[NCUC Finance] FW: Toronto event

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> I am concerned about our poor institutional memory.

Me too. I think you are right to pursue it. But one cannot do it retroactively, or only to a limited degree. Has to be forward-looking mostly. Set up new procedures to start following rather than rummaging

> I would want things to be managed in such a way that even if
> the entire EC were to disappear at once in a plane crash,
> our successors would be able to pick up where they left off
> without having to start everything from scratch.

Yes. But this capability will have to be created going forward. 

> This is not the first time I've stumbled on a volunteer-driven
> organization that's slowly grown to the point where it becomes
> necessary to revamp processes, not because they are bad as such,
> but simply because they don't scale.

Totally agree and support this, which is why I sent the invoice to Finance Committee (which AFAIK I had no legal or even NCUC-procedural obligation to do at this point). 

> To that end I need to understand how things have been
> working in the past.

Right, that's why I tipped you off that the archiving might have changed. There may be another archive that would providea more comprehensive overview, somewhere. I believe either Robin or Avri were handling that list. We always had debates about the strategic issues of a publicly archived EC list. Some of us wanted to shield those conversations because the commercial constituencies had zero transparency (don't even show their membership list) and we were concerned about revealing our plans and our "cards" to our 'enemies' in ICANN. Others said we should make everything available so our members could see it. Others countered that then the really sensitive stuff would just be kept of the list. We went back and forth on this. Talk to past chairs about how things were/were not archives. 

But, I will dredge up two emails I have that should clarify how this particular thing happened. Wait for it!