On 08/26/2010 09:43 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
If ICANN wants to expand the pool of board members to include people outside those two categories, it either needs to drastically slash the amount of time it asks of board members
The best way to do that would be for ICANN to reconsider its role as regulatory body over economic and social matters and pick up its self-described role as a mere coordinator of matters reasonably relevant to technical stability of DNS name resolution. When I was on the board (2003 time frame) a couple of us chatted about how much it cost to be on the board. The rough number was that we were losing roughly $300,000 per year in terms of lost direct income and lost opportunity income. The ratio of direct/opportunity loss varied significantly by individual. The computed cost was roughly proportional to the degree of engagement - passive members who were mainly "goers" (i.e. did little more than attend meetings) had lower costs. More active members ("doers") had significantly higher costs. It's been my observation that ICANN needs more "doer" directors than "goer" directors. One method of compensating directors would not be to pay them directly but, rather, for ICANN to provide a fund for each director that could be drawn upon to cover certain well defined (and limited) costs - such as clerical support or some coverage of independent legal or accounting advice. --karl--