Meeting - May 15 2008

ISOC-NY held a public meeting on May 15 2008 at NYU.

Attendees

• Joseph Shraibman
• Hannah Kopelman
• Erin Simon
• Aaron Williamson
• Joly MacFie
• Tom Lowenhaupt
• Evan Korth
• David Solomonoff
• Alicia Gibb
• Dave Fletcher
• Forest Mars

Minutes

1. Minutes

• Minutes of April meeting approved.

2. Welcome Dave Fletcher

• new board member
• creative director and founder of The Mechanism - graphic @ web design firm since 2001.
• Dave runs the Web Standards meetup.

3. Coming events

• May 21 Connecting .nyc meeting all set.
  • make flyers
  • video will be put online asap
• Jun 4 Online politics and participation
  • collab with OneWebDay and ILI, put together by Elizabeth Stark
  • part of Internet Week NY
  • video will be put online
  • event could be webcast live via ustream.tv
  • 5.30 -7.30 and the reception
  • snacks/drinks budget? Erin will look into that.
• Cancel our booking of Jefferson Market for Jun 4
• Last mile event.
  • Tim Wu is hard to get - out of town for summer
  • Still trying to get video statement from him.
  • likely postponed til fall.
  • Vint Cerf recently spoke out in favor of muni broadband.
• ICANN SIG possible meeting on May 28th
  • idea is to get Danny and Veni in the same room for informal chat
  • Erin will be in SF - could teleconference in?
  • room is available 7pm

4. Grants applications

• Deadline is Jun 2
• Apropos money for events
  • ISOC's guidelines emphasize that projects should result in freely distributable materials
  • Videos of events would seem to meet that criterion
  • Erin suggests 'community building' is a valid criterion that should cover snacks at events.
  • ISOC demands matching funds - nyu's provision of venue and chapter's video production efforts could be taken into account.
  • What about costs of distributing DVDs?
• David notes that ISOC requires fairly specific details of projects.
• Conclusion: Evan and Erin will draft a single grant application to submit to ISOC for a speaker series, itemized to include funds for: 1) honoraria; 2) DVD production; 3) refreshments.

5. Broadband access advocacy

• Alicia & NYC Resistor have had a problem in her building where another tenant refused to let their chosen ISP (Speakeasy) access Verizon's switchbox in his premises. the landlord refuses to intervene. She notes there exists lack of resources for those with such problems. They have eventually had to give in and get a Verizon account.
  • Alicia never did try calling 311 - will try that
  • Joly will call Gale Brewer's office
  • Aaron will talk to lawyers
• City should have 'Broadband Ombudsman'
• ISOC-NY could initiate a broadband access advocacy program
• We could at least set up a forum
• Dave could have his firm build an interface.for people to report problems
• Reachout to NYC Wireless and others to build consortium.
• Broadband Advisory Committee has been making a study .
  • Joly should see if study is available.

6. SUNY Albany

• Dean of Computer Science contacted us for Zittrain DVDs
• David discussed remote participation in events both ways
• Marratech system could be used

7. Remote access & Streaming events, meeting participation

• If we already have a camera set up at events it would just be a question of plugging it into a laptop and using one of the free services like ustream.tv or mogulus
• The jun 4 meeting - on online participation - would be a good one to try it out
• Online participation even in F2F meetings is valuable, people can swap text etc..
• Evan could arrange a router for meetings

8. Finance, membership, by-law reform

• David needs a basic finance report for 2007 for IRS purposes
• Voluntary $25 Dues were due February. None have been received.
• Dave suggests members who donate should be listed on the wiki.
• We could make the three levels of membership like ISOC Global.
• We'd have to change by-laws to do that
• By-laws also need to be changed to reflect annual elections.
• By-law changes have to be approved by ISOC Global
• Independent sources of funding needed to ensure independence.
• We need to discuss the by-laws on the discuss list.

9. ISOC Global participation

• Chapters Steering Committee
  • Joly is participating in meetings to discuss implementation of new management systen for ISOC global.
  • Reaching out to other USA chapters to help define chapter requirements.
• Sphere Project
  • David is participating in meetings to discuss implementation of Chapter development policies.

11. Personal Democracy Forum. http://www.personaldemocracy.com/

• Organized by Andrew Rasiej.
• June 23-24
• $600 Double the price from last year, and double the length.
• Possible to get some $200 tickets? Evan has contacts. Forest is interested.
• Vint Cerf is attending. Maybe we could meet him while in town.

12. At-Large Structure (ALS) application & ICANN issues

• David is going to go ahead to and put in an application for ISOC-NY to become an ALS.
• We will still maintain our membership of the NCUC.
• Liasons should monitor lists and circulate items of interest to chapter SIG
• what are the issues?
  • WHOIS - privacy vs access
  • Domain tasting - fixed?
  • Network Solutions - dubious activities
  • Internationalized domain names.

13. ISXubuntu.

• David wants to add ISOC-NY video material to ISXubuntu discs
  • include VLC and mp4 video
• Work needed documentation
• CVS needed to be set up on dreamhost - and accounts for Joseph & Alicia
• set up ISXubuntu mailing list