Hi all, * Firstly thanks to Rick and Margie for your kind words and demonstration of trust. I accept the nomination, after considereable thought and analysis (in a completely sober condition :) ) ========== Objectives ========== * I have been in the domain name industry for donkeys years, and I believe I have always played a proactive and unbiased role with regard to every issue important to the community. I have personally contributed, both in terms of opinion and effort, quite vociferously as occasion may demand. I believe I have always had the best interests of the entire community in mind in all pursuits. Infact the only possible drawback maybe that while doing so I have stayed far from politics and diplomacy :) * I recently spent a significant amount of personal effort and time towards certain fundamental modifications to the ICANN Budget. To address Ross' remark, the efforts represented recognition of interests of all Registrars alike. The alternative budget document that I personally drafted and got a significantly large number of Registrars to agree upon, contained about 11 modifications requested of ICANN. Over 6 of these modifications were requested keeping in mind the interests of the larger Registrars (such as proposing 4 different fee caps and a relief to the per transaction fee. 3 of these fee caps were actually adopted by ICANN). * In the outreach effort for the budget modifications within just 1 week I was able to work with other concerned Registrars (of all sizes) to rally support from over 76 Registrars, many from different countries with language issues. There has not been a better realisation with regards to the diversity that our Registrar group represents. We have Registrars from different countries, Registrars with different business models, Registrars making different amounts of money, and Registrars of different sizes. While all Registrars did agree that the budget was flawed, getting a diverse group of Registrars to achieve consensus on an alternative proposal would not have been possible had the interests of everyone alike not been the underlying theme. * I believe that I would be able to dedicate both the time and effort that this responsibility demands. Infact it may actually require lesser time than it takes me to work on some of these issues from the outside :). As Bruce mentions time is an important aspect with regards to considering someone for this position. The position brings in responsibility and requires dedication of time. I have pursued several exercises in the past to sufficiently demonstrate to myself (more than others) that I do have the time to handle this responsibility. I have also attended every meeting (except 1 or 2) and have always been outspoken and participative in every issue. * I have been involved with the business side as well as the technical architecting of our Registrar operations and as many of you may already know, am as comfortable discussing policy and legal matters, as I am discussing EPP/protocols and C/Java code ============================== Conflict of Interest statement ============================== I have been personally involved in the Web-Services and Domain Names industry since over 6 years now. I am the Chairman and CEO of Directi (http://www.directi.com), an ICANN Accredited Registrar and Web Services Provider I am also the Chairman and CEO of LogicBoxes (http://www.logicboxes.com) a separate entity which specialises in providing Automation solutions and Support Solutions for ICANN Accredited Registrars. LogicBoxes currently powers a number of Registrars, and consults several other Registrars on Accreditation, Operations and Support. LogicBoxes also provides outsourced Support Solutions to Registrars. Directi also runs WebHosting.Info (http://www.webhosting.info) an online statistics portal about the domain name and web hosting industry. Additionally Directi also runs 2 other Registrars by the name of Transecute Neither I nor any of my companies have any ownership in any registry. I participate in the Internet Management Group in India, which is the steering and policy formation committee for the .IN Registry. I consult the Ministry of Information Technology in India on various guidelines, issues and practices with regards to their role in managing the .IN Registry on several occassions. I do run several other companies/initiatives involved in Payment Gateway Solutions, Hosting Automation Solutions and other associated Web Infrastructure services. Best Regards Bhavin Turakhia Founder, CEO and Chairman DirectI -------------------------------------- http://www.directi.com Direct Line: +91 (22) 5679 7600 Direct Fax: +91 (22) 5679 7510 Board Line (USA): +1 (415) 240 4172 Board Line (India): +91 (22) 5679 7500 --------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: Rick Wesson [mailto:wessorh@ar.com] Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 7:37 PM To: Bruce Tonkin Cc: Registrars Constituency; jbuchanan@register.com; bhavin.t@directi.com Subject: RE: [registrars] Nominations for Chair.
Bruce,
Though I have known and respect Jordyn, being the Register.com RC rep does not immediately qualify one as RC Chair material.
The successful demonstration of leadership does, and for a recent demonstration in budget negotiations I'd like to nominate Bhavin Turakhia, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Directi
IMHO, someone whom understands our community and can develop consensus is the kind of leader we need.
-rick
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Bruce Tonkin wrote:
Hello Bob,
I would like to start with thanking Elana for her hard work
and valued
contribution in her role as chair. I also wish her well in her new job.
I believe that Jordyn Buchanan from Register.com will take over as Register.com's representative in the registrars constituency. Jordyn has served on the GNSO Council, and is currently co-chair of the combined WHOIS task force 1 and 2. He is well regarded within the GNSO.
If Jordyn is willing and has the time available, I am happy to nominate Jordyn Buchanan for chair.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin
-----Original Message----- From: owner-registrars@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-registrars@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Robert F. Connelly Sent: Thursday, 26 August 2004 7:24 AM To: Registrars Constituency Subject: [registrars] Nominations for Chair.
Dear Registrars:
I bring sad news, Elana has accepted a position which will take her away from us.
I can only describe her tenure as Stupendous. I have enjoyed working for her. She has been objective and fair, has run well organized meetings.
Sadly, I am calling for nominations for Chair of the RC.
Regards, BobC, Secretary.
I have worked with both Jordyn Buchanan and Bhavin Turakhia and they they are both great canidates for this position. So both would have my vote at this point. But as I can't vote for both, can the canidates tell me 2 things about what they would change in the constituency, and why? Thanks, Jay Westerdal Name Intelligence, Inc. http://www.nameintelligence.com
Hi jay, The question you pose is very open-ended, and here are my thoughts on that - 1. I never took up the nomination because I had 1 or 2 or 3 specific objectives in mind which I wish to achieve. It was not a case of having 2 specific changes I want to bring about, but the ability to be able to officially work towards and bring about several positive changes that I have wanted to in the past and will continue to want to in the future 2. In order to prove my point and partly answer your question but not exactly in the way you probably intended it to be - let me spend exactly 10 minutes (nothing more nothing less) in penning down random issues that I know I have wanted to work on in the past but did not have a step up forum to do so - (a) The biggest and most important issue that concerns me is that the Registrar constituency has absolutely NO outreach. I know so many Registrars who are not even aware upon accreditation that there exists such a constituency where they may step up, and participate. It is so ironical that within 24 hours of someone getting accredited they get an email from tens of batch pool operators, but there is no official invitation mail sent out to a fresh registrar with regards to joining the registrars constituency mailing list with simple basic instructions on how they may paricipate on the mailing list and what all they may vote on and how this may affect their business. This resuilts in lack of participation on the constituency and therefore we cannot achieve better averages. Infact it is more embarassing than admirable for me, that the 1 week out reach effort we conducted resulted in more participants in the ICANN BUDGET process than the constituency has seen in the last several years. There are many Registrars in other countries who do not even know how they may go about participating actively in constituency matters, and therefore we truly cannot represent the diversity of Registrars that exist out there. And all this would take is one simple email inviting a new Registrar on board upon accreditation (b) I have always wanted a better website. I am not a stickler for any frequent updates etc. I am ok if our constituency website does not really have every little event that we discuss. However there are some basic things I would want to see - - a basic database which all of us have access to showing the contact point for each registrar. I am tired of seeing and sending emails to the list asking "who is the latest contact at network solutions?". If we had a simple database with a simple authentication system which allows everyone to maintain their latest contact information with an auto-reminder, this would simplify processes - a basic database containing the whois server of all registrars and the ip address from which they make queries for whois requests which we could use as has been discussed many times in the past - better voting lists and ballot systems All of the above are easy to work on. I have volunteered twice in the past to get them done here in india at a dirt cheap cost with some companies we have worked with. I am willing to take that up whether or not I actually get elected. (c) During the entire ICANN Budget process another idea that I was toying with and would love to implement is actually taking off some burden from ICANN. ICANN has conveniently increased the budget by stating that they are spending a lot of money on registrar support and compliance issues. As a constituency of Registrars I know for a fact that we can substitute costs of millions with far lower costs by supporting some of these activities from within the constituency. I am infact of belief that it is NOT ICANN's repsonsibility to sit and respond to these complaints. It is so stupid for DAN to have to send me an email sometimes for Whois inaccuracy complaints, when I would much rather have Dan do far better things :). Moreover the level of knowledge that we as Registrars have of our operations allow us to perform a far better task of automating compliance audits than ICANN would. It is dead simple for instance to add a script to the above website which will check the whois server of each registrar and automatically alert if some whois is down. We infact already have such a script that we use for our transfer processing and I would gladly share it free. There has been much random talk about how we as a constituency can manage our own compliance, however I have not seen any implementation. Any such implementation will only save ICANN and therefore in turn us, a lot of money Infact Eric-Brunner Williams even spoke of possibilities where we as Registrars or as a constituency would be willing to support ICANN's BCP, by donating servers and other necessary resources. For most of us putting up servers and bandwidth and some basic dev resources is pretty much a scratch to our existing costs. For ICANN to do so the figures go in 5-6 digits. (d) I have also been toying with the concept of a better budget structure for the Registrar constituency. As of now as is clear on the list the current budget structure is haphazard and the constituency has no formal accounting processes. Infact there are some registrars who as startups from other countries may also find paying for constituency membership a lil expensive in the beginning. We could even have creative structures which base the constituency membership fee as a 2 or 3 tier stagger model - with a lower entry price and a higher price as you grow - just a thought (e) there are countless registry issues I have wanted to DESPERATELY YELL ABOUT in the past. But plain yelling in the constituency simply falls on deaf ears. For instance few years ago, for over 4 months I had created a riot about how the auto-renew period sucks because the registry ends up keeping 6 bucks for 30-40 days for 40% domains which we do not even intend to renew. For new registrars the moment they hit their 2nd year of operations this creates a cash flow situation too. Chuck from verisign infact eventually even made a presentation that they were contemplating to change this and charge the auto-renew fee at the end of the 45 day period. I see now that the .biz registry has proposed this which I view as positive. However we still have thousands of dollars stuck with verisign simply due to their auto-renew period policy which really helps noone. As a Registrar if I did not have to get stuck with that working capital issue I would be able to use it for marketing or advertising benefiting both the Registry and us. Then there are so many other registry issues which I have kept stifled - for instance each registry has some weirdly different insurance requirement. Most of them for no reason at all - - PIR wants a million bucks in insurance with their name on it - Verisign wants 100,000 bucks with their name on it - ICANN wants 500,000 bucks with noones name on it - Neustar wants 1 million bucks with noones name on it Each with different confusing requirements which do not make much sense. I mean when .ORG was a part of verisign I did not need verisigns name on a 1 million dolalr policy. I always thought the split to PIR should not affect anything except the connection protocol, but apparently that's not the case, and I had a bitch of a time getting PIR added subsequently here in india, cuz insurance is not a commodity product in india. I could probably spend the next hour just penning out gripes with registries :) - not because I don't like them, but because there are so many of them - and that is only increasing. Think abt maintaining non-uniform business and technology requirements across so many gtld registries at one time. (f) It goes without saying that I want to do stuff about the ICANN budget. I do not need to stress on that at all :) Having penned all of the above in a hurry I must add that do not get me wrong or misinterpret any of the above. I did not pen the above list to answer Jay's questiobn about 2 or more changes I will do if I am elected. Instead, this is for me too an exercise of introspection. I took 3 days to decide as to whether I should apply for this post. In the end the decision was made based on the fact that I have felt, as would have many of you, frustration, at times for not being able to bring about certain changes which directly affect my registrar business. I realise that all of us share similar issues at all times. Therefore my contention was, instead of stifling these issues and accepting them as they are, if I am getting an opportunity to be able to work with members from within and outside the constituency to voice these concerns and work on them officially, I should take up that opportunity I am not saying that the above 6 issues are the issues that are on the top of my mind. What I am saying is that all of us have issues. I want this opportunity to be able to do something about them. I am involved hands on from the grass roots level in running my registrar operations. If the XML spec of EPP changes I know about that. If ICANN brings up a new consensus policy I know about that. I know every change that occurs and every change that should occur because that is what I am doing 24 by 7 - running a Registrar from bottoms up. There is no dearth of issues which we should look at or changes we should bring about Jay and so asking for 2 changes that I would bring about if I was elected is not the right question - because it is very easy to answer Instead the question that is important is - am I capable of bringing about the changes. I would think so given the work I have done in the past. I respect Jordyn tremendously too. I am quite certain both of us can do a terrific job. I do not think either of us will have trouble listing out things we want to change. I do however acknowledge that either of us will have to work diligently in order to actually bring about those changes. I am willing to do that to the best of my ability. Best Regards Bhavin Turakhia Founder, CEO and Chairman DirectI -------------------------------------- http://www.directi.com Direct Line: +91 (22) 5679 7600 Direct Fax: +91 (22) 5679 7510 Board Line (USA): +1 (415) 240 4172 Board Line (India): +91 (22) 5679 7500 --------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: owner-registrars@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-registrars@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Jay Westerdal Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 12:14 AM To: 'Registrars Constituency' Subject: RE: [registrars] Nominations for Chair.
I have worked with both Jordyn Buchanan and Bhavin Turakhia and they they are both great canidates for this position. So both would have my vote at this point.
But as I can't vote for both, can the canidates tell me 2 things about what they would change in the constituency, and why?
Thanks,
Jay Westerdal Name Intelligence, Inc. http://www.nameintelligence.com
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jay. Like Bhavin, I don't approach the position with one or two or three specific agenda items, but I do think that I can help the constituency be more productive and effective. Bhavin has already identified a number of specific issues that deserve attention in the coming months. I won't attempt a similar dump of ten minutes' worth of thoughts because if nothing else it will prove that Bhavin is apparently a much faster typist than me. Instead of grappling with specific issues, I'd like to suggest some changes to the way that we approach issues that I believe will help us be a more effective constituency regardless of the particular set of issues that we turn our attention to at any given moment. Most importantly, I think that we need to work on resolving inter-registrar conflicts internally so that we can have a clear voice when dealing with ICANN, with other constituencies, and with the world at large. There is often a perception from outside the constituency that the registrars are divided . This allows other groups, who are either effective at rallying around specific causes or basically follow the lead of one or two people, to wield a disproportionate amount of power within ICANN. It is time for the constituency and its representatives to be heard as the voice of the most important and influential group within ICANN. There are obviously topics on which it is hard to gain consensus, and companies with different business models will often have strong opinions that seem difficult to reconcile. However, the penalty for failing to find a solution within our own community is often that we either have something imposed upon us or we are forced to develop a consensus solution in conjunction with many outside parties. If it is difficult to devise a solution that makes everyone happy with all of the registrars at the table, it is certainly no easier to do so when we add seats for everyone within ICANN who wants to chime in. This approach also relates to our interaction with various registries. Too often, registries seem able to slide unfavorable changes into place by finding a few registrars to go along with a change, thereby forcing the rest of us to eventually follow along in the hopes of staying competitive. We should work together to prevent unfavorable changes that effect all of us negatively. One small example of this is the EPP 1.0 implementation group that was discussed in KL and that Eric posted about recently. This sort of dialogue is important, but is hopefully just a start. Ideally speaking, we could create the sort of environment where registries reached out to registrars on a pro-active basis as part of change control before any changes in operation are initiated. In addition to working together, we need to develop responses more quickly. We need to have better clarity and a streamlined process for how constituency statements for task forces and other matters get drafted, discussed and approved. We should always allow ourselves sufficient time to make sure that we can provide statements that reflect the views of the entire constituency, but then we need to make sure that we hold ourselves accountable to make sure that we deliver those statements when they can do the most good. I'm certain that others (both those running for Chair and the many members of the consituency who are not) will have many additional thoughts about how we can continue to improve the constituency. Of course, as several people have pointed out, all of these ideas depend on a Chair with the time and capability to make them happen. I believe I have the track record as a leader and reformer to effectively serve the constituency. In the transition between the DNSO and the GNSO, I argued forcefully for votes to be evenly allocated between the contracted parties and the others in the GNSO. I led an effort to change the Names Council's rules to allow any member of the community to chair a Task Force, instead of the usual suspects from the Council who had controlled most of the previous Task Forces. And I have chaired two Task Forces myself, and in both cases we produced reports that embodied real consensus and real change around difficult issues. The most important lesson that I have taken away from my experiences in ICANN so far, though, is that it is impossible for one person to unilaterally bring about progress in a consensus-driven environment. This means that you need to be part of a group that at least believes in the same principles at the start of the process. So I hope that if people do choose to vote for me that they will do so with a clear understanding of these goals and a commitment to moving forward together. (Sorry, that comes off a little cheesy, but it's true. Regardless of who ends up chairing the constituency, I hope we can work together to tackle many of the worthy issues that have been discussed in recent days, and I appreciate the opportunity to be considered as a Chair as we move ahead.) Jordyn On Aug 31, 2004, at 2:43 PM, Jay Westerdal wrote:
I have worked with both Jordyn Buchanan and Bhavin Turakhia and they they are both great canidates for this position. So both would have my vote at this point.
But as I can't vote for both, can the canidates tell me 2 things about what they would change in the constituency, and why?
Thanks,
Jay Westerdal Name Intelligence, Inc. http://www.nameintelligence.com
participants (3)
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Bhavin Turakhia -
Jay Westerdal -
Jordyn A. Buchanan