Summary of African chapter delegates Instant Messaging Conference
January 11 2006
The meeting started at 2:05 PM GMT.
Were present
1. Pierre Dandjinou, ISOC Benin
2. Yaovi Atohoun, ISOC Benin
3. Christine Arida, ISOC Egypt
4. Diallo Iam, ISOC Mali
5. Dave Kissoondoyal, ISOC Mauritius
6. Sadou SOLOKE, ISOC Niger
- Alan Levin, ISOC South Africa
- Khaled Koubaa, ISOC Tunisia.
- Anne Lord, Senior Manager for Chapters and Individual Membership
- Dawit Bekele, Manager African Regional Bureau
Agenda
1- Welcoming remarks and purpose of meeting by Dawit Bekele
2- Short self-introduction of the delegates
3- Approval of agenda
4- Introduction of the African Regional Bureau by Dawit Bekele
5- Getting to know African chapters - Discussion
6- Communication between the Bureau and the chapters
7- African Bureau Website
8. AOB
1- Welcoming remarks and purpose of meeting by Dawit Bekele
Dawit Bekele welcomed all the participants.
2- Short self-introduction of the delegates
- Mamadou Diallo Iam: I am Dr Mamadou Diallo Iam, Président d'Isoc-Mali, former Chair of the WSIS African Bureau also known as the Bamako Bureau
- Dave Kissoondoyal, ISOC Mauritius Chair
- Pierre Dandjinou, Pt Isoc Benin
- Yaovi Atohoun, Secretary General, ISOC-BENIN
- Sadou Soloké, vice president ISOC Niger
- Christine Arida, ISOC Egypt
- Khaled KUBAA, Independent Consultant working in the ICT fields in Tunisia (Internet, web, information systems, ... ), President of the Tunisian ISOC Chapter
- Anne Lord, Senior Manager Chapters and Individual members, ISOC Secretariat
3- Approval of agenda
The agenda is approved with an addition of an eight item AOB. It was decided that the meeting will last at most 1 ½ hours.
4- Introduction of the African Regional Bureau by Dawit Bekele
Dawit Bekele said that the African Bureau is established just a few months ago to increase ISOC's Bureau in Africa. The second Bureau will be in Latin America and it will be open in a few days, we hope. The African Bureau is also expected to enable chapters and members in Africa to have better participation in ISOC's activities. Finally, he said that he will be happy to discuss on-line or off-line if there is anything the participants want to know about the Bureau.
Diallo Iam indicated that he is pleased to hear that, “we badly need this Bureau!”
Then, Alan Levin raised an objection on what has been said on the Bureau. He said “I do not understand. We are ISOC. : I thought this was an attempt to bridge the HQ with members and assit the chapters, it sounds different the way you put it. almost as if it's all about HQ”
Dawit Bekele followed by Anne Lord tried to resolve what they believe is a misunderstanding. Anne said that that “it is not about HQ. It is about providing support and information to the Chapters, to assist them in building vibrant chapters and to maintain better communication with them so as to be able to support them.” Pierre Dandjinou added that it should also be a bridge between African chapters.
To the question asked on the size of the Bureau Dawit Bekele answered that “for the time being I am alone here in Addis. But thanks to Internet, I am working with all the staff in Reston and Geneva on a daily basis. We have today Anne Lord, Senior Manager Chapters and Individual members for example.”.
Khaled Koubaa suggested that the Bureau could help in showcasing our different initiatives
It was agreed that Dawit Bekele send additional information on the Bureau off-line. In particular, how the Bureau operates, number of chapters (active and inactive), etc.
5- Getting to know African chapters – Discussion
Every chapter representative was asked to talk briefly about his/her chapter.
ISOC South Africa
- community (a few gatherings per year + >500 members)
- policy (regular submissions to parliament and regulator)
- outreach (Internet fiesta)
- education (new Spam Bounty Hunter programme recently sponsored for R60,000 by Symantec)
We do not have any staff, all ISOC-ZA activities are done by volunteers.
We are desperate need for a membership system, this uses all our resources unfortunately
Website is low priority for ISOC-ZA, this is straight forward for us. http://isoc.org.za, free for NGO's in ZA
Isoc-Mali
Isoc-Mali is in place since 1997, we have 650 to 700 members,we have been involved in the last Mali national e_Festival prep and execution. Isoc-Mali was present
Isoc-Mali is organizing next week a Workshop for blog use by Business Women of COFEM
There are around 60 000 users in Mali but by "intermediation" more than that!
In Mali we are all volunteers at Isoc-Mali.
Organizing a workshop for our members first
Hope the Africa website will be multilingual!
Our site underwent a crash last September and we have to fix it ourselves! We are paying the host
ISOC Tunisia
Our chapter is a young chapter, we were chartered last august 2006 and we were legally constituted by October 2006. Our office is hosted by the CCK which is the principal provider of the High Tunisian education institutions and universities. Our web site is : www.isoc.org.tn . We have done some activites as : training on WEB2.0, Web site for artisans people, Workshp on Electronic card for students.
All the web site and online ressources need to be reviewed : membership system, infos, ...
I think communication and marketing materiel and packages are also welcomed.
I have suggested before that it is more easy if ISOC give to each of chapters a subdomain, and the chapter can manage this DNS ressource , as I will have tunisia.isoc.org. I can point it on my domain name www.isoc.org.tn. or I use it for another porpuse like giving mail addresses to our members. There are many chapter who can not pay for a domain name. Even the actual Mailman ressource for the newslist management can have others list . In the same time than the chapter-delagates we can have Tunisia list, Mali list , Africa list.
I suggest “2 awards : best chapter website and Active Chapter”
can we have africa.isoc.org in place of isocafrica.org ?
We can help for the french centent
Dawit : I would like to propose you a CMS for the web site, and our chapter can offer the administration of this CMS.
could this meeting be periodicly ( each month for example ) ?
ISOC Egypt
The Egyptian Chapter has started as early as 1996 and was very active at that time in awareness issues, outreach, annual event, ....and promoting Internet services in the country. : During the last couple of years, the chapter has become almost inactive. Yet we are trying at the time being to revive it.
ISOC Niger
Less than 100 member my president will precise, Not very active but we hope to be more active in 2007. web site http://www.isoc-niger.ne/
Isoc Benin
ISOC Benin was approved in 1999. Conferences and workshops organized. Are taking the lead for an IPv6 forum in the country. www.isoc.bj
Dawit maybe one idea should be to assess status of chapters website for the moment?
One concern we do have with ISOC benin is the overall impact of the Association; are others having the same concerns? have there been any assessment on that as well?
The bureau can have a model website ready that chapters who want can use.
The Africa bureau should disseminate a few guidelines on best practices
And how about awards for 'best' chapter websites??
I suggest that we think about making ISOC CHAPTER different from other ICT NGOs. We must have some basic standard or activities for each chapter
ISOC Niger
For ICT small business manager and ISP: cisco, wifi et linux training (networking) will help
6- Communication between the Bureau and the chapters
It was agreed that there should e a Monthly Instant Messaging meeting like this one.
It was also requested to have one or two F2F meetings every year, piggy backing on other meetings (AFNOG/AFRINIC/ AFRISPA, 2xINET). It was also suggested that the Bureay makes sure that all the chapters are present at the next AfriNIC meeting for a full day discussion. It was suggested that ”as we are 14 approved for the moment the bureau can try support chapters who don't have funding” “ISOC have to support and not only check the presence of africain chapters”
It was also suggested that “we should also work to resolve where there is conflict, I do believe that Kenya has an outstanding application”. There were also discussions on when it is possible to have several ISOC chapters in the same country.
7- African Bureau Website
The discussions on the African Bureau website were done partially in the previous sections. It was also agreed to continue the discussions on the website off-line.
8. AOB
There was no other business .
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 2:45 PM GMT.