ISOC to focus on chapter dev.

President Internet Society, Lynn St.Amour, has said that key investment focus of the society this year, 2011, is to further empower its chapters and regional bureaus.

ISOC is a non-profit scientific, educational membership organization incorporated in 1992 in the District of Columbia. Internet Society provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organizational home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

St. Amour in her new year message ‘Making “The Internet is for Everyone” Even More Real in 2011’ disclosed that a key investment area in 2010, and one that would continue in 2011, is the further empowerment of Internet Society Chapters and Regional Bureaus.

She noted that in 2010, ISOC had focused on building local roots and global engagement.

“In conjunction with Chapters, twelve INET events were held, as well as five regional Chapter workshops. Staff and members developed Chapter toolkits and Primers on a variety of issues such as Public Policy, Mobilizing Volunteers, and Network Neutrality. And, we provided substantial additional direct funding opportunities for Chapter activities,” she said.Also she said, through the launch of the Next Generation Leaders programme - built on the successful Internet Society Fellowship to the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the Internet Governance Forum Ambassadors programme.

“We expanded our efforts to foster Internet knowledgeable policy makers and policy savvy technologists around the world. And, wherever we could, we helped catalyze support for a multistakeholder approach to discussions about Internet matters,” she said.ISOC, she said, therefore advocated globally for the deployment of technologies key to the future of the Internet, such as Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) which is a suite of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specifications for securing certain kinds of information provided by the Domain Name System (DNS) as used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks.

On the development front, ISOC said, it actively supported the launch of several Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in Africa, and supported many other regional developmental efforts and policy forums, such as the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) in Latin America.She expressed optimism that the coming year holds the promise of even greater accomplishments and growth.

“As outlined in the multi-year Business Plan recently approved by the Internet Society Board of Trustees, we plan to take additional steps to support local globally integrated action in support of our Mission. Strengthening support to and providing additional resources for the five Internet Society Regional Bureaus will be a central focus,” she said, assuring that ISOC would continue to build the leadership development efforts, such as the Next Generation Leaders programme, and embed them in all that the society do.

At the Internet Society, the president said, its strength lies in a shared vision, expressed by our mission, which is to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.

This mission, ISOC said, is realized through the actions of a global community of individual members, Internet Society Chapters, member organizations, and our partners in the Internet ecosystem, with each of member working to ensure that in the future, Internet users will continue to have access to the same open, global Internet we benefited from.“A testament to our collective efforts, I am extremely pleased to report that we have seen increased impact and significant growth in virtually all areas of the Society’s activities over the past year,” she said.

As said by her, ISOC community is larger and more active today than any time in its history, noting that over the past year, the number of active chapters increased by nearly 50 per cent and we added a significant number of new organizational members.

“In addition, the number of individual members increased to 45,000, and we set a target of doubling the number of individual Members each year for the next five years, with a goal of 1 million members by 2017,” she disclosed.

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