We need a wider range of people representing all sectors of the Internet & business users to provide input to the board
Yes, currently we have all of "our" slots on the board (which have gone over the years from half of the board to 1/3rd) taken by representatives from the largest 1% of registrars
With 2 seats available this time, you have the chance to change the make-up of the 4 member-elect positions to get more registrant/small-business focus, rather than more of the same - not voting (due to the weighting/cap) will be essentially the same as voting for the largest registrar and the encumbant
A) An acknowledgement that Nominet is there to run the UK namespace, and no more than that
It would be impossible to "undo" the morphing now, but it may be possible to control and limit it, they are certainly issues which have always concerned me - what can be done about them within the context of the NED position and overall board composition is difficult to generalise, but if you dont put us on the board, we'll never know for sure ...
B) A strong, firm stance on the pricing of domain registrations/renewals. These should be on a cost recovery basis.
The reduction from £20 to £5 led to £10m+ in surpluses - reducing the price to 'xyz' levels will fuel growth and devalue them overall - imagine if .uk domains were as blocked from mail systems as .science is now - the entire TLD would be useless for current registrants of all types - but changes to the price (up or down) because the Org wants (rather than needs) more cash is a "bad-thing"
C) A recognition that a domain portfolio holder with 5,000 domains is at least as important a customer as 5,000 individual end-users owning a single domain each
I'm not sure we can or should start categorising _registrants_ based on count of registrations - perhaps I'm not grasping where the registrant vs registrar line is on C and D
D) Relating to C), an understanding that if you extend cheap registrations/renewals to end users
Again, not sure I'm completely following as Nominet aren't selling them to end-users
I think we may be mixing terminology and in danger of talking cross-purposes -
For instance, money diverted to the Nominet Trust (or now its successor) or other similar "suck up to government by looking good" entities is NOT a valid way of disposing of surplus funds
The "Membership" overall voted that it was a way of spending the surplus with the changes to the constitution and the wide open expansion of the remit.
You know my opinions on the 'trust' and I hope I made the 'public benefit' question in the candidate pack succinct enough.
Someone some where has decided that Nominet was to shut the Nominet Trust and to use the extra money to invest in Cyber Security?
As per the answers given at the Annual Registrar event, the trust is gone, but the spend (3 to 5 million per year) on "good causes" will continue, just managed in-house rather than externally (I predict 4 years before that changes again) and to be more "tech" focused than before.
but if you don't own 6 million domains, you ain't getting nowhere
Nowhere without the support of a _lot_ of the members but I certainly think it's possible - the (probable) value of the cap will be ~520,000 votes, so that could be countered by 300 of the smallest domain-count members picking different candidates for #1 and #2 - or some combination of 100 members from the whole range of voters
I've now voted. Alex #1. I also voted for Rob Golding as #2. Good luck, chaps!
Thank you
I'd love to be joining the board of your registrar with Alex and steering it towards some much needed changes.
It will require all of you who are members voting - enough #1 Rob #2 Alex
and enough #1 Alex #2 Rob
to ensure we're not eliminated first round (so a couple of hundred thousand votes each needed)
If you're a member, cast your vote, it does count no matter how many domains you currently have - if you dont know who to vote for, talk to the candidates - some of us can be a bit grouchy, but we're not unapproachable
