I am re-standing for election for Nominet’s
board of directors (called its Council of
Management) at the Nominet Annual
General Meeting, to be held in Newcastle, on Thursday, 6th July 2005. All
directors serve a two year term, and then “retire by rotation” – i.e. re-stand
if they wish to do so.
I believe I have been, and will continue to be, an extremely effective director
of Nominet. Hence I am re-standing for election, and have written this page to
flesh out the information in my election statement which is necessarily brief
due to the 300 word limit.
A founder director, I have served on Nominet's board since
its creation. I served as Interim Chairman following Willie Black's departure, currently
chair the Remuneration
Committee, and sit on the Audit
Committee and the Policy Advisory
Board. I have served on several PAB subcommittees and working groups.
I am an independent consultant and an active investor. I founded an early UK
ISP, Xara Networks, which I left following its sixth serial acquisition. I have
wide experience of directorship of UK not-for-profit Internet bodies: not only
Nominet, but also through my prior directorship of LINX. I co-founded, and until three years ago
was a non-executive director of Redbus
Interhouse PLC, a quoted Internet colocation company, and was also a
founder director of XchangePoint; so
I also have considerable experience of the 'for-profit' world. Using skills
learnt from these roles, I believe I help Nominet apply commercial disciplines
in the context of a member organization.
Over the past two years, Nominet has matured as a company. The past year, as
you can see from my Chairman's statement, was in my view particularly
successful, financially, operationally, and in terms of performance of our duty
to stakeholders. However, there are no grounds for complacency. Whilst Nominet
has resolved many of the early operational problems that rapid growth thrust
upon it, we must now concentrate on further enhancements to customer service,
efficiency improvements, helping to raise industry standards, and reviewing our
strategy and governance.
Nominet's board
has undergone several changes in the last two years, culminating with Bob
Gilbert's appointment as Chairman, which I hope will bring fresh strategic
perspective. I believe that by re-electing me, the members will retain not only
my experience, skills, and record of good communication with the membership,
but also an element of continuity.
I’ve set out below a non-exhaustive list of what I see as key areas of
Nominet’s development in which I have been involved in the past:
I currently contribute, I believe, about 35 working days a year to
Nominet, including, in the past year, 12 board meetings, two 2 day strategy
meetings, 6 half day PAB meetings, as well as a host of PAB subcommittee
meetings, board committee meetings, reading all the relevant papers thereto,
writing papers, meeting various members around the country, taking up issues
brought to me by members, and (for my sins) reading and replying to nom-steer.
In the past, members have asked whether candidates have conflicts of interest
through involvement with other companies in the domain name business. I do not
believe I am currently involved with any companies which give me a such a
conflict of interest with respect to my position on the Nominet Board. I am a
director of Confonia Ltd, and provides
conference call and VoIP services (the company was previously called of Organic Names Ltd, which once
unsuccessfully bid to run the .org registry, but now has nothing to do
with domain names). I am a member of Nominet in my own capacity and have a tag,
but have registered under ten names in total, for family and friends only. I am
a director, and indirectly, a part owner of Mailbox
Internet Ltd, which is a member of Nominet, though does relatively little
domain name business; in the financial year ending September 2004, it purchased
£6,870 of services from Nominet, as per the annual report. I am a director of
Silverscale Associates Ltd, through which I provide consultancy advice, which
has had clients in the naming business, but these have not represented a
significant amount of turnover. I am a managing partner of Enovi LLP which invests
in, manages, and develops technology companies. Historically, I have been
involved with some members of Nominet processing significant amounts of
registrations, primarily current and former subsidiaries of GX Networks PLC, though my involvement with all
of these has now ceased. I am not currently a director of, nor hold any
substantial shareholdings in, any significant registry or registrar business -
apart that is, of course, from my current directorship of Nominet.
The financial year ended 30 September 2004 proved to be one of the most
successful in Nominet's nine year history.
This was primarily due to two factors: a much higher than expected growth in
registrations across the year, coupled to a high rate of domain name renewals
of around 60%. The increase in renewals is particularly encouraging as it
implies that registrants are now making longer-term investments in their domain
names as opposed to the speculative registrations we saw in 2000. Our strong
management team and professional staff have also worked to achieve considerable
efficiencies and cash flow improvements.
Together these factors have substantially strengthened the balance sheet. This
has allowed us to invest in all areas of the company, with particular emphasis
on the continued development of our customer facing services and the technical
infrastructure that underpins so much of our business.
Nominet is a leading international example of the effectiveness of a private
sector, self-governance approach. However there is considerable discussion at
the United Nations regarding the continued suitability of this approach and the
overall future direction of Internet governance. This will culminate at the
World Summit on the Information Society, a United Nations sponsored conference
to be held in Tunis in November 2005. We are actively participating in this
debate and promoting the benefits of Nominet's model wherever possible.
In every area, Nominet is a stronger and more dynamic company; the Board
therefore views Nominet's future development with great confidence and
enthusiasm.
The Board of Directors thanks Dr Willie Black who stood down as Executive
Chairman in December 2004 for his stewardship over the last eight years and
wishes him well for the future. We welcome Bob Gilbert who takes over the role
of Chairman from May 2005.
You can find information
about the Nominet 2005 CoM elections here (link not yet
working).
You can find information about the Nominet 2003 AGM here (link not yet
working).
You can find a reasonably recent copy of my resumé here.
You can find lots of documents I've written for, to, or about Nominet here.
If you want to know more about my position and aspirations for Nominet
then please email me at alex@nominet.org.uk
or call me on +44 (20) 8812 3300.
I believe that I bring a valuable skill set to Nominet, but ultimately the
success of a Board is the combination of different individuals. The board has
been through several recent changes, culminating with the departure of Willie
Black, and Bob Gilbert’s appointment as Chairman, which I hope will bring fresh
strategic perspective. I believe that the present board has a good range of
skill sets, but more importantly works very effectively as a team. I hope that
by re-electing me, members will not only benefit from my skill-set and
experience, but also gain the advantages of an element of continuity. I am
pleased to have been a significant part of Nominet’s development thus far and I
am more than willing to continue this work.
I hope the above is informative, and that you will support me for re-election
at the AGM.
Alex Bligh - 12 June 2005