[Community-Discuss] Reform Nomcomm - was Announcement for Final Candidate Slate for Open Seat on AFRINIC Governance Committee

[Mike Silber]

Hi Ish

> On 16 Jun 2019, at 23:41, Ish Sookun <ish.sookun at lasentinelle.mu> wrote:
> 
> The Nomination Committee extended the call for nominations [1] to
> attract more nominations.
> 
I have served on a number of nominating committees. respectfully extending time does not really qualify as a mechanism to attract more nominations. It is like a restaurant offering the “catch of the day” when there are few or no interested diners in that dish: the way to attract more diners is to increase marketing, actually reach out to people or even change the dish itself (or the atmosphere of the restaurant). It is not just extending the time - because the “catch of the day” is even less attractive days or weeks later :-)

I read an extension of time as a danger sign that something is going wrong. It is not at all “attractive” to me.

An email to a community mailing list does not really qualify as “outreach”. I have not seen any sort of “requirements / criteria / qualifications” document against which the nominating committee can seek candidates. 

> I do not think that the geographic restriction is the reason for few
> volunteers to serve on the AfriNIC board.
> 
I tend to disagree (without having specific empirical evidence). 

Firstly - the nominating committee is drawn from regions other than those in respect of which the regional directors are drawn. This means the nominating committee has few relationships and a limited ability to do “outreach” or raise awareness “in region”. 

Secondly - the way the regional structure works, means that candidates are drawn from a region, may have majority support from a region - but can be rejected by block-voting from other regions. This creates significant frustration amongst potential candidates from a region and makes a mockery of the regional structure. 

In my opinion, if you want candidates to be interested, either you need to restrict regional seats to a regional vote (an option I do not support) or remove the regional requirement and balance diversity as suggested by others (no more than x per country [I support 1] and no more than y per region [I support 2/3]).

In addition - the nominating committee should be appointed immediately after the AGMM and be given a specific set of criteria against which they can both solicit nominations as well as actually go out and approach potential candidates. The nominating committee should NOT be sitting on their hands and waiting for dozens of nominations to roll-in - because it will NOT happen.

Regards

Mike