow**s** to be adjusted to needs of individual chapters (e.g.
> those with a commercial branch, or with corporate members, or with a
> special focus like accessibility ...)
>
> Such Letter of Association could have a real effect.
>
> Klaus*
>
> *=*
>
> /*2.* The Chapter Administrative Support Working Group is now meeting
> regularly to discuss various ways to address Chapter issues regarding
> operational resources. As you have noted from the discussion in this
> email forum, there is a wide disparity of views and therefore,
> multiple solutions may be piloted.
>
> It is regrettable that this has not come together as quickly as the
> Cambodia Chapter has needed, so we hope that you will reconsider your
> voluntary de-chartering until there are more widely available support
> options for you to evaluate. Please do keep in mind that
> local self-sufficiency will always be a key component of any
> operations resource strategy.
> /
> While local self-sufficiency is a broadly understandable principle,
> the way this issue has been treated so far seems to have seen this as
> a financial affair. We have not seen response to the much more complex
> situation, where many people in Cambodia have, over the years and
> again recently, been self-sufficient in providing their energy, their
> health, their freedom, and in some cases their lives in the struggle
> for justice and in the struggle to be free to communicate about it.
> A lot of public support, legal assistance, and care for victims, is
> however not based on local finances, but is provided by organizations
> and institutions extending external solidarity funding support.
>
> We have shared information that communication technology and
> information networks are fairly well developed in Cambodia and there
> are working groups, regular activities, IXPs, organized structures,
> Barcamps (the most recent one a week ago with more than 2000
> participants) -- quite a number of the ISOC Cambodia Chapter members
> provided leadership in these fields. Our inquiry if ISOC could
> financially assist in setting up and initially operating an office was
> clearly related to the specific government regulations (*following the
> ISOC staff guided Bylaw: "The Chapter shall be established as a
> non-profit organization under the laws of Cambodia"*).
>
> If ISOC staff considers financial /"local self-sufficiency [...]
> always be a key component of any operations resource strategy"/ we are
> out for the time being.
>
> One comment on the Chapter list had said there is no need for us to
> defend ourselves -- ISOC staff may have to defend themselves instead.
> We leave this open -- but if anybody is interested in our context, you
> may find some more information about local contributions at the Annex
> at the end of our Documentation to be sent out separately. This
> material -- voices from the Chapters - may be of value for the work
> following a recent ISOC Board decision that "acknowledged the right of
> Chapters to form an advisory group."
>
> /*3.* We once again call upon the Cambodia Chapter to a) participate
> with ISOC staff in a conference call to speak forthrightly about the
> issues you raise, b) participate in the regularly scheduled Asia
> Chapter Webex calls in which most other Asia chapters are now
> participating. Regarding, a) above, we have noted your concern that
> many Cambodia Chapter officers cannot attend a call at one time for
> work-related and other obligations. We are very willing to have
> multiple calls to accommodate various schedules and to be held at
> times that allow as many officers to attend as possible.
> /
> We did not participate lately in such conference calls or webinars as
> our experience over the years is that such talks did not lead to much
> results. Especially multiple sessions on the same subject ended up
> with open questions: What was really discussed or decided? Email
> exchanges leave much clearer records.
>
> /On another note, there is currently a Chapter workshop in Bali ahead
> of the IGF. I hope the Cambodian representative will take the
> opportunity to speak to Naveed ul Haq, Chapter Development Manager for
> Asia, Joyce Dogniez Director of Chapter Development and Raj Singh our
> Regional Bureau Director. Such a conversation presents an additional
> opportunity to resolve timing conflicts and help us all get to a
> resolution of the issues.
> /
> Ted Mooney added:
>
> /"This is unfortunate as there is a travel fellowship available for
> the each Asia Chapter to attend in which expenses are covered. My
> assumption was that surely you would take advantage of such funding
> from ISOC particularly when your representative would have a forum
> with ISOC executives in which to discuss your specific issue. Why did
> you chose not to attend?"
> /
> The fact that intensive communication on the Chapter list, with
> several calls from various Chapter leaders calling on ISOC staff --
> central and regional -- to respond to the contents of our mail did not
> result in such responses, was not an indication that to meet in Bali
> would provide the practical and timely responses we were hoping for.
> We did not want to ask for such international travel support for one
> person to talk to ISOC staff traveling to Bali to talk about things
> for which the 90 ISOC staff and advisors could not organize written
> responses in the months and weeks before.
>
> And finally, Ted Mooney said:
>
> /"Also, I think we needn't burden Chapter Delegates with a lengthy and
> hopefully fruitful conversation between us in email. I will no longer
> be posting my responses to you to the entire list."
> /
> Here the ISOC Senior Director, Membership & Services, is obviously not
> in line with the many Chapter leaders who were interested and did
> actively participate in the related discussions on the Chapters list.
> As Ousmane MOUSSA TESSA from the Niger Chapter wrote:
>
>
> *Hi all,
> +1 Veni! [Bulgaria]
>
> In my previous mail I tried to share a quiet simple idea of the
> "ecosystem" of ISOC. Veni summarized what this ecosystem must be. I'm
> just thinking it just a global decentralized process, as Chapters
> don't be considered as "subsidiaries" of company with an HQ and Board
> of Trustees!
>
> BTW, I agree 200% with Veni about the fact, and keeping in mind that
> "the strength of a chain is based on the quality of its weakest link".
> Hence, let's support each other to move steadily and forward a visible
> thread, so even the newcomers can jump easy in one the various wagons
> of ISOC.
>
> Keep on talking, talking again, in the only aim to ... to sharpen our
> current and future actions and overcome inherent difficulties of our
> Global "institution".
>
> All the best
>
> Ousmane
> Niger Chapter
> *
> We continue to share our communication.
>
>
> We are committed to the "basic values" for which many persons around
> the world became members of the ISOC -- and it is our assumption that
> many of our present Chapter members may want to continue to be members
> of ISOC, for which they had to sign up before being able to become
> members of a chapter.
>
> Probably there will also be an informal fellowship of "Friends of the
> Internet in Cambodia" - and there may be interest in the future to see
> how the recent decisions of the ISOC Board that affirmed the role of
> chapters in the governance and mission of the Internet Society will
> work out, especially when a Chapters Advisory Group will have done its
> work and hopefully the clarification of the role and relation of staff
> and chapters may lead to a new start of ISOC.
>
>
> Be Chantra
>
> chantra.be at gmail.com <mailto:chantra.be at gmail.com>
>
> (still) Secretary of the ISOC Cambodia Chapter
>
> until this announcement is sent out.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
> Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org
--
Best,
Veni Markovski
http://www.veni.com
https://www.facebook.com/venimarkovski
https://twitter.com/veni
The opinions expressed above are those of the
author, not of any organizations, associated
with or related to him in any given way.
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