[Chapter-delegates] Who's going to visibly participate in the big ISOC webcast next week?

[Dave Burstein]

Folks

Will there be questions? I haven't seen any way for members to ask
questions, directly or through their chapter. It can make a difference.

The ISOC board meeting this spring set the stage for more active
membership, starting a move to letting the chapters allocate ?3% of our
$50M budget. *That was ignited by a question from a member* who believed
the board was ready to do more to make ISOC like a bottom-up rather than
top-down organization. (Money, possibly a few tens of thousands per active
chapter, may be approved as soon as the November board meeting. Write
offlist for details.)

If I get a question, I'd ask

*How can we get some public-spirited, technically informed ISOC members
to the meetings which have the greatest effect on the cost of access?
*Corporate
interests, especially giants,  dominate places like 3GPP (Wireless, the
biggest driver of access,) IEEE (Wi-Fi, probably the best way to connect
most rural communities,) and ITU-T study groups (Where IoT rules are being
hashed out already.)
*---------------------------------*

The ICANN battle is about to tone down, raising the question of where we
next focus our public advocacy to be effective?

I suggest we can have the most impact if we choose areas where the public
interest is not well represented and avoid spending when our positions are
also supported by giants.

ISOC is by far the largest public-funded group in Internet access. We get
$30M+ from the community as .org subscriptions.

I suggest we take positions on issues that matter to the Internet, but
spend most of our money on important issues *that do not have other strong
advocates. *

That would mean we not spend much on Net Neutrality, which has many strong
supporters. (I support it and applaud our Indian chapters for their work.)

Nor should we spend much money on anything with strong support from
powerful governments. *The American and Chinese governments do not need our
help on global advocacy.* Nor do corporations the size of Google ($530B,)
Facebook ($369B,) Microsoft ($446B,) or even France Telecom ($40B.)
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