STFDOC-4 ISTF STEERING GROUP (ISSG) ANNOUNCEMENT August 22, 1999 by Vinton G. Cerf, Chairman ISTF, Dear Friends of ISTF, I appreciate your patience in the two months since the announcment of the formation of ISTF at the end of June. It has been a lot longer, of course, for many of you, especially Sascha Ignjatovic who sent an email on February 3, 1999, to suggest the formation of such a group. I have compiled a list of people from whom I have heard in the last couple of months and who have expressed an interest in serving on the initial Steering Committee. I may have misinterpreted some of the "offers" and I may have missed some people who meant to volunteer or who did so but I didn't understand they had. Furthermore, I put in the briefest of suggestions of interest areas for most of these people, based on their correspondence. I know that this will be a rather distorted label - most participants in ISTF are much more well-rounded, but I put in these little reminders for myself, to help in forming a reasonably "well-rounded" interim Internet Societal Steering Group (ISSG). Please note that there is an enormous amount of work to be done in the scope of ISTF. People who expressed interest in serving on the Steering Group will have an opportunity to be considered under final procedures adopted by the interim group, and, of course, there will be many opportunities to become active through the working groups of the ISTF also. I hope no one who volunteered to serve on the steering group, but whom I did not select for interim service, will take this as a rejection of his or her qualifications or competence. I have really just tried to select a well-rounded group to help get us organized. More important, a workable interim Steering Group has to be of reasonable size to get work done - large enough to assure a working quorum will be present and able to make decisions - and small enough to be agile and quick to come to conclusions. My guess at this is 21 people, which is about the size of the Internet Society Board. A quorum of 11 or more will allow for variations in "attendance" although it is my expectation that the group will "meet" almost exclusively through email and on occasion by telephone (but such meetings will have the usual time-zone problems). The Steering Group might also always schedule at least one face to face meeting during ISOC's INET conferences. I hestitate to make that a firm requirement without further discussion because of travel costs and potential schedule conflicts among that many members. The first tasks of this group will be to determine how regular members of the Steering Committee should be selected and second what procedures would be suitable for formation of working groups. Any decision on that last point would, of course, be subject to change by the regular Steering Group once it is constituted. More generally, the interim ISSG will need to craft a set of general operating procedures (bylaws, essentially). It probably should inaugurate an information note series ("ISTF DOCS"?), appoint a volunteer editor, who will form an editorial board and establish "publication" practices which might take some operating advice from similar publications such as the RFC series from the Internet Engineering Task Force. I have made some recommendations to get that process started also. Under the authority granted to me by the ISOC Board of Trustees, as interim chairman of the ISTF, I am appointing an interim Steering Group based on the people who have expressed interest in such service. You will find that list below. If anyone so appointed is UNABLE TO SERVE, please notify me at vcerf@mci.net and I will make substitutions. For those who ABLE TO SERVE, I would appreciate confirmation of this by email from each nominee to the ISTF-participants list so everyone will be kept informed. Each confirming nominee should also supply full contact information (name, title, employer, postal address, telephone, fax number, email address). Furthermore, unless there is objection, I would like the Steering Group to work initially by email and on the ISTF participants list - that will allow all participants to observe the process of developing the ISTF operating rules and to offer feedback as we go along. If the level of traffic becomes a burden for participants not serving on the Steering Group, we can always create a separate list and put on it the Steering Group members and anyone else interested in tracking its work. A few suggested action milestones: 1. 22 August 1999: Recommend Interim Steering Group (cerf) 2. 1 November 1999: Steering Group selection and approval process defined, draft charter for ISTF ready for review by ISTF participants and ISOC Board of Trustees. Working Group establishment process defined. 3. 1 January 2000 Initial Working Groups chartered and in operation, regular (as opposed to interim Steering Group) in place. The latter milestone may be overly ambitious ( or perhaps thought too slow by some!). There is a lot to do. And we will have the benefit of other ISOC members and ISOC Board members to give advice based on their expertise. I am thinking, for example, of Christine Maxwell and Lynn St. Amour, among many others. Appointed to the Interim ISTF Steering Group: Sascha Ignjatovic dspackman@clearnet.net (Debbie Spackman) Jose Luis Pardos <104056.110@COMPUSERVE.COM> Artur Serra Michael Burks "Wawa A. Ngenge" Lajos Balint Guedon Jean-Claude Christian de Larrinaga Rob Horne Bruno OUDET Gerard Stein Andrew Mancey Sam Lanfranco "Czeslaw Jan Grycz [415] 732-6172" Rob Horne "Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM" Mark Perkins jrobin@atelier.fr (ColorNet Robin) Dov Winer "parry aftab" -------------------------------- Proposed special appointments: --------------------- Editor of the ISTF Documentation series: David Nordfors Interim Web Content Management: dspackman@clearnet.net (Debbie Spackman) - if time permits Lance Laack "Austin, Tim J" (ISTF Webmaster is to be determined after consultation) -------------- I would also like to propose an additional action by those of you interested in forming and working on working groups. It seems to me that there are some obvious ones for which there may already be critical mass or opportunity to work jointly with existing organizations. Some examples might include: Access (disabilities, economics, infrastructure) Policies (intellectual property, privacy, security) Electronic commerce Developing Countries These may have some overlaps and I suspect the way out of that problem is to have very well-defined objectives for any working group established and to try to stay focused on those objectives as the working group carries out its work. What we need now are descriptions of the scope of some specific working groups to see from the bottom up what work our ISTF participants have an appetite to carry out. I will be sending out more specific task messages in the days ahead. I am deeply grateful to each of you for your interest in ISTF and look forward to working with all of you to make real our long term objective: assuring that everyone who can benefit from Internet gets the opportunity to participate in its use. Sincerely, Vint Cerf Chairman, ISTF APPENDIX --------- ISTF Participants Interested in Steering Group Particpation ------------------------ Approximate Volunteers Interests ----------------------------------------------- ----------- g.adamson@test.medibank.com.au access "parry aftab" UNESCO ENRIQUE ARRIETA NOGUERA environment Lajos Balint ISOC AC/social John Bennett XML/technology rjan@lysator.liu.se (örjan berglund) org objectives Marjory Blumenthal science policy "John D. Boswell" Beverly Hills chap. Michael Burks disabilities David Casacuberta civil lib/impact "steve cisler" outreach "Millard Clements" clements outreach John Detwiler global help desk Dave Farber governance/policy Donna_Flynn@dai.com commerce Michael Gurstein development/access Christian de Larrinaga internet enablement "Czeslaw Jan Grycz [415] 732-6172" service/pubs Guedon Jean-Claude history Lawrence Hecht community networks Paul Hoffman / IMC Internet Mail Cons. Barbara Holt elderly Rob Horne org structure Sascha Ignjatovic org goals/philosophy Kamal Khan audit/control Sam Lanfranco org. outreach William Lester dev country outreach Andrew Mancey sustainable dev't Christine Maxwell education,pubs Alan McCluskey org, pubs "Wawa A. Ngenge" undp liaison David Nordfors ISTFDOCS Frank Odasz empowerment Bruno OUDET fiesta2000 Jose Luis Pardos <104056.110@COMPUSERVE.COM> Government "Jon M. Peha" Tech/policy Mark Perkins Intell. Property "Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM" outreach/various Costas Popotas legal/regulation Larry Press dev. countries jrobin@atelier.fr (ColorNet Robin) social impacts Christian Edward Sandvig social science Artur Serra policy "Paul J.M. Settels" Fiesta2000 dspackman@clearnet.net (Debbie Spackman) facilitation Gerard Stein african outreach "Waddell, Cynthia" disability access CK rural access "zita wenzel" IANA/ICANN Abel Weinrib Ethnic studies Dov Winer W3C Liaison? Additional Volunteers: Web Site Assistance/content --------------------------- dspackman@clearnet.net (Debbie Spackman) Lance Laack "Austin, Tim J" List Management --------------- Paul Stauffer Sheryl Hiatt Culture & Language ------------------ Rejean Roy Disaster Relief ---------------- Ronlaporte@aol.com Online Communities ------------------ "Sam Kritikos"