Internet Society of Australia
A Chapter of the Internet Society
ABN 36 076 406 801
The 2002 AGM was held at 18:15 hrs on Tuesday 3rd December 2002 in the conference facilities at our Registered Office, Maddocks, Level 7 140 William Street, Melbourne.
Tony Hill was Chairperson, and noted that as 19 current members of the Society were present, plus 23 valid proxies, there was a quorum for the meeting. The Chairperson welcomed all of those in attendance and noted the items on the agenda to those present. There were no apologies received. The Notice of AGM was read as per Corporate Law.
A specific resolution was put by Tony Hill and seconded by Bruce Tonkin, that "we use specific accounting and budget 'tags' for DCITA grant funding expenditure and obligations, so that we can meet their specific reporting requirements". The motion was passed.
The Executive Director's Activity Report was presented by Kate Lance to the meeting as below. A vote of thanks was proposed by Kate Lance to Adam Creed for the distribution of his e-zine newsletter 'The Update' to our membership list. Votes of thanks were also proposed to Cisco, who hosted board meetings and a directors' strategy day, and to Maddocks Lawyers for their generous support of our Society.
Executive Director's Report for the AGM 2002
I became Executive Director of the Internet Society of Australia in January 2002. The first activity of the year was to poll the members to find out exactly what sort of services they wanted us to focus on. Now, ten months later, it is pleasing to note that we have managed to successfully offer some of those most requested activities to our members over 2002.[A] Member Interests
In terms of facilities, members said that they wanted an online interface to change membership details, and an electronic newsletter. We simply didn't have the resources to do the first of these, but we were very fortunate to be able to organise for members to receive Adam Creed's weekly newsletter, which is certainly one of the most original, succinct and interesting summaries around.
Members said that in terms of events they were most in favour of one-day conferences and informal meetings with a speaker. For the first time in ISOC-AU's history we organised two very successful one-day conferences during the year, Connecting the Future and Designing the Future. We also organised a Broadband discussion in Sydney in May and an informal Brisbane meeting with president Tony Hill.
The major topics of members interest as subjects for talks were: Internet standards and development and Connectivity and infrastructure, and these became the subjects of our two one-day forums (as below).[B] Forums
* Connecting the Future, May 28 in Sydney, held in conjunction with AC3 was a great success. It reviewed the progess and development of advanced high-speed network infrastructure in Australia. See - http://www.isoc-au.org.au/CTF
* Designing the Future, December 3 in Melbourne, held in conjunction with Maddocks, was also a great success, looking at Internet protocol design and implementation for all types of Internet users. See - http://www.isoc-au.org.au/DTF[C] Working with Our Organisational Members
Our relationships with other organisations continue to grow and develop. We have been able to support and promote the activites of a number of our Organisational Members:
CCNR: ISOC-AU supported the Community Networking conference held at Monash in June by the Centre for Community Networking Research. I was on the committee, chaired a conference session, and enjoyed some very interesting discussions and talks. In October I also attended CCNR's very productive one-day study meeting to research future directions in community networking.
SETEL: ISOC-AU supported and I spoke at the SETEL Forum on SME involvement with the Internet and again heard some very innovative discussion on the problems of Internet take-up for small business.
ATUG: Sydney directors provided a booth at the ATUG annual conference in March and we publicised a number of ATUG events that had concession entry for our members.
Broadband: we organised a teleconference consultation between our Organisational members on broadband issues.
We also promoted Web Accessibility Workshops on behalf of some of our individual members.[D] Governance and Submissions
* Director Galen Townson attended a round-table discussion on Spam with NOIE in May and we provided a submission on the topic, see - http://www.isoc-au.org.au/Submissions/SpamNOIE020502.html
* In August we provided a submission with recommendations to the Broadband Advisory Group, see - http://www.isoc-au.org.au/Submissions/bband140802.html
* We submitted comments to NOIE on ICANN developments.
* We were involved in several ACA meetings on deriving guidelines for ISP activities and codes for consumers of telecommunications services.
* We took part in a day of protest on lack of review of the censorship provisions in the Broadcasting Services Act and in November Director Jeremy Malcolm provided a submission on the effectiveness of the BSA three years after implementation.
* We applied for and received a small grant from DCITA under Section 593 as a Telecommunications consumer representative organisation.
* We continued to discuss and promote our key points for maximising the potential of the Internet, see - http://www.isoc-au.org.au/Points/
* auDA: We remain strongly involved with domain name governance - Director Cheryl Langdon-Orr was elected to the board of auDA as a Demand class representative, and ex-director Greg Watson was re-elected as an Association class representative.[E] Resources
* We provide a source for the excellent CIRCIT report on "E-mail for All" after that organisation closed down.
* We provided links on our home page to resources on Internet security and testing for the most common computer vulnerabilities.
* We provide links and advice on dealing with Spam.
* We also provide comment to journalists, respond to individual queries, and maintain Internet history resources.
* Our web pages were archived by the National Library of Australia as "culturally significant".[F] Administration
We surveyed other ISOC chapters for their membership fee structure, and we were able to reduce our fees for students and concession-holders when our parent body ISOC changed their fee structure.
We held an Extraordinary General Meeting in May to clarify the different categories and classes of membership so that we could reduce concession fees withing the structure of our constitution.
We created a new pamphlet about ISOC-AU for public distribution, describing our membership, aims and achievements.[G] Directors' Activities
The directors usually meet via teleconference once a month and the minutes of those meetings appear on our web pages. We also organised a face-to-face strategy meeting in February, held at the Sydney premises of one of our very helpful sponsors, Cisco.
In November I organised a meeting in Townsville with a number of people interested in Internet developments, to discuss regional telecommunications consumer concerns. This was a very productive meeting which offered new and interesting perspectives on user requirements.
The question of ISOC-AU as a potentially "youth focused organisation" was raised in an email enquiry presented at the meeting, from Emil Wajs-Chaczko (webmaster for St John Ambulance Australia (NSW) Operations Branch). Craig Ng stated that our constitution did not allow members less than 18 years old, but that we need to recognise the 16-18 years and perhaps younger users of the Internet as part of our interest area.
Tony Hill mentioned that nationally Telstra has a youth focused arena. George Fong suggested a portal or activity such as a LAN Party. Narelle Clark proposed, seconded Craig Ng and supported by all present, that a youth SIG be set up for ISOC-AU, using IRC perhaps, with potential moderation. The SIG could be stratified by age, and these youth members could be Associate Members with no voting rights until 18 years old within the existing constitution. This was seen as an important focus for 2003 and has been referred to a Strategy workshop.
The meeting closed at 1850 hrs.
Tony Hill President, ISOC-AU