On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Don Cameron wrote:
> Sadly, even some of the postings to this list over recent months are not
> suggestive that the brief has been met - that there is still a considerable
> amount of work to be done.

On the topic of auDA membership, I expected auDA to have more members than
it currently does.

But more interesting is the prescence iiNet (WA's oldest and largest ISP)
has in auDA:

20% of the demand class members (as of 11/2000) were staff at iiNet around
the turn of 1998/1999. Many of them (53%) no longer work at iiNet and some
of them aren't even involved in the ISP industry anymore. I asked a couple
of them if they knew they were auDA members and what they got from their
$100. One had forgotten he was a member entirely, the other remembered he
was a member but has never paid for membership and assumed iiNet was
picking up the tab.

iiNet also hosts the auDA DNS mailing list, the auda.org.au web-site and
two of the auDA directors/officers work for iiNet (MM - iiNet's MD, and
Kim - iiNet's webmaster).

I'm not saying it's a bad thing for an ISP's staff to become interested in
Internet issues (far from it), but it is interesting that approx. 50% [1]
of an ISPs staff be auDA members, and that the ISP _appears_ [2] to pay
for their individual memberships.

Perhaps it's this type of thing kre sees as a lack of even representation
of the Australian Internet community in auDA?

"If auDA develops as it is, or was, planned to develop - as an
organisation with a fairly large membership, from all interested sectors
of the community..."

PD

[1] From memory, iiNet had about 60 staff members at the turn of
1999/2000, and 30 of them are listed as D members as of 27/11/00
[2] Emphasis on "appears" - from a massive sample space of only 6%.

-- 
Paul Day         Email: bonfire§bur.st         Web: www.bur.st/~bonfire