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

[Greg Shatan]

All,

I must add my voice to those expressing deep concern and sadness with the
decision to terminate Joly’s current arrangement and replace it with a
“piecework” arrangement.  The justification regarding live-streaming
reveals a deep misunderstanding and undervaluation of Joly’s work and
contributions. The proposed replacement process and position would leave
ISOC and the entire ISOC community much poorer, all to save a couple of
thousand dollars a month. The savings might be slightly larger than that,
but only because the replacement process is so untenable that it will very
significantly reduce the ability to engage Joly and will result in much of
what he does going undone.

As Joly has noted, his audiovisual production is usually a matter of his
“intervention” (I.e., reaching out to Chapters and others) and suggesting
that they have Joly stream and produce a video of their programming.  This
often occurs quite close to the date of the programming.  Joly can then
produce a high-quality audiovisual production, both for live-streaming and
later viewing.  Joly adds titles and “chyrons” (names, etc., on the screen
as in TV broadcasts) and cleans up technical shortcomings where possible.
In many (if not most) cases, Joly does far more. He physically shows up
with a significant amount of equipment (multiple cameras, microphones,
cables, stands, mixing console, specially kitted-out laptop, etc., etc.).
Joly will produce a multi-camera production with high quality audio for all
speakers, which will give later viewers a well-produced program for later
viewing and for posterity, as well as the livestream.

This is only possible because of the arrangement with Joly that ISOC has
terminated.  Under the new arrangement, Chapters and other organizations
will need to address and budget for Joly’s services at the beginning of
their planning process (assuming that the planning process is long enough),
which may mean applying for a grant, which will take at least a couple of
months with attendant uncertainty until it is granted. If we were all
professionals and not volunteers and if information were well disseminated,
maybe this would work some of the time.  Realistically, it will mean a
massive drop off, with Zoom artifacts as the only post-meeting content in
many cases. This might work well enough for fully -remote meetings, but it
will be a disaster for hybrid meetings, where equipment is lacking and no
one is paying close attention to audio quality, etc. Meanwhile, the
archival management and other little things Joly does now would largely go
undone. That doesn’t even take into account his purchasing, maintaining and
replacing equipment (Joly has built up quite an impressive kit over the
years, along with even more impressive experience in the quirks and
challenges of livestream and AV production and post-production).

I would remiss if I didn’t mention the effect on Joly himsel of going from
a regular income to piecework. My ancestors in the sweatshops of the
garment industry struck for a living wage and an end to the tyranny of
piecework. (Melodramatic I admit…)

I greatly appreciate Vint stepping into the gap, at least in the short run.
But it should not have been necessary and hopefully in the long run, it
won’t be.

I strongly urge ISOC to reverse this decision.

Thank you for reading this far.

***********************************
Greg Shatan
President, ISOC-NY
“The Internet is for Everyone”


On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 14:49 Cheryl Langdon-Orr via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Vint,
>
> My Chapter, along with many others and their many many Members , deeply
> appreciate your offer to keep this invaluable services to us sll going with
> your targeted and specified financial support offer; An elegant solution
> (of course) and one  I trust ISOC.org will also appreciate and welcome.
>
> Thank you, once again, for all you have done, and continue to do, for "the
> Internet We Want"
>
>
> Kindest regards,
>
> Cheryl Langdon-Orr
> Internet Australia Chair.
>
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2024, 00:14 vinton cerf via Chapter-delegates, <
> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Andrew is correct. This is a business decision for which he is
>> responsible and in my view came to the correct conclusion. I have
>> volunteered to pay for Joly's work beginning in May.
>>
>> V
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 12, 2024, 08:42 Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates <
>> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 07:27:08AM +0530, Sivasubramanian M wrote:
>>>
>>> >message. Either you as CEO could have taken a stand, asserted your
>>> powers
>>> >and have done "the right thing"
>>>
>>> As I think I have already outlined on this list, regardless of how much
>>> I like Joly both personally and professionally as a member of this
>>> community, or how good I think his video production is, we did an analysis
>>> of the _service_ and its use.  That analysis led us to the conclusion that
>>> the service barely saw use, and therefore we could not justify continuing
>>> to pay for it.  That _was_ the right thing in my opinion, as personally
>>> unhappy as the conclusion makes me.
>>>
>>> This is no differerent to the very difficult decision to eliminate some
>>> staff positions, which was _also_ the right thing regardless of how painful
>>> that decision is.  Being able to separate those kinds of considerations is,
>>> at bottom, a part of the very essence of my job, just as taking
>>> responsibility for those decisions here before the community is another
>>> part of it.  I do not pretend those things are fun.  They are, however, my
>>> responsibility.
>>>
>>> >which are incurred every year, incurred in a possibly flawed pattern of
>>> >possibly unnecessary expenditure and/ or suboptimally placed contracts.
>>>
>>> You are making the assumption, or perhaps levelling an accusation, that
>>> we did not undertake similar analyses of other contracts that we have.  But
>>> we did.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> A
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO, Internet Society
>>> e:sullivan at isoc.org m:+1 416 731 1261
>>> Help protect the Internet for everyone:
>>> https://www.internetsociety.org/donate/
>>> _______________________________________________
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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
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>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:
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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:
> https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>
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