Inside:
ISOC Chapters (Chapters) and W3C Offices (Offices) share quite some goals on behalf of their respective parent organizations. Among these goals are:
Based on this it might be a good idea for both organizations to meet and exchange experiences and investigate opportunities for more cooperation between both organizations on a regional level.
Though there are many goals in common Offices and Chapters are completely different wrt Concept and Organization.
In effect ISOC has a lot of Chapters all over the globe. There are quite some differences in structure, activities, set up etc. ISOC has rather liberal rules wrt to the scope of chapters. So the spectrum of chapter activities is rather broad and their influence on the regional Internet varies a lot. But doing nearly nothing is not OK but practice in some cases. (And the doing nearly nothing status applies for a lot of chapters). Nevertheless there are also quite active chapters in the world and some even conduct mission critical tasks for the Internet like running a NIC. Especially in developing countries where the big Industry is missing, politicians are not sufficiently aware of the Internet and a infrastructure is missing ISOC chapters often "represent" the Internet by e.g. providing important services.
Offices are much closer to their parent Organization than chapters. They are in permanent communication with W3C and they are supposed to comply to an agreement. The set-up by a contract with a hosting institution provides them with some stability - though this is subject to a rapidly changing world in Internet and Web research organizations. In practice W3C tries to avoid to have inactive Offices because every Office charges W3C with significant effort for coordination, education and control. But the agreement is in practice a rather blunt sword. And so it can happen that an Office can be rather inactive for a year or two - especially if W3C technologies get out of focus of the Office's host organization. But in general W3C succeeds - by communication and motivation for the mission of W3C and the appeal to work in a international community on a fascinating subject - to keep them active. And beside being regional entities Offices work as a community within W3C .
It should be mentioned that ISOC has another instrument to cope with regional diversity. ISOC Offices are part of the ISOC Organization and staffed with ISOC employees. ISOC Offices work more on the continent level than by country. So they more resemble W3C hosts than W3C Offices. Nevertheless there might be opportunities for cooperation on this level too which might be discussed in this or another context.
Neither Chapters nor Offices represent a perfect model to do regional outreach for an organization. The chapters is definitely more grasrooty while the Offices model is more targeted towards the mission of the parent organization. Nevertheless there is cooperation already today:
Other Offices have occasional cooperations with ISOC chapters.
[while I tried to report and analyze facts up to here the following is definitely my private opinion.]
ISOC has conducted work wrt developing countries from its very beginning. Starting in the nineties with developing country workshops on the INET conferences it was always one of the goals of ISOC to raise Internet awareness and teach the teachers especially in Africa. To team-up with ISOC on this level might be attractive for both sides. W3C would gain from the work that ISOC did so far in teaching and training. So many of the Chapters resulting from this work started to launch Internet business and services in their respective countries. So these chapters might provide excellent contacts. W3C could broaden the scope of these chapters by providing them also some Web mission wrt the dissemination of W3C technologies. Many of these chapters are actively involved in ICANN and IETF so adding W3C would provide some one stop Internet org shopping in the respective areas.
We should rather not call them Offices. Because neither will they be able to meet the expectations we usually have for Offices nor would we be able to extend the effort that we use to care, minister and supervise our Offices on them. Maybe we can revolve the idea of establishing a POC within these groups with the option to come to an Office agreement once they proved their interest and stability.
Quite a few topics where we could co-operate with ISOC chapters in spreading our message. There is a high interest in WAI and MOBILE Internet throughout ISOC chapters and some of our Offices already use the opportunity to cooperate with ISOC on this level. W3C could participate in such regional activities by providing speakers, our logo our technologies. As before: proven stability and interest might be used to lay ground for a new Office.
Neither model for regional work, spreading awareness and getting support from local communities is perfect. They share common problems (e.g. both heavily depend on the individuals in charge) and advantages (neutral by construction, bridging cultural and language barriers). But as shown above they also have their specific problems many embedded in by the set-up. Both organizations are interested to improve the structure and efficiency of regional work. Aware that in the end we are interested in a good and effective regional worn the author recently had a few talks about options to jointly experiment (in the existing framework of ISOC and W3C) with new structures.
Though ISOC and W3C share a lot of goals they are rather not in competition. Technologies of W3C (and IETF) contribute to ISOCs goal to make the Internet a better place. So in the mid term ISOC and W3C might want to team-up in their regional efforts to be more effective and visible. So setting up an joint regional infrastructure might be in the interest of both organizations. Maybe ISOC and W3C can launch a joint effort to more thoroughly investigate on this.
INET Washington DC29.04 - 29.04.2010United StatesWashington, DC
INET Marseille06.05 - 07.05.2010FranceMarseille
INET Cape Town 13.05 - 14.05.2010South AfricaCape Town
INET Montevideo24.06 - 24.06.2010UruguayMontevideo
INET Beirut14.07 - 14.07.2010LebanonBeirut
INET S.E. Asia 01.11 - 01.11.2010S.E. Asia
Opportunity for Offices to organize tracks or get in touch with local ISOC Chapters
Similar concept, similar rules. Major difference: even with a grant an Office has to present third party invoices in order to get the money while the ISOC grant is completely paid in advance.
ISOC http://www.isoc.org/
ISOC Chapters http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/
W3C Offices http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/
ISOC Regional Bureaus http://www.isoc.org/regions/
ISOC Communities Grant Programme http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/projects/
W3C Offices Activies Fund http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/fund.html
ISOC Events calendar http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/events/
W3C Events calendar http://www.w3.org/participate/eventscal.html
ISOC Addresses of Chapters http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/list.php
W3C Addresses of Offices http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/staff.html