Joop,
> I am not IDNO's chair, I'm just the guy who has called IDNO into life and
> is trying to nurse it to a proper democratic existence.
> It is not yet democratic, because it has no officers yet of any sort to
> share the responsibility of keeping it alive.
IDNO may not yet be democratic, but its not a question of having
officers -- the responsibility rests with the membership, not their
delegates, or the person who 'set it up.' (Indeed, I would argue that
the *office* of an automated listserver already cripples the
democratic impulse; on an 'authentic' list everyone would
resubscribe after each post. One's first responsibility, therefore, in
this age of 'servers' is to *overcome the 'bureaucratic machinery'
which seduces us to adopt *unquestioningly elitist roles.)
Since your members are evidently not aware of how to interact
democratically, some kind of preparatory (not to say remedial)
training is called for. While that training need not *logically be
democratic, it always helps if the 'container' is consistent with the
'contents' -- out of the 100 or so, there may be a half-dozen or so
who are able to defer their private agenda in order to *demonstrate
the process -- to team-teach the class, one may say. Absent such
a cadre, IDNO will never get its house in order or its priorities
straight: no democracy was ever organized by a single individual.
> When I am faced with treason, I have to act on my own. When I don't
> pay the bill for the website hosting, the website dies. I am still
> the owner, in other words, not (unfortunately) IDNO. I am justs as
> impatient to change this situation for the better as you are.
You're the landlord of a conference hall; that's understood. You
may be impatient for any number of reasons (do the floors have be
waxed before the next conference? ;-) but the conduct of the
conferers is not your charge (nor is defining 'treason').
IDNO has been left to do what ICANN should have done in the
beginning -- what IFWP was intended to do, in fact -- that is, to
*organize individual membership across the Internet. (An (ex-
)salmon fisherman told me the motto of the Fisherman's Union is:
"Every man for himself!") ICANN palmed the job off to the SOs,
and now they to consituencies (and I dare say the constituencies
will find it expedient to create 'working groups' of 4 people who will
reach "consensus as best as they were able to determine it"), thus
consuming 6 months and more time that could have gone to this
remedial work. Be that as it may, I'd suggest as a 'case study' for
the IDNO 'class' the following resolution:
Whereas in general, without individual DNO[wner]
representation, *all ICANN actions to date are invalid,
and in particular, the present Board is therefore not authorized
to set deadlines for the identification of such representation,
therefore, in due course, when the individual DNOs are good
and ready, they will move to revise, even revoke, any actions taken
in their absence.
By the time the group has learned to extract a position from all the
arguments pro and con on this 'moot' resolution, you see, they will
have gained the *democratic experience necessary for them to
actually act as a constituency. Whereupon I predict they will teach
the autocrats a thing or two -- so keep your wax handy.
Cheers,
kerry
