Hi Brian,
On 11/24/17 8:52 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
On 25/11/2017 11:44, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Ole,
With all due respect,
On 11/24/17 3:17 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
Individual members of chapters have voting rights in their
respective chapter and the chapters are represented on the
board. You can look up the details just as easy as I can.
First off, that doesn't make one a voting member of ISOC, just of a
chapter, nor does it make ISOC anything like a traditional membership
association.
That's correct. As ISOC Board Chair at the time when the current
constitutional arrangements were put in place, I could tell you a
lot about the whys and wherefores over a couple of beers.
Love to take you up on those beers at some point. Though I do know some
of the reasons - and they had more to do with the techno-politics of why
ISOC was created in the first place.
But whoever said that the *Internet* Society should work like a
*traditional* membership association? We had to find something that
would work at world scale, allow for multiple types of stakeholder,
and not be subject to capture by special interests or populist
politics.
Well true, but for a very short time it presented as such (you know,
membership cards & levels, dues, and so forth.
Personally, I would have gone for either the self-perpetuating board of
trustees model, or a professional association model. (IMHO, IEEE does
pretty well as both a standards body and as a policy shop; though the
IETF does better in terms of standards process.)
Second, there aren't, and as far as I recall never have been, any
chapters in New England. (A couple of time folks have tried to start
one in Boston, and given up for lack of any reason to.)
Local chapters wax and wane, and are very subject to the personalities
and motivations of their founders. Some work, some don't. (The Geneva
chapter, of which I was the first President in ~1995 iirc, crashed
and burned by 2009 due to lack of activity, but was followed by the
current active Swiss chpater. But most of the chapters today are in
the developing world, which is great.)
I've never quite figured out the logic of chapters, absent operating as
a true professional association. There's certainly room for a true
professional association in the networking space - but absent one, IEEE
& ACM (plus more specialized groups like AFCEA) fill the gap quite
nicely when it comes to talks, conferences, professional networking.
Perhaps there's more of a vacuum to fill in the developing world?
Regards,
Miles
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra