Franck Martin PICISOC Bio

First read the History of PICISOC and then I will plug my history on top of it. I came in Fiji as a French civil volunteer in 1993 to work in SOPAC. After my 18month contract with the French government, SOPAC decided to keep me. I have not left since and this is why:

Table of contents

• The Early Days.
• PICISOC Creation.
• PICISOC, a Fijian Charitable Trust.
• I'm not only a hooligan...
• ISOC Board Application

The Early Days.

I first worked in SOPAC as a yound IT graduate for the French programme on Geographic Information Systems and Remoter Sensing. I migrated the uucp system on a PC to a Sun Workstation in 1994. The system was calling ORSTOM (now IRD) in Noumea to exchange e-mails. When I finished my French contract and moved under a SOPAC contract, I worked with Les Allinson, SOPAC IT Manager. Les had just moved 2 years before from FFA to SOPAC. He decided it was the right time to go back to FFA to compare notes and cooperate for better serving the Pacific Islands Nations. I was part of this trip and we decided to create IT-Pacnet. The IT-Pacnet meeting got organised in various regional organisations the following years, and when it was FFA turn to organise it again in Honiara, Solomon Islands. Sam Taufao, FFA IT manager, had just came back from a UNESCO meeting in New Zealand and recommended the creation of the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society (PICISOC).

PICISOC Creation.

PICISOC was created out of the people in the room at IT-Pacnet. More people joined subsequently, but it appeared clearly from the begining that a chapter caring over 22 countries or territories will not be able to function unless registration is free for its members. It costs a lot to move USD5 from one country to the other, and most countries are developing countries.
With other Friends in PICISOC (Al Blake, Richard StClair), I became vocal to ensure that ISOC offer Free membership, especially for developing countries. Since then I ensure that ISOC keeps this rule. Recently when it was decided by ISOC, without consultation that the global individual membership would be lessen by a new paying membership, I encouraged our members to write individualy to ISOC to explain that it was not on. This issue created a schism inside PICISOC where some mebers decided we could go back being an IT-PacInet group rather than be associated with ISOC. I felt the contrary. ISOC has some values, even if it is only relation to other chapters or relation to individuals. After the resignation of the then Chairman, I took acting chairmanship of PICISOC, relaunched the machine, prepared IT-PacINET in Kiribati, and ensured elections would be done quickly. A new board was elected and under Rajnesh Singh Chairmanship a new direction was taken.

PICISOC, a Fijian Charitable Trust.

In 2005, it was decided to register PICISOC fully legally as to be able to handle money, sponsorships and have proper relations with other organisations. In 2006 PICISOC was registered in Fiji as a charitable trust, and a bank account opened. I organised most of the final registration by contacting Fiji Registry office and speaking to its Permanent Secretary to explain what is PICISOC and what are the goals.

I'm not only a hooligan...

Having worked with people of many races and many countries in an environment mainly of english culture, I think French people sometimes solve problems in confrontation rather than in consensus... Also I noticed I'm better in communication in person than virtually, but it is true with other people, you need to know the person character if you want to understand the tone of e-mails.
I have been helping co-organising the various PacINET events. The best one so far was to succeed in inviting Dr Vinton G. Cerf to come all the way from Philadelphia to Tarawa in Kiribati. I'm glad Vint accepted the invitation and that he made it up to Tarawa. I always said you have never been in the Pacific until you visit an atoll country. Now Vint knows what I mean...
I went also to request Dr Jimmie Rogers, now Director of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community to attend this PacINET. I think the meeting between Vint and Jimmie in Tarawa was exceptional. Vint should be with us in Samoa for the next PacINET and hopefully Fred Baker, ISOC Chairman.

I have attended a couple of INET meetings (Yokohama, Stockholm and Washington). In Washington I presented a paper on the status of Internet in the Pacific Islands. I also attended ISOC board meeting as an observer. This was during this time that I tried to understand the effective relationship between ISOC and IETF, and how sometimes the point of view of chapter and individuals is not neccessarily the point of view of ISOC and the organisation members.
I have attended 2 Gac meetings, In Luxembourg and in Vancouver. At the time of the Luxembourg meeting I was chairman of the CROP ICT Working Group whose secretariat is the Forum Secretariat. The Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP) is a body to coordinate the work of about 10 governmental organisations. The Forum Secretarait, the organisation dealing with regional politics is member of GAC. I went to both meeting under this umbrella and based on the experience acquired from Luxembourg, I suggested during PacINET in Kiribati (we had a CROP ICT WG meeting) that the next Forum ICT Ministerial meeting takes place during ICANN in Wellington. The New Zealand government agreed and I'm looking forward for this joint meeting (we had a couple of lobbyist in New Zealand to decide the New Zealand Government).
At the Vancouver meeting, I drafted a section for the GAC communique as to encourage relations between GAC and Pacific Islands.
I reported on the GAC via mailing list back to the Pacific Islands via PICISOC and the WSIS-Pacific mailing list.

ISOC Board Application

ISOC Board 2006 Elections
ISOC is a support organisation to the IETF. I have sent on chapter delegates an e-mail to Fred Baker explaining that if ISOC has this role, and if the members have to support the role of IETF it is important that the jargon in IETF be democratised. Most of individual members have no idea what IETF is doing today. I suggested the creation of a newsletter explaining in simple terms what the IETF is working on and how it may change the way people are using the Internet. I think we have the IETF journal now which is not yet readable by the majority of ISOC members. It is important however to support this initiative and further the action.

ISOC communication and public relations is very limited. ISOC has many members which are respected people in their own region, but the message of ISOC has trouble to pass. First there is a need in this day and age to rework the ISOC web site in making it more up to date with current technologies and participation. The website needs to be multilingual friendly. Not all the website needs to be translated but the major documents and the web site should contain with link in the various languages to the local chapters. Secondly the website needs to bring more interactivity (wiki, blogs, etc...). This is a technical aspect but it is very important if ISOC wants to reach all the population which does not neccessarily speaks English. I have raised this point in the past to ISOC, I hope to have it actioned if board member.

This leads to have ISOC rely more on its chapters. The chapters and the organisation members are the core supporting groups of ISOC. They should be involved in their geographical areas. I was somehow surprised that ISOC was founding an APNIC training for the Pacific Islands and we were not alerted. Many Chapters are doing some great initiatives and they need the support of ISOC as a whole (including with communication). We organise now for several years PacINET in the Pacific Islands and we receive some support and communication support from ISOC. ISOC France does EGENI and needs the support of ISOC. ISOC Bulgaria is quite active too. All these chapters initiative receive still little highlights on the global scale inside ISOC.

Increasing links with other organisations. For instance there are no links between ISOC and ICANN. An IETF rep sits at the board of ICANN to ensure that the decison of the ICANN board are all technically possible. ISOC now supports IETF but also ISOC supports ICANN. I have suggested to Lynn, that ISOC signs an Memoranding Of Understanding (MOU) with ICANN and other organisations. This would formalise some links with other Internet Organisations. There could be a MOU with IEEE (which makes most of the hardware standards the Internet/IETF relies on).

Better communication with chapters and others. Rarely the board members communicate on what is happening during board meeting and what are the current issues ISOC is facing. This need to change to ensure the chapters, organisations and individuals are more involved in the running of ISOC. Minutes of board meetings may be published on ISOC web site, but they are very difficult to find. Anyhow a more personnal form of reporting is may be needed as to highlight what could be the various options. I would gladly report back via chapter delegates. I have done it several times on the PICISOC mailing list in regards to two GAC/ICANN meetings now and I got hired a Pacific Islander, Apisake Saokai, to report back to the Pacific Islands on various WSIS meetings.

Which leads to ISOC ambassadors and accreditation. It is important that ISOC weaves a network of ISOC representatives to various international meetings. A lot of us, members of ISOC, could represent ISOC too at the meetings we are attending. ISOC needs to be accredited with the UN to be able to send representatives if needed to these UN meetings. I'm thinking also IPO, WTO, UNESCO,... There has been a start with the ISOC amabassadors to the WSIS. This initiative needs to be continued.

The project from Andreu Vea Baro "Who's who on the World Wide Web" needs to be supported by ISOC. It would be highly benefitial if we would have interviews of the major Internet architects an players on ISOC web site. Also a who's who of the persons attending ISOC and IETF meetings.

Finally, voting rights for all individual members need to be restored. This include free as well as sustaining members. It may go first by improving the chapters membership system before going into individual membership, but I beleive we could authenticate adequately free members to allow them to vote and truly participate in ISOC. Three trustees from individuals with three trustees from chapters would balance well the six trustees from organisations.

These are a couple of points which I feel are important for the development of ISOC and which I feel I should concentrate some energy. There are certainly some other points of importance, but they will reveal themselves as I gain more knowledge in ISOC and ISOC people.

I value your comments, so write to me on gmail to franck.martin

Finally you can find a short CV at: Franck Martin

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