development UK Nominet in Big Trouble?

Just got a mail from simon with subject "11th Hour Manoeuvres"

Is ex-CEO going to get Golden Parachute? since he resigned he gets severance package?

Lets hope EGM voting take place and this issue put to rest once for all.

Webinar over, voting will end in 16:15. The guy i think Rob said that they have contingency plan .

Finally, the results are out (as are the four remaining board members). The motion passed. The vote was close.

https://www.nominet.uk/nominet-egm-result/

https://media.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Nominet_EGM_ROV.pdf

The board spoke about membership engagement. They got it.

Regards...jmcc

Much appreciated @jmcc. I just read the Nominet statement. A good start to the week. I doubt statements of intent to members who have been ignored by them for years will cut much ice. Perhaps AGM turnouts will, for some unexplained reason (sic), increase greatly for at least a couple of years and there may even be one or two AGM motions which cannot be ignored or sidestepped.

Mike Goodman said:

Much appreciated @jmcc. I just read the Nominet statement. A good start to the week. I doubt statements of intent to members who have been ignored by them for years will cut much ice. Perhaps AGM turnouts will, for some unexplained reason (sic), increase greatly for at least a couple of years and there may even be one or two AGM motions which cannot be ignored or sidestepped.

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I was wondering if it would not pass beause of the politics of the big registrars versus the small registrars and the members. Most of the people who made the statements of intent lost their place on the board in the last 48 hours. If the mergers and acquisitions of the last few years had not taken place (Godaddy buying up a pile of UK hosters and also Newfold Digital merging EIG/PDR/Web.com), the status quo would have prevailed because the voting power of these registrar operators would have been greater than that of the bulk of the members. The capping of the votes of the large players also helped. It was close. The way that Wood's posture visibly crumbled at the end seemed to indicate that things were not going well for the board. The turnout seems to have been the highest in Nominet history.

Regards...jmcc

So do we know, or when will we know, who the board is or will be from now going forward to the next AGM? Will the membership get a say in who is on the board at the next AGM (depending when it is I'm hoping to be a member by then)?

Mike Goodman said:

So do we know, or when will we know, who the board is or will be from now going forward to the next AGM? Will the membership get a say in who is on the board at the next AGM (depending when it is I'm hoping to be a member by then)?

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Not sure about the procedures but I think that all those removed were not elected board members. The e-mail from the acting chairman (Rob Binns) did cover some of it but was not specific as to elections and dates.Eleanor Bradley and Ben Hill still retain their jobs as MD and CFO but are not members of the board.

Regards...jmcc

I got the gist re. MD and CFO among those kicked off the board but sacking people doing an actual job of work is a different matter (don't ask my opinion on board members in general, I used to advise boards and met far too many - most are what I would label makeweights at best). If they are such high flyers they may well leave of their own accord before very long.

But I am concerned about the future make up of the board itself. I'd very much like to see the two guys who were proposed as interim in post for two years, to see a constructive format introduced. Where the hell is the integrity if the so-called "leadership" is allowed to play the kind of games this shower did? OK, they lost in the end but they had far too much gaming leeway to play with.

so the biggest soap opera come to an End. End? Lets wait and see.

I have seen board room coups in movies and in news but seeing and experience one first hand gives me feeling that how tricky people act to save themselves and how they use their knowledge and effort to win and not bothering whether is it fair or not. could have been great if they put such effort towards the nominet and its members benefits.

Mike Goodman said:

But I am concerned about the future make up of the board itself. I'd very much like to see the two guys who were proposed as interim in post for two years, to see a constructive format introduced. Where the hell is the integrity if the so-called "leadership" is allowed to play the kind of games this shower did? OK, they lost in the end but they had far too much gaming leeway to play with.

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The big players generally have lobbying down to a fine art so what often happens with registries is that they see more of the big players than they do of of the smaller registrars. After a while, they begin to identify more with the big players and a kind of regulatory capture happens due to smaller registrars not having quite as much time to spend on the various issues and attending meetings (Zoom or otherwise).

The two guys who were proposed have a lot of expertise. One did a major review of Nominet and the other had run RIPE (the European IP address registry). The choice of Russell Haworth as CEO was a bit odd in that he was an M&A specialist. Nominet is first and foremost a registry but the board, from reading about the campaign and the watching the EGM, seemed to jump between comparing it to "comparable" technology companies and considering it as a registry. It was like they wanted to play at being entrepreneurs but without the risks that entrepreneurs take.

The hard work, for Nominet, starts now. It has to rebuild a lot of the trust that it lost in the campaign and in the way that the board turned off the membership forum. The rot should never have been allowed to get this far. Ironically, Nominet is one of the better run registries. It will probably recover the trust of the membership quickly now that the bloodletting is done.Wellington's quote about Waterloo is quite apt: "The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life". Had those mergers and acquisitons of registrars not taken place, the Nominet board members would not have lost.

Regards...jmcc

premkumar said:

so the biggest soap opera come to an End. End? Lets wait and see.

I have seen board room coups in movies and in news but seeing and experience one first hand gives me feeling that how tricky people act to save themselves and how they use their knowledge and effort to win and not bothering whether is it fair or not. could have been great if they put such effort towards the nominet and its members benefits.

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The hard work generally starts afterwards. The vote numbers were close but from the way Mark Wood visibly started to slump at the end of the EGM, I think that the board knew they had lost as the EGM drew to a close.

When this kind of thing happens as the result of action by the membership and registrars rather than from external forces, it makes the TLD and the registry stronger because it amplifies the sense of community and shared ownership of the TLD. While it may be bad for those who lost their positions on the board and personally for Haworth, it can be a good thing for the TLD and the registry in the long run.

The voting rights (number of votes rather than how individual members voted) have been released by Nominet:
https://media.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Nominet-UK-Voting-Rights-2021.pdf

Regards...jmcc

jmcc said:

The big players generally have lobbying down to a fine art so what often happens with registries is that they see more of the big players than they do of of the smaller registrars. After a while, they begin to identify more with the big players and a kind of regulatory capture happens due to smaller registrars not having quite as much time to spend on the various issues and attending meetings (Zoom or otherwise).

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That's it in a nutshell. Nominet was initiated with a better structure than most. What follows is my assumptions rather than any hard facts. I have not had the benefit of being there or actually seeing the evidence but it must be in there. It is impossible to rewrite the rulebook without recording anything.

It has taken a lot of changes to the original constitution behind closed doors over a very lengthy period to allow the board to behave as it has done. It must have been done a small tweak at a time or the membership would have realised what was going on and nipped it in the bud.

By the time Haworth took office the way was clear to plunder the coffers and begin the process of privatising the organisation. That is what this EGM has now prevented and we should all be grateful to Simon Blackley and his closer allies for their action.

Far fetched? Look at what happened to the building society movement when Thatcher began "rewriting" the regulations. i.e. burning the rulebook.

Found the EGM has been uploaded to Youtube for all to see:

Article and analysis in Register today

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/24/nominet_board_plan/

carob said:

Article and analysis in Register today

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/24/nominet_board_plan/

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Found in that article:

GoDaddy is Nominet’s largest member and it voted against the EGM

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Which to me is a very clear indication of just how it sees its role, both in its own dealings and as supposedly representing the interests of the membership - that is the role of a board member, not merely to represent the interests of the organisation which employs it - of Nominet.

Because of its poor, barely usable to a Tux user, customer interface, appalling customer service and repeated stories of it fleecing its own customers and denying them access to their own domains, I have been trying very hard not to use GD at all for some time. This really nails that policy as the only correct one to follow.

I just wish more people would attempt to understand that, unless you yourself are a plutocrat, following the mainstream for mainstream's sake, or price for price's sake, without acting on, not just acknowledging but doing something, other indicators is not always the wisest move.

Fresh article in Register today - Nominet still resisting change and ignoring members even after EGM:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/01/nominet_future_plans/

Read the PDF unbelievable

1. Members fired Eleanor Bradley, now she came back as CEO wow wow a promotion
2. Nobody member / public benefit said about huge reserve, but they came up with plan to empty the cookie worth 20 million pound.
3. Appointed new board member from their own staff and now board is back to their control
4. no word about reducing their pay
5. no appointment of Sir Michael Lyons and Axel Pawlik rather they search a new person and it take 6 month
6. Considering what “membership” means - are they plan to reduce our power or increase the power their beneficator likes of Daddy

All of the above.

premkumar said:

6. Considering what “membership” means - are they plan to reduce our power or increase the power their beneficator likes of Daddy

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Very much the latter, I fear. And GD voted with the board at the EGM. I'm now out of GD altogether, including their raft of subsidiaries, which includes Afternic.

I suggest we all ask our contacts to do the same, at least as a temporary measure, and tell the GD reps why we're doing it, show them who really pays their wages and rub in the fact that they can't keep taking the piss for ever and expect nobody to respond

Once the bottom line is affected I'm reasonably confident the GD shareholders will butt in on our side. Subscribers are already bailing out due to the Brent Oxley affair. It won't take much more to have an impact.

Looks like only way to fix this scandal is a second EGM:

https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4029948/campaigners-egm-nominet-board

The Public Benefit campaign, which aims to ensure UK registry operator Nominet is run according to its Articles, has announced that 97 per cent of its supporters want a second extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to remove the remaining members of the Nominet board.

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Plus another Register article too:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/15/nominet_second_agm/

Simon Blackler was making the same point on LinkedIn yesterday. It appears to be shaping up as an inevitability.

Nominet names new chair, slashes exec pay, promises reforms and more boardroom exits

Kevin Murphy, July 26, 2021, 13:47:51 (UTC)

Nominet has named its new chair as former BT Openworld CEO Andy Green, who has already laid out a suite of measures — including more blood on the boardroom floor — to address the barrage of criticisms from members who ousted his predecessor earlier this year.

Read more:

http://domainincite.com/26880-nomin...pay-promises-reforms-and-more-boardroom-exits

so Sir Michael Lyons and Axel Pawlik have no role to play. so his this Andy Green a neutral guy?