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

Sun Mar 10 09:36:07 PDT 2024

I have had occasion to watch Joly with his computers, special equipment and
a rack full of cables of all kinds, often hauling them around in two or
more big suitcases in case of isoc / IGF events happening in NY or nearby,
otherwise staying up at odd hours typically till about 6 am ny time to time
in and stream (and offer tech support as in the case of several India
Chennai events), ISOC wasn't really paying any sum of any significance,
perhaps what I would call petty sustanence. The BoT's observation is
inaccurate about the utility of Live (and cross) streaming. What is it that
ISOC hopes to save by terminating the services of someone who has been
everywhere in every ISOC event for the past 10 years in his streaming role,
and 25 or more years as part of Chapters?

On Sun, 10 Mar, 2024, 21:52 Veni Markovski via Chapter-delegates, <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> 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/
>> <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 the
>> Internet 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. 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
>> --------------------------------------
>> _______________________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
> 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://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login
> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:
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