[Chapter-delegates] Request that board member Sunday discuss forming a group to review the chapter proposals

Sun Jun 4 04:26:16 PDT 2017

HI Dave

I hope you are very well.
Gonzalo will surely answer after the Board meeting, very probably he is not checking email now. But I didn’t want to let your email without a deserved response.

So i will comment as far as I can since some of your points have to be responded by the Board.

My intention is very far to argue with the Chapters, all the opposite. Our objective is strengthening the role of the Chapters in the organization and the role of the Chapters in our work toward advancing our Mission and objectives.

Going to your comments, I am really surprised by your negative perception about the support the Chapters are receiving.

As it is shown in the document the staff has prepared to the board and the board sent to the ChAC, the budget dedicated to support the Chapters, has only increased in the past few years. We are in an absolutely different situation than 3 years ago.

But we are never satisfied with that and permanently we are looking for new instruments for supporting the chapters.

El 4 jun. 2017, a las 08:25, Dave Burstein <daveb at dslprime.com<mailto:daveb at dslprime.com>> escribió:

Gonzalo and folk

As most of you know, last spring a proposal was made to allocate 3% of the ISOC budget for the chapters to spend on their activities. Depending on the allocation formula, that would be $15,000-$50,000 per active chapter. Careful review to avoid fraud was included.

The Chapters that are running projects and/or organizing local events are already receiving significan support in some cases bigger than the amounts you mention.

I believe the majority of the board was supportive and one board member said he was confident things would be approved after the chapters committee developed a concrete proposal. Instead, staff has chosen another path.

I don’t understand your comment. The Board and the staff have been aligned on this for a long time and the direction chosen is only one: Increasing the support to the chapters, giving new opportunities of involvement to the chapters in as more activities as possible, involving chapters in advocacy activities, consulting chapters in policy positions development.

It's time for those on the board to set policy. The staff proposal ignores the primary points and instead suggests spending $500,000 on branding is the best way to help the chapters. The staff proposal will soon be public, I'm told. The differences will be very clear.

Perhaps you are mixing two different things. One is our comments to the ChAC submission and other thing is our budget.
We are allocating a significant amount of money to the Chapters this year for supporting branding activities and celebration of our 25th anniversary.
This is obviously a one-off investment. Of course we are much more interested in supporting programs than branding. However, it would not be responsible to invest in branding for the whole organization and to not include the chapters. It is precisely because we think Chapters are an intrinsic part of the organizations that we have to do this effort. Additionally, the reason why we are spending on branding this year is because the branding work is a way to support the increase of the impact of ISOC work. We are a impact oriented organization and the branding has its role in achieving that.
The support to celebration doesn’t deserve much explanation. We want all of us to celebrate together. If this instrument is well used by the chapters is an instrument to increase local engagement and to gain visibility in the local community.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that most ISOC chapters are in the Global South, as is most of the board. Almost all policies are made by senior staff, almost all in the Global North and strongly supportive of the "DC Consensus." I can provide several clear examples of ISOC opposing Group of 77 proposals strongly supported by the African and Asians because they would lower the price of Internet access. (Previously discussed at ISOC events.)

Dave, to be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about here. More explanation would be useful. Saying that the work of ISOC is going against increasing access in developing countries is something difficult to sustain.
Fortunately we are being globally recognized by the opposite.
I can’t comment about the DC consensus because I have no idea what is that and so I doubt we are supportive of that.

With regard to your comment about the global south, I have to say that a good part of our senior team is in the global south. I have responsibilities over a good part of the organization and it is obvious that I am not from the Global North. 4 of our regional directors are from the global south, we have a good portion of the staff locate In the so called global south and of course, there is no such division inside of ISOC. I am very very glad we have a very solid Access strategy developed and supported in a global manner.

One final comment.

As I presented to the board today:

We have to continue working on the improvement of the chapters (Chapters performance is improving as presented today), providing more instruments to the chapters to perform their activities and to contribute to advancing our Mission, and also formalizing the chapters (incorporation, bank accounts, transparency and accountability).

At the end of the day maybe we will spend more than 3%, it is not about a fixed number, it is about what we do with the money, what instruments we use and how impactful our work is in different areas including Chapters.

I would be very happy to join one of the next AC meetings to have an open discussion about those points you raised.

Best regards,

Raúl

I spend time on ISOC because I think we can deliver concrete progress on the Internet for All. I don't think I'm alone in believing our $30M PIR subsidy can be far more effectively used. I believe the chapters will demonstrative that, if they had support.

Frankly, the people on the ground in Africa I've met have a far clearer understanding of what's needed than D.C. lawyers and economists. I'm on a U.S. State Department committee, and I'm amazed how in DC ideology takes precedence over knowledge. We can and should bring the public interest issues to the forefront. We haven't.

So I request the board members informally begin looking closely at the chapters proposal, with a possibility of forming a group to show respect for the opinions of the chapters.

The rest is commentary. I've been up almost 24 hours working on this and am fading. If my comments are unclear, please request clarification from me or the members of the chapter committee.

I'll be making concrete proposals after I get some sleep and catch up on the technology reporting I do for a living. In particular, we should change the symbolic meaning of some old charter rules and actively reach out to those not well represented.

In particular, nearly 1/3rd of the Internet is now Chinese. Both Africa and India will soon have more Internet users than the U.S.

Any global policy is likely ineffective unless a way is found to incorporate this missing third of the Internet in decisions.

How can ISOC build those bridges? Many of us, including Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, have been personally working on this

Ideas needed.

Dave Burstein
--
Editor, Fast Net News, 5GW News, Net Policy News and DSL Prime
Author with Jennie Bourne  DSL (Wiley) and Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed (Peachpit)
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