Minutes of Board Meeting No. 50

30 Oct 2005, Herdon, Virginia, United States

Author: S. Bradner
Date: 2005-10-30
Committee: BOT
Document: 05-50
Status: Unconfirmed
Maintainer: S. Bradner
Access: unlimited

The ISOC Board of Trustees met from 8:41 am to 2:50 pm EST on 30 October 2005 in Hernden VA, proper notice having been provided to the Board of the meeting.

The following members of the Board of Trustees were present:

Fred Baker (chair)
Steve Crocker
Rosa M. Delgado
Erik Huizer
Daniel Karrenberg
Veni Markovski
Desiree Miloshevic
Glenn Ricart
Stephen Squires
Lynn St. Amour (President)
Patrick Vande Walle
Margaret Wasserman

Apologies were received from Pindar Wong.

Also present were:

Scott Bradner (Secretary)
Brian Carpenter (IETF Chair) (via telephone)
Leslie Daigle (IAB Chair) (via telephone)
Lucy Lynch (IAOC Chair) (via telephone)
Ray Pelletier (IAD)
Lynn DuVal (ISOC Staff)
Jim Galvin (VP Chapters and Individual Members)
David McAuley (ISOC staff)
Mike Nelson (ISOC VP Public Policy)
Mirjam Kuehne (ISOC Staff)
Matthew Shears (ISOC Director of Public Policy)

Minutes taken by Scott Bradner. Minutes of the end of the meeting based
on notes taken by Mirjam Kuehne.

A quorum was present.

I – Approval of minutes and ratification of electronic votes

(A) Approval of Minutes of BoT Meeting # 39 – May 15-16, 2004

Margaret moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of May 15-16, 2004 Fred seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved except for Daniel and Veni who abstained, because they were not present during that Board meeting in Barcelona.

Resolution 05-19: Approval of the minutes of the May 15-16, 2004 meeting of the Board of Trustees
RESOLVED that the minutes of the May 15-16, 2004 meeting of the Board of Trustees are approved

(B) Approval of Minutes of BoT Meeting # 48 – August 5, 2005

Glenn moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of August 5, 2005, Margaret seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved except for Daniel and Veni who abstained.

Resolution 05-20: Approval of the minutes of the August 5, 2005 meeting of the Board of Trustees
RESOLVED that the minutes of the August 5, 2005 meeting of the Board of Trustees are approved

(C) Approval of Minutes of BoT Meeting # 49 – August 5-6, 2005

Margaret moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of August 5-6, 2005, Veni seconded the motion. The Secretary proposed an addition to the minutes. The motion was amended to approve the minutes as amended. The motion unanimously approved except for Veni who abstained.

Resolution 05-21: Approval of the minutes of the August 5-6, 2005 meeting of the Board of Trustees
RESOLVED that the minutes of the August 5-6, 2005 meeting of the Board of Trustees are approved as amended.

(D) Confirmation of Electronic Votes
– Ad-hoc ISOC PIR Committee Membership
– Ad-hoc ISOC IASA Committee Membership
– Nominations Committee Membership

Glenn moved to confirm the electronic votes taken since the last board meeting. Margaret seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.

Resolution 05-22: Confirmation of Electronic Votes
RESOLVED that the electronic votes defining the memberships of the Ad-hoc ISOC PIR, Ad-hoc ISOC IASA and Nominations committees are confirmed.

II – Approval of delegation policy

Daniel moved that:
WHEREAS, the operations of the Internet Society are characterized by a growing number of programs, contracts, and other approved areas of assistance, involvement and financial support and outlays; and

WHEREAS, the Board of Trustees and the executive management of the Internet Society desire that there be in effect a consistent, clear, and prudent policy regarding the authorization required to enter into certain agreements or financial transactions or to execute any instrument or take any other action to obligate the Internet Society to make any payments of money or of other value; now, therefore

BE IT RESOLVED, that the attached INTERNET SOCIETY POLICY FOR DELEGATION OF FINANCIAL AUTHORITY OF OCTOBER 19, 2005, is hereby adopted by this Board of Trustees and shall be given effect in accordance with its terms until such time as it shall be superseded or withdrawn by the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society.

Glenn seconded the motion. The motion was approved unanimously.

Resolution 05-23: Approval of revised policy for the delegation of financial authority
WHEREAS, the operations of the Internet Society are characterized by a growing number of programs, contracts, and other approved areas of assistance, involvement and financial support and outlays; and
WHEREAS, the Board of Trustees and the executive management of the Internet Society desire that there be in effect a consistent, clear, and prudent policy regarding the authorization required to enter into certain agreements or financial transactions or to execute any instrument or take any other action to obligate the Internet Society to make any payments of money or of other value; now, therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, that the attached INTERNET SOCIETY POLICY FOR DELEGATION OF FINANCIAL AUTHORITY OF OCTOBER 19, 2005, is hereby adopted by this Board of Trustees and shall be given effect in accordance with its terms until such time as it shall be superseded or withdrawn by the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society.

II – ISOC Budget Review

Lynn reviewed the budget (URL) and discussed some of the specific programs. She noted the ISOC’s work in the WSIS governance discussions.

A – Policy

Matthew Shears discussed the ISOC policy efforts. He said that ISOC would need to continue to be involved in Internet governance long after the end of the WSIS Tunis meeting in November. He said that the current plans for continuing work included focused roundtables and other outreach efforts with the intent to establish ISOC as a key player in the Internet governance discussions.

He discussed a proposal for regional advisory councils to facilitate coordination within a region on policy or education. The councils will be virtual (e.g., mailing lists) rather than physical.

Matthew then discussed a proposal to establish regional ISOC bureaus, phase 1 was proposed to be in Africa. Each bureau would be staffed by a contracted person. The board discussed the proposal and the difficulty of addressing the complexity of a region as big and varied as Africa or Latin America with a single bureau. Steve Crocker noted that ICANN was working on a similar effort. The board supported the basic proposal noting that good coordination with the ISOC chapters was needed with the chapters normally taking the lead in local activities. Fred asked that the staff revise the proposal to make the roles of the councils, bureaus and chapters very clear. Steve Crocker asked what the plans were for expanding these efforts if the pilot efforts prove successful. Lynn said that some funds were included in the 2007 and 2008 budgets.

B – Education

Mirjam Kuehne discussed the ISOC’s education programs (URL). She said that ISOC has been rebuilding its education programs, presence and capacity. She emphasized that the ISOC focuses on developing local and regional initiatives & expertise. She said that the regional councils and bureaus that Matthew mentioned would also be an important part of the education pillar’s activities.

Mirjam also talked about the ISOC support for technical training in conjunction with organizations such as AfNOG/AfriNIC, PacNOG etc, and the ccTLD workshops. Steve Crocker noted that he had been talking to people about developing a formal certificate that could be provided to people who had undergone training in a specific area.

Rosa asked if Mirjam expected to expand the number of languages used in the training. Mirjam said that a number of languages were already in use and she expected more next year. Rosa also asked if the workshops trained trainers rather than just training end users. Mirjam said that training the trainers was a key goal of the workshops. Daniel mentioned that he had recently attended a workshop and reviewed the comment forms and that the comments were quite positive.

Mike Nelson said that the first edition of the IETF Journal was very good and that it should be widely distributed. David said that paper copies were being sent to all chapters with an invitation to get more. Mirjam noted that the Journal was also on-line. Mike suggested that ISOC talk to US TTI (US Telecommunications Training Institute) to see if there was an opportunity to cooperate. For example, maybe US TTI would like to distribute the IETF Journal.

C – Chapters

David McAuley reported that the initial project funding efforts have been successful and that funds were in the proposed budget to continue the project funding process.

David reported that there were now 75 ISOC chapters in 67 countries and about 21,000 members in more than 80 countries.

David said that he thought that the regional bureaus would be a help to chapters. He said that the ECC was progressing towards finalizing its incorporation papers. He also said that a francophonie council was under development.

David noted that the ISOC only had 65 sustaining members but he expected that this number will grow based on efforts to inform people about the sustaining membership possibility (for example, links on the IETF web page).

Fred noted that Jim Galvin was ending his long role as ISOC VP for Chapters the end of this year. Lynn gave a short speech thanking Jim for all his support and presented him with an award in recognition of his selfless support.

Fred moved that the board thank Jim Galvin for all his efforts and extremely selfless support as ISOC VP for Individual Members and Chapters. Glenn seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

Resolution 05-24: Thanking Jim Galvin
RESOLVED that the ISOC Board of Trustees thanks Jim Galvin for all his efforts and extremely selfless support as ISOC VP for Individual Members and Chapters.

D – Advisory Committee Charter

Daniel moved to accept the charter for the ISOC Advisory Council as proposed by Ed Juskevicius. Steve Crocker seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously

Resolution 05-25: Accept Charter for the ISOC Advisory Council
RESOLVED that the ISOC Board of Directors accepts the proposed charter
for the ISOC Advisory Council as proposed.

E – Organizational members

David reported on the status of the organizational membership. He noted that the number of organizational members was below what the 2005 budget projected. He then outlined some of the activities that ISOC planned to engage in to recruit additional organizational members.

III – IETF

A – IETF Budget

Ray Pelletier presented the proposed IETF budget. (URL) He said that the budget assumes that there would be 1,250 paid attendees per IETF meeting. It also assumes a 10% increase in meeting fees – this is expected to bring in about $200,000 over the next year. Ray noted that the IETF did not have any reliable numbers on the costs of past meetings. He said that the budget assumes that there will be an effort to obtain sponsorship of IETF meetings and that there will be rebates from the hotels as long as the number of rented rooms meets expectations.

Ray described the new process whereby the IAOC has hired a part time copy editor to off-load the RFC Editor. The primary aim is to remove the RFC Editor backlog. Ray expects that a RFP for the RFC Editor function will be issued next summer. The board discussed options for reducing the cost of the RFC Editor function.

Leslie Daigle noted that there would be a publications requirements BOF at the upcoming IETF meeting to try to better understand what the IETF expects of the RFC Editor function.

The board then discussed the cost of the current RFC Editor contract and expressed the feeling that any future contract for this function should cost less given various benchmarks and the intent to reduce overhead costs..

Ray then discussed the status of the IETF Secretariat and the status of the sale of Foretec to Neustar. He said that the sale should be finalized soon. He also said that the IAOC had not yet received detailed information about past meeting expenses so that the projections he was making in the proposed IETF budget were not as solid as he would have liked. In response to a question, Ray said he was comfortable with the attendance projections in the proposed budget. He noted that the IAOC had included $300K in the budget for new tools development and to support other special projects.

Daniel said that he would like the ISOC to develop a set of principals that would be followed in the future when developing IETF budgets.B – IETF Update

Brian Carpenter presented an IETF status report (URL). He also reported that he had been talking to a number of people from China. They are very interested in increasing the Chinese participation in the IETF. He said that he had gotten some policy related questions from the Chinese, most of these related to IPv6 deployment and most of the rest related to VoIP.C – IAB Update

Leslie Daigle presented a report on the activities of the IAB. (URL) She said that the following three topics were on the IAB’s priority list.

1. IPv6 transition – including how to get network operators more involved in the IETF.
2. what can be done architecturally to minimize bad network traffic
3. articulating an Internet architecture

IV – Continue ISOC budget discussion

The board discussed the first years experience with the project funding process. Desiree, who was on the project committee this year, said that she would like ISOC to establish additional criteria and ways to measure project success before the next round of grants. The board discussed a possible increase in the funding for projects.

Lynn took an action item to provide an evaluation of project funding for the next board meeting, an action item to use this discussion as input to revise the proposed ISOC budget and to send the revised proposal to the board and an action item to review the 2006 – 2008 budgeted reserve forecasts to ensure we met the commitment made to the IETF in BCP 101.

The meeting adjourned at 2:50pm EST.

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