[rpd] Board Election 2017: Final Candidate Slate

[Bill Woodcock]

> On May 22, 2017, at 5:29 AM, Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com> wrote:
> We have a requirement that says that candidates must have participated in X number of meetings in X amount of time.  I would argue that the meetings do not lend themselves to the types of people you want running a company.    The types of people you want running a company have deep business experience and are in C level structures – the nature of AfriNIC meetings is that they are fundamentally technical .  That is not a bad thing and I think that the AfriNIC meetings are great – I just think that the participation requirements limit the TYPE of candidate we so desperately need.

ARIN has now had four (I think) board members who had never attended a meeting before serving.  All relatively recently.

While the theory of what you’re saying is sound, Andrew, I’d say that our industry has a vast amount of realm-specific knowledge needed to understand what’s going on and contribute usefully, and that need percolates surprisingly deeply into the decisions an RIR board needs to make.

So, I think having one person on the board who has no prior RIR meetings or experience won’t do any harm, and they may contribute other strengths that are missing…  but any significant number of such people, and you won’t have the background necessary to understand the decisions in context.

> Recognition of prior learning encompasses experience gained over the years and a variety of other factors.  I believe that there are many successful people who have risen to the top of their respective organizations and to the level where they have sufficient experience that can be proven and demonstrated to perform the function – and any restriction that limits the participation of such people would be counter productive.

Yeah, that I agree with entirely.  I’ve served on boards with people who hadn’t completed high school, and they were just as effective as people with doctorates.  Academic experience is no predictor of business competence, and an RIR isn’t a university.

                                -Bill