CIRA 2025 Board Elections (8.Viewing)

I have voted for my choices

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Caleb said:

Curious what prompted this question - seeing specific issues in the .ca aftermarket?

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This questions was prompted by the fact that this forum is mostly frequented by Domain Investors. Also, by the fact that it frequently comes up as an election issue. I think this time a question about it was posed in the Q&A meeting, but ended up not being asked.

I'm not running this year as I am two years into my three year term, but I am on the CIRA board and have been lurking here for a couple of years. There's a couple ideas in this thread that I'll try and comment on.

Graeme said:

I'm not running this year as I am two years into my three year term, but I am on the CIRA board and have been lurking here for a couple of years. There's a couple ideas in this thread that I'll try and comment on.

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Absolutely! Glad to have you here!

MapleDots said:

I have voted for my choices

Make your vote count today: Sign in at CIRA

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I did too

Eby said:

I did too

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Me three.

Graeme said:

I'm not running this year as I am two years into my three year term, but I am on the CIRA board and have been lurking here for a couple of years. There's a couple ideas in this thread that I'll try and comment on.

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Good to know, happy to see you check in

jamesaepp said:

I'm honestly very torn for the member slate. My opinion (as a biased IT professional) is that a lot of the candidates don't seem to have actual real technical backgrounds. They may be able to answer skill-testing questions on the spot but I don't think they'd be able to actually install a bind-compatible zonefile if they had to.

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First up on my list of things in this thread I wanted to comment on is this comment from James. First, James I appreciated your clarity and precision on the AGM call. I thought you did that well. I'm going to pick on this comment a bit, because I've heard similar sentiments before and it's worth digging into, but please don't take this personally, James.

I think the idea that a board member would need the technical capabilities to install a bind-compatible zonefile misunderstands the role of a board in the governance of an organization. There's just no real scenario where this level of technical competency is going to be relevant to the work of a board. The board needs the technical expertise to understand the importance of uptimes and system stability - enough to ensure that these things are monitored, reported on, and meeting or exceeding industry standards. But if those aren't being met, it's not the boards role to assess how updates are done. It's not even really the boards role to assess the capabilities of the CTO in managing those processes. It's the boards role to ensure that the CEO understands the importance of these issues, and is appropriately managing them, and if they're not, to find a CEO who can.

Which is not to say having deep technical experience is bad, it's just unlikely to be useful in the course of regular board governance. If some issue arises that a board doesn't feel it has the expertise to address, then a board would likely search for that expertise externally.

All of which is to say, I don't think looking for that super deep technical expertise is a particularly useful lens for assessing board candidates.

Graeme said:

All of which is to say, I don't think looking for that super deep technical expertise is a particularly useful lens for assessing board candidates.

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I agree with that, the board is there to make decisions that best reflect the well being of the company, that being CIRA itself.

However, the company CIRA has to make decisions based on the shareholders which in this case are the Canadian public who is technically reflected by those who own the domain names themselves.

So any decision CIRA makes should always represent the best interests of the majority of domain registrants. Will a feature/project be in the best interest of the shareholders. Again, without renewals and registrants CIRA cannot function so the shareholders are technically the registrants.

A large portion of the domain registrations are owned by Domain Name Investors who are largely reflected on this forum, we spend tens of thousands per year in renewals yet feel like we are not well enough represented on the CIRA board.

So I think I can speak for a lot of members here when I say we would like to see 1 or 2 board members that understand the domain name aftermarket and are willing to represent our views and opinions when the time comes.

I will probably run next time around because I am in the process of winding down some of my other ventures so count on me representing the members here when the time comes. In the meantime all candidates should look at the fact that a lot of the members here are CIRA members as well and when the time comes to make a voting drive we will become a much larger force moving forward.

The proactive candidates looking to stay involved at CIRA would be encouraged to engage here to keep their finger on the pulse thus almost guaranteeing the vote of the member base. We are looking for like minded candidates and are willing to support those who show an interest in our concerns.

Graeme said:

There's just no real scenario where this level of technical competency is going to be relevant to the work of a board.

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What happens when the board isn't technically fluent enough to recognize when the CEO or the broader executive is feeding them bad or incorrect information and making decisions upon that bad information?

Graeme said:

I think the idea that a board member would need the technical capabilities to install a bind-compatible zonefile misunderstands the role of a board in the governance of an organization. There's just no real scenario where this level of technical competency is going to be relevant to the work of a board. The board needs the technical expertise to understand the importance of uptimes and system stability - enough to ensure that these things are monitored, reported on, and meeting or exceeding industry standards. But if those aren't being met, it's not the boards role to assess how updates are done. It's not even really the boards role to assess the capabilities of the CTO in managing those processes. It's the boards role to ensure that the CEO understands the importance of these issues, and is appropriately managing them, and if they're not, to find a CEO who can.

Which is not to say having deep technical experience is bad, it's just unlikely to be useful in the course of regular board governance. If some issue arises that a board doesn't feel it has the expertise to address, then a board would likely search for that expertise externally.

All of which is to say, I don't think looking for that super deep technical expertise is a particularly useful lens for assessing board candidates.

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@Graeme
Thank you for articulating this so clearly. You're absolutely right about the board's role, and this is a critical distinction that often gets lost in CIRA elections.
@jamesaepp I deeply respect your technical expertise and your desire for technically competent governance. As someone who's worked with DNS at the policy level for over a decade, I understand the instinct to want board members who "get it" technically. But Graeme has hit on something fundamental here.
In my experience across Internet Society Board of Trustees, ICANN Constituency leadership, the most dysfunctional moments occur when board members try to play engineer instead of governor. I've seen technically brilliant board members derail strategic discussions by diving into implementation details that should be handled by management.
The board's technical responsibility is to ask the right questions, not configure the servers:

• "How do we compare to other ccTLD uptimes?"
• "What are the risks to .ca stability?" not "How do we configure DNSSEC?"

That said, James raises an important underlying concern: boards need enough technical literacy to know when they're being snowed. You can't govern what you don't understand. But that requires strategic technical knowledge, not hands-on implementation skills.
The ideal CIRA board combines:

• Members who understand internet infrastructure strategically (like several of us running)
• Members who understand governance and finance deeply
• Members who represent diverse Canadian communities
• Members who can challenge groupthink

Graeme's point about external expertise is crucial. Good boards know when to bring in specialists. I've seen boards hire external DNS security experts for specific assessments rather than pretending to have that expertise internally.
Best regards,
@Caleb

I'm sorry if this comes off as gish galloping but just a few more thoughts/attempt to develop this discussion (maybe it's time for a new thread though).

• I get it, board members don't need to be equals to executive. That'd somewhat defeat the purpose of governance/oversight.
• I think the core question we could agree on is "what is the minimum standard of technical and cultural literacy?". We're having a good discussion here because we're all English fluent. Obviously there's a core competency required.
• I'm totally good with there being a balance. The board - to a point - should trust their CEO and the moment they don't trust the CEO, concrete steps need to be taken. No beating around the bush. This is binary - you trust your CEO, or you don't.
• Terrible analogy, but let's think about a municipal government making a decision about how/whether to invest in their water treatment facility. They don't need to be experts in water/wastewater handling. But they do need to know some of the items below so that they know when their manager of utilities is taking them for a ride or is exposing the board to a risk of wasting money on non-productive or even harmful pursuits.
  • Water is dihydrogen monoxide.
  • Disease is transmitted via water if not treated.
  • We don't install lead pipes anymore.
  • Wastewater and potable water must not meet.
  • Black water vs grey water.
  • Water pressure is key to a system or else no one gets anything
  • Infrastructure must be regularly replaced to avoid catastrophic failures (exhibit A: Calgary)
  • Boiling water is a very expensive way to treat water. That's why we use other methods like UV and chemical treatment.

Note how all those examples in the water utility example aren't SUPER technically detailed. We're not asking for a lot here.

There's probably no perfect analogy for DNS. I'm not asking for the world here, I'm asking for some fact based knowledge so that if the executive says "we're going to turn off the IPv4 CIRA nameservers because IPv6 is newer than IPv4" the board knows that's a stupid ass decision and the executive needs to be put on immediate leave.

As an aside, I'll be at the Canadians Connected event this afternoon here in Toronto. Please come find me and say hello. Short middle aged white dude with curly hair. Don't be shy.

Riveting topic

@jamesaepp I think the governance you're talking about is covered by:

a) Financial expertise - where people with expertise are able to assess the assumptions made within proposals
b) Subject matter expertise - where people like myself and Rob V. are capable of assessing DNS industry related activities
c) Governance expertise - where people with governance expertise are good at asking management how they are assessing and managing risk, asking for comparisons to similar organizations, understanding where blind spots commonly are
d) Technical expertise - people with experience managing technology platforms like @mg and their corresponding risks

But I think you'd maybe be surprised at how effective just asking things like 'what were the alternatives to this approach, what was your framework for assessing them, and why did you choose this particular path' can be on just about every topic. It's usually revealed pretty quickly whether someone knows what they're talking about or not.

Graeme said:

what were the alternatives to this approach, what was your framework for assessing them, and why did you choose this particular path

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That kind of undermines the point of any expertise though. I don't know if it was the Greeks or the Romans (or fable), but one of the legends of the civilizations of antiquity was that the governor/ruler was picked at random. Why expose power to people with special interests or agendas or corruption?

May as well pick your rulers by lottery.

Graeme said:

It's usually revealed pretty quickly whether someone knows what they're talking about or not.

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I've got a 300 pound monkey caked in fake tan that would challenge the subtext there. While the main point is true, it doesn't stop idiocy.

I think we're in diminishing returns for this sub-topic of this thread, but:

jamesaepp said:

That kind of undermines the point of any expertise though. I don't know if it was the Greeks or the Romans (or fable), but one of the legends of the civilizations of antiquity was that the governor/ruler was picked at random. Why expose power to people with special interests or agendas or corruption?

May as well pick your rulers by lottery.

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I don't think it undermines the point of expertise, but I think it does highlight that most of good governance is common sense. Expertise is deeply valued when it's necessary, and a diversity of expertise is required for good governance, but the day to day governance of a healthy, well functioning organization doesn't really involve the wielding of power in any sort of dramatic sense.

Congratulations to the winners, thank you to all the candidates.

Election : Election results – CIRA



Is it just me or does the amount of voters and votes seem higher this year?

FM said:

Congratulations to the winners, thank you to all the candidates.

Election : Election results – CIRA

Is it just me or does the amount of voters and votes seem higher this year?

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Congratulations to all the candidates who were elected this year! I am proud to have put my name forward, to have had enough endorsements to run and to have shared my ideas on how we can strengthen and protect Canada's internet. September was a challenging month for me as I was unwell, and I was not able to network and connect as much as I had hoped. That is something I will work on next time, because I believe my perspective is an important one to add to the conversation.

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Fellow CIRA Members,

The election results are in, and while I wasn't successful in securing a board position, I want to express my deep gratitude to each of you who supported my candidacy.
To the 92 members who voted for me: Your confidence in my vision for CIRA means more than you know. In a field of accomplished candidates, you chose to support someone who brings fresh perspectives and membership engagement to Canadian digital sovereignty. Your votes validate that these issues matter to our community.
Congratulations to Matthew Gamble on his decisive victory and to all elected directors. The membership has spoken, and I respect the democratic process that makes CIRA unique among registries. I hope the new board will champion the transparency, engagement, and accessibility that so many of us discussed during this campaign.

What I learned: This campaign reinforced my belief that CIRA members are deeply engaged and thoughtful about our digital future. The conversations we had - about domain investing, governance transparency, the role of technical expertise, and reducing barriers to participation - these discussions matter regardless of election outcomes.

Moving forward: This isn't goodbye. My commitment to Canadian internet governance continues through my other volunteer work

I'll keep advocating for the principles we discussed: democratizing access to internet governance, ensuring diverse voices are heard, and maintaining Canada's digital sovereignty.

To those who engaged critically - including those who challenged my approach or questioned my methods - thank you. Your feedback made me a better candidate and will make me a better advocate.
Special thanks to:

• The DN.ca forum community for the robust discussions
• Those who asked tough questions that pushed me to articulate clearer positions

While 92 votes didn't secure a seat, they represent 92 members who believe CIRA can be more transparent, more inclusive, and more responsive to its membership. That's a foundation to build on.
I encourage everyone to stay engaged, hold our elected directors accountable, and continue pushing for the CIRA we all want to see - one that truly serves all Canadians in our digital future.

The work continues.
With gratitude and respect,

Caleb Ogundele
Winnipeg, Manitoba
calebogundele.ca

P.S. - To Matthew, Marita, Sharon, Keith, and Heather: though we competed for the same seats, I wish you success and stand ready to support initiatives that strengthen CIRA's service to Canadians. The door remains open for collaboration.

FM said:

Congratulations to the winners, thank you to all the candidates.

Election : Election results – CIRA

Is it just me or does the amount of voters and votes seem higher this year?

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