Internet Society Chapters 

Meetings

ISOC Chapter meeting in Puerto Rico

Summary of meeting

Agenda

1. Welcome by ISOC-PR/ Welcome by ISOC-HQ
2. Chapters Introduction and update (All)
3. Strategic overview for advancing chapters inc. questions (Anne Lord)
4. Chapter collaboration (incl. chapter wiki, mentoring, annual
   meeting?) (All)
5. Membership System update (Terry Monroe)
6. AOB, next meeting and wrap up. (ISOC PR/HQ)

Attendees

There were over 42 people present (apologies if we have missed
someone) and 22 chapters represented, with 3 under formation.

Chapters/members

Eduardo Diaz, ISOC Puerto Rico, Chairman
Enrique Arrieta - ISOC Colombia
Sebastian Bachollet, ISOC France
A. Samad Bakurraly, ISOC Mauritius
Vittorio Bertola, ISOC Italy
Victor Ciza, ISOC Burundi
Alex Corenthin, ISOC Senegal
Ernesto Cruz, ISOC Puerto Rico
Hawa Diakite, ISOC Mali
Tricia Drakes, ISOC England
Luc Faubert, ISOC Quebec
Aziz Hilali, ISOC Morocco
Erik Huesca - ISOC Mexico
Didier Kassole, ISOC Democratic Republic Congo
Dave Kissoondoyal, ISOC Mauritius
Peter Koch , ISOC Germany
Cheryl Langdon-Orr, ISOC Australia
Archer Lebron - ISOC Puerto Rico
Franck Martin – Pacific Islands Chapter
Virginia Paque – ISOC Venezuela
Jorge Plano, ISOC Argentina
Veni Makovski, Chairman ISOC Bulgaria
Ana Sanchez - ISOC Ecuador
Carsten Schiefner, ISOC Germany
Toru Takahashi, ISOC Japan
Eugenio Torres, ISOC Puerto Rico
Stefano Trumpy, ISOC Italy
Deirdre Williams - St Lucia under formation
Didier Kla, ISOC Cote d’Ivoire under formation
Jean-Robert Hountomey, ISOC Togo under formation

ISOC Board of Trustees

Daniel Karrenberg
Patrik Fältström
Franck Martin (and PICISOC)
Patrick Vande Valle (ISOC Luxembourg)

Staff

Sebastian Bellagamba
Anne Lord
Lucy Lynch (by telephone for the beginning of the meeting)
Terry Monroe
Lynn St.Amour
Mark Thalhimer
Dawit Bekele

Others

John Klensin
Andrew Mancey - Guyana

Summary of discussions

Many thanks to Dawit Bekele for taking the minutes.

1.Introduction from Eduardo Diaz and Anne Lord

Eduardo Diaz, chair of ISOC PR and of the meeting welcomed the attendance to Porto Rico. Following that, Anne Lord, ISOCs senior manager for chapters and individual members, said that she is happy to meet so many people face to face that she has been communicating with and that she is happy to hear feedback on what can be done to make their chapters stronger.

2. Chapters Introduction and update (All)

Every participant introduced himself/herself as well as his/her expectation from this meeting. The expectations of the participants were around discussions on how chapters can collaborate, mentor and share knowledge among themselves and getting to know one another.

3. Strategic overview for advancing chapters inc. questions

Reference ‘ISOC Chapter Development’ presentation http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/meetings/sanjuan.php

Anne Lord presented the draft plan for ISOC Chapter Development. She stressed that what she presented is a draft plan and the development of the plan is an iterative process that is required to produce a document with which everybody is comfortable with. She reminded the participants that ISOC has been committed to developing chapters since 2005 but that there hasn’t been a framework for that. The document that is under preparation is a high level document developed based on conversations, feedbacks, documents and her own experience in the last six months. She reminded the participants that this is a multiyear effort and that it will take time.

According to Anne, ISOC needs the chapters and the chapters need ISOC. The chapters are diverse and have a lot of things to bring to ISOC. The beginning of the document articulates the long term goal for chapters. ISOC wants chapters that are active and well respected in local community, that are working in partnership with local stakeholders, that are strong and engaged with membership base, that are unified components of ISOC ‘family’ working towards common cause, that are working collaboratively with other chapters, that are delivering a clear & consistent message of ISOC and that have local flavour.

She then introduced the four focus areas in the plan, which are:

• Chapter policies and procedures
• Stakeholder relationship management strategy
• Tools, communication and support
• Funding support

For each of these areas she tried to identify the various activities as well as the dependencies that need to be considered.

For the chapter policies and procedures area, she said that there are some documents but they are not consistently followed. Thus, there is a need to review the current policy and procedure framework, identify documents and gaps, revise and create new policy and procedure documents as appropriate, implement policy document and operationalise policies and procedures. The dependencies are mainly on the support and participation of chapters.

For relationship area, the goal is to build strong, sustainable and trusting relationships with chapters and between chapters. This requires shared understanding of roles and responsibilities and seeking constructive interactions between parties. She reminded the participants of the importance of having quality relationship with the highly growing number of chapters; there are more than 90 today. She said that such a relationship will not be achieved without the use of tools and interfaces such as the regional bureaus. In the dependencies, she mentioned the need of the state of the art, technical infrastructure, technical development resources and communications support

In the tools, communication and support area, she said that the main challenge is to find out how ISOC can be inclusive in its communication. For example, how can it cater for its chapters that are multilingual? The dependencies in this area are the development of ISOC technical infrastructure, the support from the policy and education department in the provision of ‘white’ papers & position papers as well as the support from chapters in contributing material and defining what is useful.

The last area Anne talked about was funding support. She said that this is an important but challenging issue since the number of chapters is growing and whatever the funding model is adopted should be sustainable.

Anne then presented the next steps of the chapters draft plan which consist of seeking feedback from chapters, presenting and seeking approval from the board for principles and developing timelines.

Anne’s presentation received a lot of praise from the participants of the meeting. In particular, Sebastien Bacholet said that it was the first time that he hears a comprehensive proposal on the relationship of ISOC and the chapters. He also added following points that he feels were missing:

• The coordination of chapters (ex. ISOC ECC in Europe) should not be
  forgotten. It would be interesting to work on that in Europe.
• ISOC can help the chapters to be self sufficient, how to raise fund, how to create income. It is more important than to directly fund the chapters.

Tricia Drakes also congratulated Anne for her enthusiasm as well as for the good work. She then added the following point that she believes is important to add in the plan:

• It is important to look the relationship in the governance structure within ISOC. This will entail looking at the relationship among the chapters themselves, ISOC HQ, the board, organization members, etc.

Stefano Trumpy reminded the participants that, in the late 90s, ISOC had funding problems. Then, many things which improved ISOC’s status happened. In particular, the .org income made it financially sustainable. ISOC should push the chapters in the same direction so that they also become financially sustainable by generating some income. Example, there are some opportunities in multilingualism and providing training. ISOC should try to centrally organize this kind of activities that can bring income for the chapters. Currently, many chapters have very little fund and there is a danger in insuring their continuity.

Archer Lebron, inquired the number of chapters that administer ccTLDs and what is the strategy they have adopted and he asked whether this is a strategy to use for other chapters? John Klensin said that only few chapters manage ccTLDs and that the bulk are managed by private organizations, while a few are managed by governments and universities. Alex Corenthin added that, in Africa, the chapter under formation in Sudan is an example of a chapter that manages a ccTLD.

4. Chapter collaboration (incl. chapter wiki, mentoring, annual
meeting?) (All)

This discussion took place mostly at the end of the meeting so is reported under AOB.

5. Membership System update

Reference presentation ‘Membership System Update’ http://www.isoc.org/ isoc/chapters/meetings/sanjuan.php

Terry Monroe presented an update on the membership system and on the BRIMS initiative (Business Rules in Membership System).

He then reminded the participants that ISOC adopted a new, different approach to solve the problems in the membership system. In order, to go forward effectively, it was decided to learn about the relationship of the users: how the staff, the chapters uses it, the members uses it, rather than rushing and adopt solutions that may not satisfy everybody. For this purpose, he said that the Business Rules in Membership System initiative
(BRIMS) have been launched. He said that a consultant has been hired to conduct the first phase of the work which consists of one-on-one and group meetings with chapters across various geographic regions and representing a variety of sizes and structures and a survey of all chapters to provide them an opportunity to participate in this initiative. He said that a survey is currently underway to get feedback from the chapters.

He then presented the preliminary findings after interesting discussions with chapters:

Some chapter members are not ISOC Global members Differences in chapter renewal policies between ISOC Global and chapters and among chapters Some chapters collect dues, others do not Data privacy rules differences

Terry then presented the issues to address, which include system architecture, ability of chapters to access/download member information, approval process for chapter member, mailing list support, privacy requirements and local language/non-ASCII characters. Furthermore, some chapters have no database while some have robust databases they have used for years, and this should be considered.

As for the next steps, he indicated that the survey will be completed after which there will be a draft and ultimately a document on which everybody agrees with. Lastly, the decisions on how the improvements should be made will have to be taken, such as improving the current system or finding new alternatives.

6. AOB, next meeting and wrap up

Daniel Karrenberg took the floor and said that he is very happy to see increasing number of initiatives from the staff, some of these at the board’s request. He also said that he is very happy to hear the praises from the community. He also commented that this is the beginning and that there is much work to do. For instance, there is a lot to do even in the vocabulary; ISOC Central, ISOC HQ, ISOC Global are used to mean the same thing, which can be confusing at times. He said “let’s keep this process engaged, let’s keep talking”.

Luc Faubert reminded participants of the multilingual chapter wiki development work by Frank Martin and himself and populated by the chapters. Currently, the wiki is in three languages (English, French and Spanish). After showing the wiki, Luc said that they would be happy to have more volunteers for the three but also other languages. Currently, there are some interests for Polish and Arabic. The articles are very short and therefore the work is not very time consuming. He said that all interested should contact either the address at the bottom of the wiki, Luc Faubert or Frank Martin. He also reminded those that have lost their password and not logged in to contact him for instructions on how to login.

Other issues and comments raised were as follows:

Dave Kissoondoyal, asked how participants to consider how ISOC can become more visible in international events? Frank Martin suggested that IGF and the next ICANN are where many chapters will be present.
On the note of meetings, Anne Lord said that she has been working on using these events to have ISOC chapters meeting but that it has been difficult to arrange a schedule that satisfies everybody since most people finalize their travel plans well in advance. She said that, in the future, she will plan the meetings well in advance (2 months before for example) so that people can plan their travel plans accordingly.

Ginger Paque from ISOC Venezuela informed the participants that, Diplo foundation with which she works in the LAC region, is open to do partnership for developing documents in local languages on specific points or in Internet Governance on which it has a good experience. Ginger said that she would like to give a big applause for Sebastian Bellagamba for what he has done in the LAC region. Similar comments followed about the African Bureau.

Finally, Lynn St. Amour thanked the participants for coming to the meeting and the continued support of the chapters and members and reiterated that ISOC always want to hear the suggestion.

The chair, Eduardo Diaz closed the meeting by thanking the participants. He said that all his expectations for the meeting were met.