My understanding of best practice thought in the area, is that in the life
cycle of a board, stakeholder representation is the most fundamental way of
making up a Board.  Boards then evolve further by attracting new members who
can offer insights or connections into areas where the Board is weak (eg.
The Marketer, the Industry Specialist).  Finally the Board evolves into a
fully effective group by ensuring that  it has members to naturally play the
roles necessary for informed decision making (eg. The Devil's Advocate, The
Mediator, The Change Agitator etc).

Getting all this right is a difficult balancing act.

By introducing new rules that may prevent auDA getting the right person on
board because of their corporate linkages, the Board may actually limit
itself from becoming more effective.  All other Boards I have ever been on,
have considered the issue(?) to be a minor problem, resolved by disclosure
and stepping out when conflicted.

My two cents.

Brendan

-----Original Message-----
From: Kirk Fletcher [mailto:kirk§enetica.com.au] 
Sent: Thursday, 19 July 2007 11:27 AM
To: .au DNS Discussion List
Subject: Re: [DNS] Restricting demand membership of auDA


Since the positions on the board are elected anyway, perhaps a better
position is simply a requirement for disclosure?

Cheers,
Kirk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeremy Malcolm" <Jeremy&#167;Malcolm.id.au>
To: ".au DNS Discussion List" <dns&#167;dotau.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [DNS] Restricting demand membership of auDA


Kim Davies wrote:
> auDA has given notice of an Extraordinary Meeting on August 13 to
> consider constitutional amendments to forbid a "supply related person"
> from being elected a director of demand class; and preventing multiple
> divisions within the same corporate group from having multiple
> memberships.
>
> Presumably this is a measure to try and guard against the possibility
> of unfairly unbalancing auDA's board by stacking it full of supply-side
> representatives, however is the mechanism the right one? It seems to
> disenfranchise legitimate community members who may be indirectly
> connected with the domain name retailing business from participating as
> users.

I agree with you.  This strikes me as short-sighted.  The idea of having
different stakeholder groups represented on the board is so that the
perspectives of all those materially affected are brought before the
board for its consideration.  However all of us inhabit different roles
for different purposes, and board members are no different.  Marcus
Franda in a book called "Governing the Internet" writes:

"the idea of a board member's representation is not the public
representational function of someone duly authorized by an election or
other legitimizing process to speak for a large constituency. Rather, it
is the idea that someone will know and understand a specific ...
interest and be able to speak for that interest in forums where such
interests are being challenged."

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
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