[Chapter-delegates] Chapter advice on live streaming

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

Dear Ted,

please be so kind to find my comments below:

On 14/09/2024 13:16, Ted Hardie via Chapter-delegates wrote:
> Hi Luis,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts on this matter.  Some comments in-line.
>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 1:14 AM <drhipo at me.com> wrote:
>
>     Dear Ted,
>
>     Thanks for the notices regarding this matter of the Chapters. I
>     agree with your explanation about the role of the Board of
>     Trustees regarding overseeing rather than managing the Internet
>     Society nor the Internet Society Foundation. However, the Board is
>     responsible to monitor and update the Mission and every
>     foundational aspect of ISOC. Such a responsibility is on the
>     highest interest of the multiple stakeholders involved in the
>     Internet Society. If I am wrong, please let me know who takes care
>     of these principles ?
>
>     Let us remember that the Board exists due to the Incorporation of
>     the Society in 1992. The 3rd Article of such an instrument states
>     that the purpose of ISOC is to “ … To be a non-profit corporation
>     (without capital stock), which shall be operated exclusively for
>     educational, charitable and scientific purposes."
>
>     Today I find in your mails that the Board responded to the ChAC
>     (it is not clear if yet or when) that the transmission of events
>     is not important or at least not part of the Communications Team
>     plans,
>
>
> That's not quite correct.  There is a set of events that have broad 
> participation in an interactive session.  For those, the live session 
> is the interactive session itself (e.g. a Zoom call or webinar), and 
> the live event transmission is thus covered by the interactive session 
> being broadly available.  There are also events which are closer to 
> broadcasts.  For those events, the Communications team's analysis 
> showed that nearly all of the consumers of the media were using the 
> recorded sessions.  This time-selection style consumption pattern is a 
> common shift, and not unique to ISOC.  As a result of this, the team 
> moved the live streaming service to a project basis rather than 
> retainer basis.
>
> None of that is intended to devalue the overall effort to transmit 
> events; it is intended to match the use of resources to the current 
> consumption patterns.  As noted in the message, there is continued 
> analysis of these patterns and if they change again, this will be 
> revisited.

I am deeply concerned by the business-oriented language employed in your 
analysis of the utilization of Internet Society resources. By this same 
analysis, it appears that every Internet Society activity is being 
evaluated as a profit/loss cost center. This approach could potentially 
necessitate significant cost-cutting measures across various areas, 
particularly within the Standards thread, due to changing consumption 
patterns. I must emphasize that I do not advocate for this approach, as 
I am acutely aware that many activities of the Internet Society serve 
the public interest and are inherently "loss-making."

The issue with the communication team's analysis is the lack of a 
comparable benchmark for the ISOC.Live channel. Currently, no department 
or contractor within the Internet Society provides the comprehensive 
service that Joly McFie has delivered over the years. The focus on "Live 
Streaming" overlooks, for reasons unknown, other critical and often more 
costly aspects of the service, including but not limited to:

- Promotion to mailing lists, including those outside the Internet 
Society, thereby enhancing the brand visibility of the Internet Society 
and its chapters.
- Full production services, which encompass vision mixing between 
multiple cameras, integrating slides with video, providing full 
captioning for each speaker, and creating comprehensive pages that 
include the agenda and other pertinent information such as slide decks.
- Complete transcription of sessions to enhance accessibility.
- Archiving on archive.org, ensuring a centralized repository for all 
chapters to share and cross-pollinate their viewership.

Quantifying the cost of these services is challenging.

My insistence on this matter stems from the belief that this represents 
a classic case of "devolution" based on questionable data and a process 
ill-suited to our organization. This top-down, autocratic 
decision-making process has been implemented without consulting the very 
communities most affected by it. This approach is not reflective of the 
Internet Society that I joined in 1994.

Kind regards,

Olivier
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