[Chapter-delegates] Revised Chapter Agreement

Tue Sep 5 15:21:11 PDT 2017

Raul,

indeed and yet not. The Chapter Agreement and related instruments are only
as good as the depth to which goals are shared and trust prevails; as good
as all parties involved feel they are respected in their professional
competence, political experience, and ethical trustworthiness. The Chapters
are not satellites and they are not branch offices. They are
self-constituted entities which share a mission with all others in the ISOC
organization.

The Chapter Agreement has a structural contradiction in the incentives it
creates and ISOC central has to be very mindful of this. It requires or at
least requests that the Chapters be constituted as full-fledged independent
organizations, legally recognized, governed by rules, big enough to allow
diversity and a rotation of leadership, of weight enough to be influential
in politics and policy, all of which may in turn require legal compliance,
a lot of lawyering, administrative burdens for transparency and
accountability, dealing with all kinds of authorities, and political
exposure both favorable and of risk. Some of our Chapters, further, are in
countries where any organized activity is high risk, all the more so if it
promotes openness in any of its senses.

It is hard to ask such an organization to submit itself meekly to a set of
administrative requirements without fulfilling at the same time the
conditions in my first paragraph above. The Agreement must commit both
parts equitably. A pound of flesh from each if that is the measure. And as
I have tried to explain many times over the years. ISOC global suffers when
it acts regionally or locally without integration. At the very least you
end up going to the wrong office and making the wrong statement at the
wrong time; and your opportunity cost rises exponentially.

The practical consequence is that you leave yourself more room to
accomodate Chapter specifics (there's plenty of staff now for that) and you
make and deliver on commitments from HQ that really mean something
substantive for the Chapters as parts of a whole larger than the sum of its
parts.

Alejandro Pisanty

On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 4:42 PM, Raul Echeberria <echeberria at isoc.org> wrote:

>
> Alejandro,
>
> Your email goes much beyond the issue of the Revised Chapter Agreement.
> I would suggest to keep the focus on this topic on this thread.
>
> Your comments about the role of the staff are not appropriate. The Staff
> doesn’t play games with the chapters as you suggest neither choose
> favorites and the only idea of using ISOC resources for supporting those
> games is something absolutely unacceptable. I’m happy to discuss with you
> any specific accusation and be sure we would take measure if something like
> that would be proved.
>
> With regard to Chapters involvement in international meetings, we have
> made huge progresses in the last couple of years, in fact you Alejandro
> yourself have participated in ISOC delegations in a very productive manner.
> Next month 5 chapters leaders will join ISOC delegation to WTDC. And this
> is not an isolated case, this is the habit in present times.
>
> We always try to coordinate with local chapters in every meeting. Of
> course, we can make mistakes sometimes, but mistakes are just mistakes, not
> the way we proceed. In some cases even the problem is not the communication
> between the Staff and the chapters but the internal communication at the
> chapter level,
> We are happy to correct anything we are doing wrong in that sense, but I
> hope it could be recognized the effort that has been made in the last few
> years in this area, not only in implementing fellowship programs oriented
> to the chapters,  for participating in ISOC delegations to International
> meetings, but also in the selection of the fellows, according to the
> recommendations submitted by the Chapters to the Board.
>
>
> Coming back to the topic of the subject, I think this dialogue has been
> very fruitful. We have taken notes of all the comments and all your
> opinions and we will try to accommodate most of them in a new revision of
> the agreement.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Raúl
>
>
>
>
> El 5 set. 2017, a las 15:13, Alejandro Pisanty <apisanty at gmail.com>
> escribió:
>
> Hi,
>
> clearly Chapter officials rotation is not an easy proposition. We go
> through several generations in the formation of new leaders before some are
> ready, available, and clear of conflicts for time with their day jobs, as
> well as conflicts of interest such as working for government in Internet
> policy-making fields, having clients whose needs in litigation may be at
> variance with ISOC's positions, and so on. Other than a general call for
> renewal any crisp-set rules are bound to clash with reality.
>
> The need to incorporate new perspectives and people in leadership must be
> strengthened internally in the chapter. Otherwise too many incentives are
> created for intervention and manipulation by ISOC mid-level staff, who can
> play games with resources, choose favorites, enter into blame games, and on
> the other hand lose sight of the difficulties and failures of the
> leadership they choose to support.
>
> Now let's for a minute imagine an ISOC that was built as a federation of
> independently founded societies, as indeed is the case for a few of the
> older chapters (and also is a little bit with some new ones, whose members
> are simultaneously members in some other local organization such as a trade
> association or an NGO.) What would we agree with a central administration
> and representation that we created?
>
> We would put substance first, not form. One egregious disrespect that
> continues to happen is that ISOC delegations arrive at international
> events, such as those in the ITU's global and regional processes, without
> due advance coordination with the local chapter. To their surprise, the
> local Chapter is all over, invited by the local host, participating in
> consultations and even drafting documents... all on their own, and not
> being able to be decisive enough because the "party line" remains unknown.
> Ditto for ICANN, IGF WSIS Forum and so on. Further ditto for the processes
> where governments are taking their stuff away from multistakeholder
> mechanisms altogether. There is an asymmetry of trust that is hurtful to
> all parties in the long run.
>
> Re-balancing the HQ/Central-Chapter relationship will take much more work
> than just refining the Charter's provisions for managing Chapters
> internally.
>
> Alejandro Pisanty
>
> On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 2:34 AM, Borka Jerman Blazic <borka at e5.ijs.si>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> In ISOC SI we had more than 50% Internet wide members that never appeared
>> in the chapter communications or activities.
>> We did not had as well any information why they were enrolled as our
>> members. In that context I believe that  chapters
>> should have the responsibility to conduct themselves based on high NGO
>> standards  that are either visible or are checked
>> each year.  However, being ISOC member global  is  attractive for the
>> chapter membership, but most of the chapter activities
>> should lay on local institutions and members that are engaged and work
>> within the local community.
>>
>> So any firm restrictions in that context  are not appropriate in the new
>> Chapter agreement.
>>
>> With regards,
>>
>> Borka
>>
>>
>> Susannah Gray je 4.9.2017 ob 22:23 napisal:
>>
>>> Hi Raul, all
>>>
>>>
>>> On 01/09/2017 10:41, Raul Echeberria wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> The number of Internet users have increased very much and the number of
>>>> people involved in Internet development and policy matters have grown very
>>>> much too. There are several (ISOC runs some of them) programs for
>>>> developing new leaders. New people is coming on board every year. Youth at
>>>> IGF, NextGen leaders, Youth SIG, the numerous IG schools are just some
>>>> examples of those initiatives. We have to learn how to take advantage of
>>>> all these new leaders that ara being formed by different organizations.
>>>>
>>> - Just a quick comment on this. I am fully in agreement that chapters
>>> need to rotate leadership, encourage young leaders and actively engage in
>>> succession planning.
>>>
>>> However, I believe it's not always possible or in the best interests of
>>> a chapter to rotate leadership frequently, as several others have pointed
>>> out.
>>>
>>> The SF-Bay Area Chapter has often had trouble recruiting Board Members.
>>> In the past, before I joined, I know the Board even talked about closing
>>> the chapter (one of the largest with over 2,000 members) because no one
>>> wanted to take over the Chair role.
>>>
>>> Running a successful chapter is similar to having a full time job or
>>> running a small business when you consider the amount of administration
>>> that needs to be done (website maintenance, finances, reporting taxes,
>>> member admin and engagement, social media, project management, event
>>> planning, Board meetings, keeping track of mailing lists etc. ).
>>>
>>> Admin and Board commitments take up a lot of time. Young leaders/those
>>> in the Next Gen programs are often at the beginnings of their careers and
>>> are working hard to climb the career ladder or are still studying, leaving
>>> little time for anything else. They may also not be able to ask for
>>> flexibility from an employer to carry out or contribute fully to
>>> Board/Chapter duties, which may be easier for people at a more advanced
>>> stage of their career.
>>>
>>> While I would love to have a graduate of any of the programs mentioned
>>> above on the SF-Bay Area Chapter Board, my personal opinion is that
>>> overstretched Boards generally need people on their Boards who already have
>>> Board experience, need little coaching, know the industry and who can jump
>>> in and offer much needed advice and support from the outset as this greatly
>>> reduces the workload on existing Board members.
>>>
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> Susannah
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Susannah Gray
>>> President & Chair
>>> San Francisco-Bay Area Internet Society Chapter
>>> www.sfbayisoc.org
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Prof.dr.Borka Jerman-Blažič Head, Laboratory for Open systems and
>> Networks Jožef Stefan Institute and Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana
>> University Slovenia tel. +386 1 477 3408 tel. +386 1 477 3756 mob. +386 41
>> 678 410
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
> Facultad de Química UNAM
> Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
> +52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
> +525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475
> Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
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> Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/
> 22285/4A106C0C8614
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>

-- 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Facultad de Química UNAM
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
+52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
+525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475
Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
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