[Chapter-delegates] ISOC-NY President Resigns

Wed Apr 6 06:16:33 PDT 2016

Thank you Olivier!

Those are very important thoughts from somebody who is particularly 
generous with his time and involvement and I admire personally. We have 
tried hard to make our chapter self-sustaining by charging a small 
membership fee, but this initiative has found only very strong 
opposition by ISOC (paid) Staff.

I don´t want to rest important to David`s message (who I don´t have 
the pleasure to have met personally), but for the very same issues both 
of your have mentioned I planned already for my phase-out of the Costa 
Rica Chapter Chair by the end of the year. I´m already closely working 
with two of my colleagues who I hope are in a better position to take 
over and continue with our local work, who will have to take time form 
their full time jobs to do it. The good news is that Luis Carlos SOLANO 
is a real network engineer, presently working with the local branch of 
Cisco. Our 3rd Co-Chair for the rest of the year is Jorge BREALY, a very 
fine counsel of the Regulatory commission I used to head.

We hope to deal smoothly with our transition to part-time volunteers 
only.

Best regards to all

Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez
+506 8837 7176
Skype: carlos.raulg
Current UTC offset: -6.00 (Costa Rica)
On 6 Apr 2016, at 4:31, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:

> 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
>>
>
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