[Chapter-delegates] ISOC-NY President Resigns

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Dear David,

sorry to hear that you are standing down from your position. This is
particularly painful since it is not the first time that I read messages
like yours from people who have offered a considerable amount of their
time to significantly defend the values that we believe in, yet have to
go through a multitude of hops and obstacles to get their expenses  paid
out. Not only are you not spending time working lucratively, you often
have to fund this "pastime" in the same way you would pay for their Golf
Club membership. (although by being an ISOC Chapter chair, you've
probably given up on Golf membership already) Something as simple as a
modest expenses account has never been in question for Chapters that do
not collect membership fees and I know countless numbers of Chapter
chairs who actually bankroll their chapter too. As a result, if having
deep pockets is one of the prerequisites for a Chapter chair, I am not
surprised that there's no waiting list for volunteer Chapter chairs. But
this is not just an Internet Society Chapter problem: over the years, I
have seen many people burn out in ICANN in equally the same way,
sometimes much more dramatically.

But the issue is only an symptom of a wider problem. Back in 2012, at
the Global INET Geneva
https://www.internetsociety.org/history-timeline/global-inet-geneva-0 I
raised the problem of funding of volunteers a multi-stakeholder system.
Since then, there have been many initiatives aimed as facilitating and
funding participation or covering travel expenses of volunteers who
would not have managed to self-fund their participation in other ways,
but the balance has been heavily slanted at focussing this type of
support to volunteers from Lead Developed Countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_developed_country or Developing
Countries & Newly Industrialised countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country

Secondly, the funding and support has been mostly ad-hoc, in that
volunteers get supported for a single event, or a handful of events, and
then are expected to be ale to swim by themselves and find funding on
their own from other sources. Ironically it is when these people start
taking on more and more responsibilities, that they get told they're on
their own.

It's a huge question: when does a volunteer stop being a volunteer? Is a
volunteer whose expenses are paid for still independent enough to be
deemed a volunteer? Is top down funding of a bottom-up model acceptable
or does it transfer control of the bottom-up system to the people at the
top? Are hands-off sponsorships without strings attached a reality or a
unicorn?

It appears that the Internet Governance ecosystem must be absolutely
cash-strapped, judging from the difficulties that everyone shares in
obtaining modest funding for activities. Having had experiences in the
past in other industries, both in the aerospace & arts/entertainment
space, I am always flabbergasted about the contrast in how much is spent
in these other industries on meetings, events, marketing, support,
subsidies and how poor Internet Governance is... although it is quite
obvious that this is not everybody's experience.

All to say that whilst I recognise there are improvements from 4 years
ago, we are still far from having found the solution to funding of
multi-stakeholder models. I therefore maintain that the issue of funding
is the single largest threat to the Internet being run in a
multi-stakeholder manner. Until we have significant commitments from the
rich stakeholders (Government & Business) to ensure sustained support of
poor stakeholders (Civil Society, Academia, End Users), some
stakeholders will continue to struggle. Multi-stakeholder models are
novel methods of governance - let's design novel ways together to
sustain the component parts of the model.

Kindest regards,

Olivier

On 05/04/2016 11:16, David Solomonoff wrote:
> Effective Monday, 4/11 I will resign my position as President of the
> New York Chapter of the Internet Society.
>
> I put all my time and financial resources as a full-time, unpaid
> volunteer into developing the Chapter and more broadly, the cause of
> open technology for social good, over the last three years.
>
> That proved not to be sustainable - I've completely run out of
> financial resources and can no longer make the time commitment.
>
> ISOC-NY EVP Grace Wang and SVP Carolina Coto will jointly assume
> leadership until a new election can be held. I will help them in every
> way I can.
>
> I would like to have a final Board meeting as President at Civic Hall
> on Friday, 4/8 or Sunday, 4/10.
>
> I will also be pursuing several commercial ventures and can be be
> reached at david.solomonoff at zoeticnetworks.com to discuss partnership
> opportunities.
>
> Thanks to everyone for all their support over the 11 years I've been
> President, as we went from being an inactive Chapter to one of the
> most vital.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>