[Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

[Tracy F. Hackshaw @ Google]

I wrote ISOC's AMS "help" on the membership "loss" issue a couple weeks ago
and received a pretty dismissive response. Not sure if this change (and the
supporting structures) are designed to actually *assist* small Chapters
with limited resources to succeed and survive.

If this was a purchase, I would want a refund.

Very disappointing.

Rgds,

Tracy Hackshaw
Trinidad & Tobago


On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 1:09 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
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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