On 01/12/2010 17:36, Alan Greenberg wrote :
At 01/12/2010 11:05 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
I've always considered CoI to mean financial interest or, if defined more broadly, attachment to an organization that has a financial or regulatory relationship with ICANN. Those are the only interpretations used by any board I've ever been on.
The idea that board members can only vote on topics they don't care about is truly strange. I will repeat, this is something I was cautioned about and I passed it on when Evan had said that availability was the only issue. It may be a completely spurious tale, so let's not get too worked up about it until Sebastien finds out if it is indeed an issue or not.
Actually, I have heard the same thing too! Or rather, I have argued with a Board member about this. The gist of the problem stems from a Board member's limited time to indulge in the nitty-gritty, thus preventing it from forming its opinions as a helicopter view. In that Board member's view, Board members should act like "members of a Board", that is, not mingle half as much with the communities, to "waste less time". I disagreed vehemently. IMHO this is a remnant of 20th century top-down hierarchical management and has no place in the bottom-up integrative management which ICANN has been *designed* to thrive on. And there, your honour, lies the root of the fracture in ICANN. :-) Warmest regards, Olivier -- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html