[Chapter-delegates] ISOC LIVE - the reports of its death are exaggerated, but..

[Winthrop Yu]

+1 Mohan and Veni.

BTW Veni, Raj was Regional VP Asia-Pacific with a fairly autonomous remit, not a 
chapter management or compliance staffer directed from Central/HQ. Experienced 
people like Raj and Joly were and are competent, productive, but also 
independent thinkers and doers. It's interesting to note that the Asia-Pacific, 
a large and diverse region, still doesn't have a replacement for Raj 
(essentially the APAC Bureau has been dismantled). Then again, i suppose it 
doesn't make sense to hire and pay for yet another new staffer if all she/he is 
going to do is echo and pass down instructions from above.

WYn


On 11 Mar 2024 12:22 AM, Veni Markovski via Chapter-delegates wrote:
> Agree wholeheartedly with Mohan!
>
> Not renewing his contract is a huge loss for the broader Internet community. 
> And, sadly, it seems that’s a pattern with recent layoffs of highly skilled 
> people (if you remember the about 10% that were let go or whatever is the 
> right term used in such situations). The fact that the former engagement 
> person in Asia, Raj Singh, was immediately recruited by another similar 
> organization (APNIC foundation) is a testament for the big loss for ISOC and 
> for his qualifications.
>
> July has dedicated years to provide live feed and archive recordings from 
> countless of interesting and relevant meetings, which helped not only the 
> transparency of ISOC, but also supported chapters in having a first row seat 
> for some great conversations and sessions.
>
> Best regards,
> Veni Markovski
> http://www.veni.com
> pgp: 5BA1366E veni at veni.com
> <http://www.veni.com/>
>
> The opinions expressed above are those of the author,
> not of any organizations, associated with or related to
> the author in any given way.
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 11:53 K Mohan Raidu via Chapter-delegates 
> <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     Dear fellow members,
>
>     Joly McFie has been rendering sincere and yeoman service to ISOC.
>     He responds 24X7 during all days, including holidays.
>
>     I STRONGLY disagree for terminating his services. And I am sure, every
>     ISOC Member agrees with me.
>     Let us continue to have him with ISOC.
>
>     K Mohan Raidu
>     President
>     ISOC India Hyderabad Chapter
>
>     +919985033566
>     =======================================================================================================
>
>
>
>     On Saturday, March 9, 2024 at 07:12:00 PM GMT+5:30, Joly MacFie via
>     Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>
>     If I may carve out the section of Oliver's BoT missive that pertains to me.
>     /
>     /
>     /
>     /
>     /4.2 Termination of contract for Joly McFie - isoc.live/
>     /
>     At the recent Chapters Advisory Council meeting, we learned that Joly
>     McFie's services were no longer going to be contracted for Live Streaming.
>     The powers that be at ISOC found that most people were watching recorded
>     videos than the live video streaming, which in my opinion makes sense
>     because live watching requires people to do it at a time T but many people
>     like to watch the event later - and also when Live, many people had a
>     preference to be on the original Zoom channel to take an active part in
>     asking questions remotely. The Live Channels archive was great for ISOC's
>     image. A great showcase of: "This is what we do!" - with "we" conveying
>     the global dimension of the Internet Society through its memorable Chapter
>     events.
>
>     It seems to have been decided unilaterally that in order to cut on costs,
>     Joly will not longer be contracted full time to LiveStream and Archive
>     events with the added excellent professional service of adding captions
>     and making a recording very polished indeed and ready for public consumption.
>     We learned that Joly can still be contracted on a project basis by both
>     ISOC teams and chapters. The budget would come from the party who enters
>     into the contract with Joly. Chapters can include these costs in their
>     event budgets when applying for a Beyond the Net
>     Small<https://www.isocfoundation.org/grant-programme/beyond-the-net-small-grants/>
>     grant.
>
>     ISOC will continue to record its public marquee events and post the
>     recordings thereof for on-demand viewing.
>
>     ISOC's messages are unclear: on the one hand it says that it has more
>     money to support the community than the number of applications it receives
>     for funding and on the other hand it cuts a major volunteer and chapter
>     support programme and replaces it with yet more bureaucracy. It is
>     replacing an ISOC Community Resource for everyone with an elitist
>     on-demand selection process with lengthy application documents that will
>     just push back on Chapter activity.
>
>     4.2.1 Was this change in process / withdrawal of service agreed with the
>     Chapter Advisory Council or with Chapters in any way?
>     4.2.2 What will happen with the current excellent archive of livestreams
>     which constitute an amazing library of Chapter events of many many years?
>     4.2.3 Why introduce the unreasonable bureaucratic overheads in the process
>     of booking Joly McFie's services with an events budget request? Some
>     Chapters have regular Webinars and adding an official request for an event
>     budget is a waste of volunteer time. Plus there is a limitation as to how
>     many requests a Chapter can make. Plus all the necessary bureaucratic
>     reports that need to be filed afterwards.
>     4.2.4 Couldn't the Internet Society just have an on-demand contract with
>     Joly McFie and make payment on a per event basis, without needing all the
>     bureaucracy to file for "events budget"?/
>     /
>     /
>     /
>     /
>     What I will say first is that 'on-demand' is essentially a non-starter. I
>     am essentially a self-starter and most streams are interventions rather
>     than requests. Agility is key. Take, just for one example, Friday's Alumni
>     Network Women Pioneers <https://isoc.live/17412/> event. I first got the
>     info at 8am and was streaming at 10, and it was only confirmed that
>     archiving was ok two thirds of the way through the session!
>
>     Then the question of livestreamed versus recorded content. How it works is
>     that the livestreaming drives the recorded content, 1) material is edited
>     on the fly, rather than a delayed process, giving 2) an instantly
>     accessible archive, which can then be further segmented and properly
>     archived.
>
>     In the case of Zoom calls, active participation is not always practical. A
>     livestream, or even simply real time text, can be a good way to keep up
>     and stay informed. And also, unless a Zoom cloud recording, with all
>     options such as hiqh quality, separate screen and speaker etc, is made
>     available, the switched livestream is going to be way superior quality. I
>     note that, in the case of SGs/SIGS the provided Zoom accounts have
>     cloud recording disabled.
>
>     Originally the livestreaming was a NY chapter activity. Then, around 2010,
>     I was contracted by Anne Lord  to manage other Chapters livestreams, over
>     a single Livestream channel. A couple years later Paul Brigner took over
>     the North America Bureau with a strong policy of engagement via
>     livestreaming, including active outreach to other communities to stream
>     their events, and investment in production capability. I ended up working
>     pretty much full time.
>
>     When Paul left, COO Todd Tolbert contracted me, as part of IT support, to
>     keep running the now wider livestreaming activity, with the additional
>     remit of establishing one place that people could go to find streams, and
>     thus https://isoc.live was born.
>
>     Then Todd left, and I was bounced over to Comms. This has never been a
>     good fit. Comms work is getting the word out. My work is basically
>     bringing stuff in, making it available, and preserving it. I used to joke
>     that the only time I heard from Comms was when they told me NOT to stream
>     stuff. The idea being that limiting access brought value to being an ISOC
>     member. The exception was the PIR campaign, when suddenly I was in demand.
>     Nevertheless I have done a fair deal of recording and editing of ISOC
>     regional events, even if only to post some of them unlisted on YouTube.
>
>     Given this, Comms tolerance of this 'streamer in residence' budget item is
>     laudable, I guess. Up til now, that is. The shoe dropped at the start of
>     the year. I was told, in the choice of 'need to have' and 'nice to have',
>     the latter had to go, and I was in that category, and funding would cease
>     at end of Q1 2024.
>
>     How much, you might ask? Well I've been on $63,600 per annum. Out of this
>     I pay all my expenses, including servers, power, accounts like Otter,
>     Descript, etc, living expenses in NYC, not a cheap city, and tax. In
>     addition to this, ISOC has been paying for the 3 Livestream.com premium
>     channels @ $900 per annum = $2700. So, a total of $66,300.
>
>     What this does not cover is if I have to gather up my kit and schlep out
>     and do production on location, and this has occasionally been funded by
>     yes, Beyond The Net (IGF-USA), or even the North America Region (State of
>     the Net), or just Chapter funds.Other community groups such as A11yNYC,
>     BetaNYC, and Silicon Harlem fund it themselves, while the NY Chapter
>     sponsors the webcast channel via ISOC.
>
>     But, there can be a problem, as currently, in the case of 2024 State of
>     the Net. Due to the unfortunate death of John More, ISOC-DC was without a
>     treasurer ubtil the appointment of Jon Conradt at the end of the year, and
>     his BTN Fluxx application foundered, and I am yet to get paid. I am
>     guessing this was due to new stringent '8 week advance' requirement over
>     at ISOC Foundation. When I asked North America Region to cover, I was
>     told, oh well, you should have asked in advance. This event, the most
>     prestigious Internet Policy event in North America, involves travel to DC,
>     covering 4 tracks of content. re-editing and archiving, at a cost $4.5k.
>     The Internet Society logo appears on every minute of the livestream and
>     archived video <https://bit.ly/sotn2024vids>, which includes, Congressmen,
>     top White House and Agency officials, etc. If ISOC DC has to cough up, it
>     will make a serious dent in their funds, all because of ISOC red tape.
>
>     Olivier mentioned the archive. So, that original channel, that Anne Lord
>     paid for, was on the 'old' livestream which was like a TV newsroom. What
>     Paul got, and we currently still use is the 'new' livestream, which is
>     event based. A few years back, the 'old' system was sunset, and
>     downloading the archive was awkward, and then they just deleted the whole
>     thing. Realizing that if we ever stopped paying for the 'new;, I changed
>     my workflow so that all events were more or less immediately ported over
>     to theInternet Archive <https://archive.org/details/@isoc_live> where,
>     hopefully they will exist in perpetuity.
>
>     Late last year, Vimeo, who had bought Livestream Inc, announced that they
>     were in turn shutting that service down, and would not renew accounts
>     after the end of the year. Fortunately our accounts renewed in December,
>     so we are good until December 2024 with the current channels, after which
>     there will have to be a switch to some other platform, maybe AWS. I don't
>     actually favor YouTube, because 1) copyright issues can kill a stream 2)
>     ads 3 ) tracking. I do currently do Twitter, Twitch and Facebook, but as
>     secondary simulcasts, due to the same issues.
>
>     I have had some back and forth with Vimeo, and it seems we will be able to
>     grab the content, in some form, by first transferring it to a Vimeo
>     Premium account (ISOC has one) and then downloading in bulk. I have
>     procrastinated this til the summer. Not confirmed, but in my call with
>     Comms, it was mooted that ISOC might pay for the work involved.
>
>     The main point is, *_in December, ALL legacy ISOC livestream.com
>     <http://livestream.com> links/embeds will break_*. Any Chapters that have
>     legacy livestream content will have to update to the same content on
>     archive.org <http://archive.org>. If you have live stuff on your Chapter
>     website and would like to jump the queue, then it's as simple as making a
>     request to support at isoc.live with details, to get wheels in motion.
>
>     As to what will happen to ISOC LIVE from April 1 2024 on? Well, I plan to
>     continue much as usual, but this is somewhat contingent on finding
>     alternate funding. Perhaps the ISOC Fondation may have an epiphany that
>     it's something they should continue to support, perhaps other donor(s) may
>     emerge. Or some combination. Maybe a Large grant.  In order to facilitate
>     this, the NY Chapter Board, at a recent meeting, approved a motion to
>     fiscally sponsor ISOC LIVE as a chapter project, thus a) maintaining the
>     ISOC nexus, and b) making such contributions tax deductible in the US.
>     Interested to hear what the BOT will say today. BTW BoT meetings are a
>     good example of inferior zoom recordings. Years ago I asked to be able to
>     stream them and was rebuffed. But that was before the new transparency
>     era. I guess I could do a recording and post the reports.
>
>
>     Still streaming
>
>     Joly
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     --------------------------------------
>     Joly MacFie  +12185659365
>     --------------------------------------
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20240311/7bfb42b8/attachment.htm>