[Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

[Veni Markovski]

Hi. Copying Chapter-Support.

To add to Olivier's message - few months ago (in October), we emailed
all our members (who, as Olivier rightfully points out) have become from
about 900 down to 571. Let's assume the emails of 330 people were not
working. Today of these 571 there are only 115 left. That's strange.
HOWEVER, when we emailed them back in October, only 1 (one) responded
that he doesn't want to receive further emails. Suddenly, there are 456
less members? And, as for the data - we don't have their data at all.

Now, there's another problem: I have actually signed up with two emails,
when I was experimenting around few years ago, and while I am not
getting the emails from ISOC this year to veni at veni.com, my alternative
email... is getting it. By the way, I don't remember if I responded to
the reminder from December 31 2018 with subject "Action Requested/Acción
solicitada/Action requise: Final Opportunity to Remain an ISOC Member",
but that account still gets messages. And mine is not.
And yet, I am (veni at veni.com) an active member, as per the portal.

Anyway, so where did the 456 people disappear between October and now?    

Veni
ISOC Bulgaria
Chairman of the Board

On 02/12/19 12:09, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'd be interested in your comments, as I have realised (from the
> feedback received on today's Chapter Advisory Council Steering
> Committee) that the UK Chapter is not the only Chapter with Membership
> software problems. Throughout the week, I have been grappling with
> various problems brought forward by the new Internet Society
> membership system.
>
> Leaving small problems to the side, there are two main problems that
> the Internet Society UK England Chapter is facing:
>
> 1. The inability to download a list of all our members in Excel
> format. When we started using the ISOC AMS system, we transferred all
> of our member's details to the AMS. We even registered with the Data
> Protection Registrar, in case the details were going to be leaving the
> UK. Whilst the Internet Society runs the AMS system, we believe that
> we are the data controller. Now we cannot retrieve the data of our own
> members and the question comes as to "who owns members"? I remember
> this debate poisoned discussions in early 2000 when the Internet
> Society was about to collapse for lack of funds and at the end of the
> day, the matter was dug into the ground and full access to the
> membership records given to the Chapters about their own members. Now
> the new system makes things a lot harder for the Chapter to view and
> download records of its own members. This simply cannot be the case.
>
> 2. Emailing members using the system: here there are two main
> problems: first, it is now impossible to email a subset of our
> members, it's either all of them, or 1 of them, but there is no
> ability to select a subset of members, for example living in town X,
> and email them. Functionality loss - which I had already pointed out
> during the demonstration calls a few months ago, but it appears that
> someone has deliberately decided to ignore this important feature.
> That's a technical thing that should be fixed easily.
>
> The second problem, possibly more of a problem because I do not think
> that it is technical, but is a "feature" that was added, is that we
> now appear not to be able to email all of our members. With the
> decision of ISOC to go through the toughest regimes of GDPR acceptance
> by asking for explicit acceptance of GDPR terms, we went from 3400 to
> 1490 members. Whilst this is a pill that's difficult to swallow, I
> understand the purpose and conservative direction that ISOC took for
> this - the culture of "safety first" prevailing these days. That said,
> we now have another challenge, in that out of these 1490 members, we
> appear to only be able to email 1098 of them - because it appears that
> 400 of our "members" have "decided not to receive emails".
> First, I think that the email opt out button is very badly marked, as
> it cuts you off all communication and signs you off all of the mailing
> lists that you might have subscribed to. In my test, I have managed to
> sign myself off email mailing lists without being able to find a way
> to put myself back on them - for example the Internet Policy..... But
> worse still, I have found that my own colleagues in the leadership
> team have opted out of emails - perhaps unwittingly.
>
> What good is a Chapter member that opts out of emails?
>
> How in the world will I get in touch with members that have opted out
> of emails? Are these people completely cut-off from the Internet
> Society? Are they receiving *any* communication at all from the
> Internet Society, or is it only the Chapter that is blocked from being
> able to email them? Do they know they have opted out?
> To me, these 400 people that the Chapter cannot email are as good as
> dead wood - why not remove them from Internet Society membership as well?
>
> I'd be interested in your comments if you are faced with similar problems.
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
> (personal views)
>
> _______________________________________________
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