Provisional election Results

[William Drake]

On Oct 21, 2011, at 4:23 AM, Alex Gakuru wrote:

> In my Kiswahili language lies a proverb, “asiyekubali kushindwa sio mshindani” [one that never agrees to defeat can never be a winner]

This seems apt.

My collegial advice to our friends in NPOC:  

1.  Recruit organizations represented by identifiable members or staff who actually wish to participate in NCSG and ICANN beyond materializing to vote when prompted from D.C.  

2.  Have them submit their membership applications themselves to the Exec Committee.  Do this well in advance of the next election, rather than at the 11th hour, so EC volunteers have sufficient time to properly vet their applications.  If that vetting does not yield your desired results, provide additional information and if necessary, take steps specified in the charter in hopes of achieving better outcomes. 

3.  Have open dialogue on a publicly archived listserv to define a distinctive, substantive policy agenda of operational concerns pertaining to the range of GNSO issues.  If you largely focus on trademark protection for your member organizations, other people will quite naturally conclude that you are only concerned with trademark protection for your member organizations.

4.  Have the above mentioned people bring those concerns to the NCSG list and debate them with the wider membership so everyone knows who they are, and so we can collectively identify where we all agree and can work together in Council, working groups, etc., and where we need to agree to disagree and represent our views separately in ICANN.  If you actually talk to NCUC members you may find that they share some of said operational concerns and will back you. Eschew the silo mentality, it doesn't matter exactly how many of your own people are on Council at any given time if you persuade the SG as a whole that something is right to do. 

5.  Having done the above, get some of your people to stand for election in the next cycle.  If they're known and have a record of good faith participation they may get NCUC votes, irrespective of whether there's agreement on all points.  Win by persuading, rather than by trying to stack the deck.

6.  Terminate your long standing practices of communicating privately with staff and board members whenever you want something or have concerns and then refusing to answer questions from others about this.  It is really uncollegial and not at all "trust building" when, as just happened with your travel funding complaint,  we receive email from the chair of the board saying he's considering how to respond to you but we don't even know what your complaint is.  It is nice that for the first time, you decided to share a complaint letter, on the election (although not so nice that your VC spent two hours on a call with us the night prior without mentioning it).  Still, it would be better to try sorting out differences in house rather than immediately running to the board and demanding that the charter be subverted in order to mandate your desired outcomes.

This is not rocket science.

Bill





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