I just finished voting in the
Canadian Internet Registration Authority Board of Directors election. This year's election is the first under the new election process and reformed membership structure that was ushered in last year at the special member's meeting in Toronto.
I have mixed feelings about the new membership reform, having spent a good deal of my term on the Board working on it and finally seeing it get ratified by the membership shortly after the end of my stint. I found the re-authorization process of the membership confusing. If I found it confusing, having been in the belly of the beast so to speak, it must have been utterly unfathomable to a lot of casual .CA domain holders. I think 90% of .CA domain holders don't even really understand who CIRA is or why they consistantly get cryptic emails from them telling them to authorize this, confirm that, verify your id ("your papersss pleasss").
Anybody hoping for a massive streamline of the CIRA process is still waiting. Myself included. Still, we keep on trying to improve things, CIRA has gotten several key aspects of registry management right over the years, it is possible to smooth out the rest to make it more accessible to Canadians at large.
When I was on the Board we travelled across the country a lot, and in some cities a lot of people would turn out and give us their thoughts on how things could better be run. At those open forums, everybody had an opinion. I made it a habit at as many of those events as I could to ask: "This is great that so many of you have come out today to express your views on this namespace. How may of you voted in the last election?"
At which point hardly any hands would go up.
So I have always maintained, the first step in improved CIRA governance is wider public participation in the election process, to that end it is time again to encourage one and all to vote. (Hopefully you have gone through the authorization process to do so, if not, you have to wait until next year, one drawback to the new structure).
This year I have voted for the following candidates from the Nomination Committee's slate:
- Clyde Beattie: former Chairman of the Board and in my mind a strong, seasoned veteran who brings a lot of wisdom to the table and keeps everybody in line.
- Rick Andersen: always respected his level headedness.
- Rick Sutcliffe: simply put, a respected futurist with a vast repository of relevant experience.
From the member's slate I have voted for my old friend
Paul Andersen, who also has copious board experience at both the director and executive committee level, being the youngest Vice Chair in CIRA history.
One may ask why I am supporting so many incumbants or past directors, 3 of my 4 picks have been on the board, with only one new pick. This is because one of the things I realized during my term is that there will never be any shortage of new blood on the CIRA board, even more so now under the new nominations process. What has to be taken into account now is to keep some seasoned directors going forward to provide continuity of overall strategy from year to year, especially with CEO Bernie Turcotte moving on and a search for a suitable replacement in the offing.
