ISOC-NY Board Meeting - January 2, 2017

ISOC-NY Board Meeting - January 2, 2017 6 - 8 PM @ Civic Hall (See video, 1 hour 46 minutes. Skip to 11 minutes for formal start.)

Attendee Introductions

The first order of business was brief introductions by the attendees. The (in person) or (online) notation indicates if they attended in person or online.

Joseph Shraibman (in person), Treasurer

Greg Shatan (in person) - Attorney, and new board member. ICANN participant. 3 term chair of its intellectual property constituency.

Richard Knipel (in person) - Active in Wikipedia circles, former president of Wikipedia-NY. On board of Wikipedia Education Foundation that offers 200 courses a semester.

Dave Burstein (in person) - Tech reporter. Wants to get more people connected. Wants to bring down the price.

Alexander J. Urbelis (in person) - New board member. Attorney. Started as hacker. Works on WBAI's 2600. Former in-house attorney for London firm, now runs firm focused on security.

Shuli Hallak (in person) - Executive Director, ISOC-NY, Photographs visible Net. Wants to help everyday end users know how Net works. Wants to see that principles of Net's founders are passed on to new generation.

??? (in person) - A returning board member. She works with UNICEF and the Berkley Human Rights Initiative. Based in Costa Rica, she works to give voice to non-visible communities, e.g., migrants.

Dave Farber (in person) - A member of ISOC-NY and observer at the meeting. He is on the Board of directors of EFF and EPIC. Starting in 1964 he has had an engagement with what was to become Internet. Many of the Internet's founders were his students.

Chris Grundemann (in person) - New member, vice president of ISOC-NY. Network engineer. Founder Colorado ISOC chapter. OPEN IX engagement. Promotes the "broccoli" of tech - DNSSEC, TLS, advancer.

Joe Plotkin (in person) - A returning board member. Connectivity provisioning is his focus. Policy wonk. Started Self-communications. NYU's ITP.

@ 22 minutes

Sherry Antoine (in person) - Wikipedia-NY activist. Wikimedia's Afro-Crowd shepherd. Masters from American University.

Tom Lowenhaupt (online) - NYU ITP grad. Concerned about meaningful or effective use of Net. Secretary of ISOC-NY. Working on the Jackson Heights neighborhood network.

Avri Doria (online) - On ICANN board of directors. Looking for role in ISOC that allows her to advance her social, political, economic, and human rights ideals.

Jonathan Askin (online) - Prof at Brooklyn Law School which offers legal services to non-profits. Visiting Prof at MIT.

Andrea Garcia (Online, from Brazil) - A lawyer, she has a human rights interest. Fights against corruption in Brazil. Stated corruption flourishes without robust communication channels. Has a blockchain interest.

@ 31 minutes

Stu Reid (online) - New board member. Community technologist since late 1970s early 1980s. Sought bringing CATV to housing projects in upper Manhattan. Found that inadequate Net access in his neighborhood. Too many don't have access because they can't afford it, with some unaware that they should be seeking ways to afford it. Works with Digital Divide Partners, public/private partnership. ??? University to provide fee Net access to the 600,000 living in NYC public housing projects - 1/2 of whom don't have access. Wants to bring education about Net to NYC.

Joly MacFie (in person) - Born to internet: father was signals officer to Royal Air Force. Fanrock to rock video. Administrated ISOC-NY since 2008. Sees chapter as bridge betweendifferent groups in city.

Reuben Loewy (online) (@ 1:00 hour) - outreach and education is primary interest. LAB founder. High school teacher, interest in civics. Curriculum he developed reaches 35,000 students.

(for more on members see ... )

Meeting Chair Selected

@ 37 minutes

Greg Shatan was chosen to chair the meeting.

Election Review

Dave Burstein moved that we accept election results as posted on wiki.

@ 40 minutes

Joly said he used Google Forms to manage election.

• 203 responses were received from membership of 3,000
• 4 of those running were not selected
• Votes cast were validated against ISOC central's AMS member list

All approved acceptance of Burstein's motion.

(get link to results from Joly... )

Thanks To Outgoing Members

The board unanimously passed a resolution expressing its thanks to the outgoing directors.

Joly Reviewed nominated positions

@ 47 minutes

Joly made several recommendations to ISOC-NY liaisons to various committees and positions. With no objections heard...

• Chapter Advisory Council to ISOC central - Avri stepped down from steering committee, but will stay on as member 'til end of term (2019)

• NARALO - Joly is primary, voting delegate

• NCUC - Shuli is second to Joly

• ICANN Liaison - Veni M

• UN - Veni M is ICANN's rep to UN

• NYNOG - Chris is active there.

• NYU Liaison - Evan Korth

all were approved by all.

Help Offer by Departing Officer

??? anounced that she needed to depart early but offered to help reach out to migrant community and engage in ISOV-NY matters.

Finance Review

@ 1hour and 1 minute

Treasurer Joseph reported:

• 23k in ISOC-NY bank account at Chase
• 19k of that is for use by NYC MESH
• Joly explained that NYC MESH has 20k from the Beyond the program and another 10k other (supernode MESH incurs $850 expenses per month.) MESH is looking for $20 per month donations
• We received a 3k administration grant from ISOC central, and earned $2,500 via a relationship with NYM CHC (as per Joly).

Dave Burstein moved to accept report, with authority of treasurer to revise and extend the report. All approved.

2017 Review

Joly will list all events inn which we participated in 2017:

•  ???

Shuli reported:

• Interactive Node for ISOC
• Privacy event at LMHQ
• ISOC 25th Anniversary event

Membership Review

By some indicators we have just over 3,000 members. 200 of them voted in December 2017 election.

Joly explained that those 2k are an accumulation of 20 years of membership. Those who join are automatically added to the announce list. If you unsubscribe from the list you resign membership.

Should we refresh membership via opt-in?

It was suggested that we might separate the announce list and membership.

@ 1:17

Dave Burstein suggested that we seek more membership. And he detailed various anomalies in the membership that suggests that a deep review is needed. More members are a general good. How to engage is the issue. He believes ISOC central also has membership number issues, with perhaps 10-20K members, not the cited 120k membership. As well, there might be a similar issue with chapters, not 120 but 60 chapters.

Reuben suggested that we poll our members to ask what they'd like ISOC-NY to engage.

Shuli want a more select mailing list. Dave Burstein said can assist with this.

Joe - Budget should be hit if needed to improve this.

Joly - He likes a Google form outreach. Richard says we might support a weekly slack meeting. Perhaps Slack events. Invest in some slag to get potential members involved.

Joe - Compelling messages should be sent to members. Connect on hot button issues.

Dave Farber suggested a "Great Debate" on NN issue with a great moderator.

Dave Burstein urged forming committees, e.g. Education, Policy. Quizz membership on interests.

Richard seconded outreach and gathering info of members.

Greg - Form nodes of interest, e.g., last mile committee.

Joly - We need organizational members to fund an exec director. (Zoom call in week on this issue.)

Chris - We need to set plans, budget, and funding. Joly suggested that Chris serve on finance committee.

Avri - Slack is good to track interest. Consider membership dues.

Joe - We should have regular meetings.

Joly - I would like to urge monthly meetings. Is the first Monday acceptable?

@ 1:31

Greg - Summarizing membership:

• More engagement
• Poll members for interest
• No opt-in for membership
• Full board meeting on first Monday of each month. (Asperationaly, Joly would like to focused groups meeting on the other Mondays "If its Monday, it's ISOC-NY."
• Membership Committee should be formed.

All approved this summary.

Joly - Use mailman for issue areas.

Upcoming Events

• February 12 is next ISOC_NY meeting. First regular one to be March 5, 2018.
• Wikipedia Day - January 14. To be streamed from Ace Hotel. To be streamed.
• NYC MESH meeting on January 11 at Brooklyn Law.
• Shuli - Working on 2 Digital Preservation events with Google: on January 12 on "policy" in D.C. and February 5 in NY on "business models." Google is an organizational member of ISOC-NY as per Shuli.
• State-of-Net to be streamed on January 29 by Joly.

Other Business

Dave Burstein

• We need better by-laws.
• Would like to expand board membership.

Greg Shatan - Suggested that a Law Committee be formed, initially to focus on by-laws. Alexander and Greg volunteered to review.

Adjourned at 8:06 PM