Hello BC members,

As the firm I represent is now officially a BC member, and as I am its voting representative, I wanted to thank this group for welcoming me and introduce my firm and myself.

STEPHANE VAN GELDER CONSULTING (SVGC) was set up to leverage my experience as a professional journalist, a seasoned member of the domain industry and an entrepreneur.

SVGC is a UK-based company operating in both England and France. It has clients in the UK, France, the US, Asia and the Arab countries. It provides consultancy in a number of areas, including:

I am the company's founder and chairman. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science. I studied at university in England. I am fully bilingual and bicultural in English and French.

My first career was in journalism, where I worked as a print and TV journalist for more than 10 years.

I then cofounded a corporate registrar in France called INDOM, which I built up to become France's market leader and then sold to UK-based Group NBT (now NetNames) in 2010. I stayed with NetNames until December 2012. I left NetNames to set up SVGC.

I have good experience of the world of Internet governance. I served as an elected Board member for the French registry AFNIC from 2004 to 2010. I was nominated by European registry EURid to serve on its Requirements Panel and its Code of Conduct Council.

INDOM has been a member of the Registrar Stakeholder Group since 2007 and I have been a member of that group's Executive Committee since 2008, when I was elected treasurer. In 2009 I was elected GNSO Council rep and nominated to be the CPH's Vice Chair in 2010. I was elected Chair of the GNSO Council in 2011 and again in 2012.

I currently sit on the NomCom as the RrSG's rep there. I have already informed the RrSG Excom that I am now a BC member and that once my current NomCom term ends in Q3 this year, I will no longer seek to represent the RrSG in any position.

I am delighted to be a member of the BC and look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the months to come, either in person or via this list.

I will be attending the INTA meeting in Dallas next week, so if any BC members are around, it would be a pleasure to meet you.

Thanks for reading and sorry for this long first email to the BC list ;)

Best,