hi all, January is almost here (happy New Year!) and that means elections are coming soon. here's my statement of interest in standing for the VP Finance & Operations job, in my traditional FAQ format... Why?? partly because i can -- i've done this kind of thing "for real" back when i worked for a living. i've worked for various of the Big-8, er... Big-6 um... Big-4 no... Big-3 accounting/consulting firms (the part of Andersen that turned into Accenture, and the Coopers and Lybrand part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers -- what a ghastly name). i also put in a stint as the crisis-manager AVP Finance, CIO and Controller at the University of Minnesota where i was informally known as the "VP of Stuff That Is Broken" until we got things turned around. so i have a lot of skills/experience in this area. i'm also interested because i like to do this kind of thing -- i'm comfortable with operational and financial issues and enjoy getting them fixed. What's your history with the BC and ICANN? here's a link to my ICANNwiki page -- i try to keep this up to date with all that kinda stuff http://icannwiki.org/Mike_O'Connor Where do you think the BC is headed and how will you help get us there? the BC is my home-base within ICANN and i find it to be a good place to be. i'm quite taken with the "bottom-up" model as well as the value placed on "transparency" and want to help make those things work well within the constituency. i'm interested in broad lively debate on issues and will continue to work on due-process for bearers of inconvenient truths. and finally, i think we need to get more members and want to help with the "customer service" stuff. Are there any issues or concerns with your participation we should know about? yep. i'm a white-guy from the US -- so i am not a great contributor to "diversity" in any leadership group. if anybody would like to stand for this role who makes the group more diverse, i'll cheerfully withdraw my application and help out from the sidelines. i'm hoping that we can grow our way out of the situation we find ourselves in right now -- small membership and limited leadership bench-strength. nothing would please me more than to find myself out of a job in a year or two. - - - - - - - - - phone 651-647-6109 fax 866-280-2356 web www.haven2.com handle OConnorStP (ID for public places like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.)