Executive Committee
Meeting Minutes 02-008
ISOC Document
Title: Minutes of Conference Call of ExComm, ISOC Board of Trustees
Attendees:
Fred Baker
Rosa Delgado
Christian Huitema
Toshio Mikki
Kees Neggers
Glenn Ricart
Lynn StAmour
Excused:
Lynn Duval
Latif Ladid
Date: 2002.09.16
Committee: Executive Committee of BoT
Document: excom-02-008
Revision:
Supersedes:
Status:
Maintainer: Minutes taken by Christian Huitema.
Access: Unconfirmed
I. Financial Update
Lynn St.Amour presents the financial update. At the end of July, the
amount of cash available was $145K, and the account payable was $378K;
this last amount rose to approximately $450K at the end of August. We
have finalized our settlement with Exponova and are scheduled to pay
$71K to Exponova in early October at the latest.
Year to date, we have incurred a loss of $162K, and we are $355K behind
budget. However, our revenues from “regular” organizational
members are only $40K behind budget, and we even had some good news,
e.g. NTT DoCoMo-USA Labs joining upgrading to as a Sustaining Gold membership.
We expect to close this gap later in the year with the arrival of our
Platinum membership dues.
The Standard pillar is showing a loss against budget; this will be offset
by the arrival of payments from Platinum members this fall.
The Education pillar shows significant loss against budget, as salary
costs moved to education to support INET instead of organization member
services; the INET expenses were not fore planned in the 2002 budget.
Our discussions with Foretec show that salary expenses of $104K will
probably not be recovered. We have suffered a double hit from INET:
salary cost, and then distraction from regular fund raising.
Losses in the Public Policy pillar continue to increase after the loss
of a Platinum member. Public policy revenues currently are a few individual
member fees, and some donations.
The cash flow follows the same historical trends; we are however forecasting
a more aggressive A/P payment schedule due to increased predicted revenues
in the last months of the year; the cash on hand will be managed to
about 2 weeks of operating revenues until A/P is brought current.
II. Fundraising update
A big concern is
that the board is not actively raising funds and this is a traditional
responsibility of not-for-profit boards; there was hardly any response
to a recent message from Lynn on this subject.
Philippe Courtot sent a note asking to pass the responsibility of the
fundraising committee to Latif. Philippe is very busy with his company
at the moment, not able to devote enough time to this activity. Latif
will now lead this committee.
III. .Org bid update
We have received
additional questions from ICANN, to which we replied within the required
timeframe. We still expect a board decision beginning of October.
We have decided to extend board membership of PIR from five to seven
members. The executive committee will act as nomination committee, and
will put a slate in front of the board for ratification. We are currently
developing and reviewing a list of qualified candidates. One of the
first executive committee decisions, in its PIR nomination committee
role, is to post a public call for nomination: Lynn will send a note
to all individual members, and also a specific note to the organizational
members and other appropriate bodies.
Lynn will send a note to the full board, asking for advice on the presence
of an ISOC board member on the PIR board.
The most appropriate location for incorporating PIR appears to be the
US states of Virginia, Delaware or Massachussetts. Incorporating in
a different country does not appear realistic: it will take a long time
to study the legal situation, and it would increase the complexity of
the financial and legal relations between PIR and ISOC. Incorporating
in the US appears to be the conservative alternative.
IV.Publications strategy update
A preliminary report has been published, but has not received any feedback from the board. Lynn asks Toshio to resend the report to the board. Lynn suggests reaching out to experts in the field, who could join the committee.
V. Code of Conduct Update
Brian has written
an initial memo, for which he requests comments. The memo will be submitted
to the full board for a 1 week review, before sending it to the chapters,
in order to get comments in time for a discussion during the November
board meeting.
Rosa suggests getting a legal review.
VI. Future Conferences Task Force Update
Christian has written a preliminary report that he has sent to the committee members for comments. The memo will be reviewed at the November board meeting.
VII. Preparation of the November 2002 Board meeting
One of the main
objectives of the board meeting will be to review the proposed budget.
There is a need to increase the amount of time spent on discussing strategic
programs and initiatives. Lynn proposes thus that the agenda will start
with a strategic review, followed with committee and key initiative
reviews; each area reviewed will be requested to propose a clear action
plan.
A proposed agenda should be sent to the board 6 weeks before the meeting.
The bulk of the meeting should clearly be devoted to creating new activities,
specifically education activities and regional activities. This should
take precedence over discussions of the internal organization of the
society.
VIII. Individual Membership
There is a motion
currently submitted to the board.
A side issue is that of chapter based election, for which we have to
clarify the rules. A possible simplification is to evaluate chapters
once a year, and to avoid any manipulation of the election. The simplest
solution is that chapters duly recognized at the beginning of the calendar
year will be the ones allowed to vote, thus removing the possibility
of "validation" debates during the discussion period.
