Passing the Torch to the next Internet Society Board Chair

In the 2016 Internet Society AGM (Annual General Meeting), I was elected Chair of the Board by the trustees of the Internet Society. I have had the honor and the privilege to serve in that capacity during the last five years. In the upcoming 2021 Internet Society AGM I will reach my term limit as […]

The post Passing the Torch to the next Internet Society Board Chair appeared first on Internet Society.

Internet Society Continues Strong Support for the IETF’s Critical Work on Open Standards

Open standards and the role they play are an important part of what makes the Internet the Internet. A fundamental building block of the Internet and everything it enables, open standards allow devices, services, and applications to work together across the interconnected networks that make up the Internet that we depend on every day. 

In fact, every moment you are online, even just reading this blog post, you are relying on open standards such as DNS, HTTP, and TLS. They are a critical property of what we call the Internet Way of Networking.

Since its inception, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) – a global community of thousands of engineers who are working each day to create and improve open standards to make the Internet work better – has been at the center of technical innovation for the global Internet. In addition to the standards themselves, the open processes and principles through which they are developed ensure the evolution of Internet technologies that meet the need of the growing number of devices and uses that empower people around the world to connect, share, learn, and more. This places the work of the IETF, and other groups focused on open Continue reading

Contributing to the Internet Society Governance Reform Working Group

[Published on behalf of the Internet Society Board of Trustees]

As we announced some time ago, the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC) has established the Governance Reform Working Group in order to host open community discussion on the general topic of potential governance changes at the Internet Society. We would like to welcome all members of any Internet Society Chapter, Organization Member, SIG, as well as individual members and IETF participants to contribute to this effort. Please, find the initial charter for the working group at:
https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/governance-reform-working-group-charter/

Olga Cavalli and Mike Godwin will be the chair and vice-chair of the working group, respectively. You can subscribe to the working group’s mailing list in order to contribute to the discussion on the following link (where you can also check the mailing list archives) :
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/governance-reform

The post Contributing to the Internet Society Governance Reform Working Group appeared first on Internet Society.

Building a diverse and strong Internet Society Board of Trustees

[Published on behalf of the Internet Society Board of Trustees.]

The Internet Society’s 2020 AGM (Annual General Meeting) is going to be held on the first weekend of August. While the meeting had originally been planned as a face-to-face meeting, the Board decided to turn it into an online meeting instead given the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The AGM is the meeting where we say goodbye to the outgoing trustees. We want to thank them for all their efforts during their terms and wish them good luck in their future endeavours. We are confident they will continue supporting the Internet Society down the road.

The AGM is also the meeting where we welcome the incoming trustees. This year is special because we will be welcoming five new trustees. This represents a significant Board turnover for a Board of twelve voting trustees. Therefore, we are currently running a comprehensive onboarding process to get our new trustees up to speed as efficiently as possible.

As you know, the Board is selected and elected by our community, with the IETF, Organizational Members, and Chapters each independently choosing a third of the Trustees. Next year, at the 2021 AGM, three trustees will be reaching Continue reading

Internet Society Board of Trustees Meeting on March 13-14, 2020, changed to a virtual meeting

Internet Society community members,

Due to concerns associated with the COVID-19 coronavirus, including the possibility of quarantines and other travel restrictions, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has decided to hold its meeting on 13-14 March, 2020, as a virtual meeting instead of a physical meeting in Cancun, Mexico. This board meeting was originally planned to follow the ICANN 67 meeting in Cancun, which was also changed to a virtual meeting.

The agenda and remote participation information will be published to https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/meetings/ within the next few days.

The post Internet Society Board of Trustees Meeting on March 13-14, 2020, changed to a virtual meeting appeared first on Internet Society.

Working together to build a bigger, stronger Internet

[Published on behalf of the Internet Society Board of Trustees.]

The Internet Society’s vision is that the Internet is for everyone. Earlier this month, we wrote about our efforts to ensure a stable and diverse funding model to support the work that takes us towards our vision. The role of the Board of Trustees is to provide, with support from the community, the strategic direction for that work. In this post, we discuss our recent and current strategic efforts, put them into context, and provide pointers with more information for our community to get involved in defining our wanted future.

Naturally, the starting point of our current strategy was to agree with the community on the overall direction. Therefore, two years ago, during 2017, the Board consulted with our community to revise our mission statement into what we have today. Many of you contributed to that 2017 effort, which resulted in the following three focus areas:

• Building and supporting the communities that make the Internet work;
• Advancing the development and application of Internet infrastructure, technologies, and open standards; and
• Advocating for policy that is consistent with our view of the Internet

Based on that community agreement on the development of this new mission, the Continue reading

The sale of PIR: The Internet Society Board Perspective

[Published on behalf of the Internet Society Board of Trustees.]

Last Friday we held a webinar with Internet Society members to answer questions about the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR). We were also able to unveil more details about the sale and its long-term contribution to the stability of the Internet Society (ISOC). On that call, we listened to our community members carefully. We heard the concerns regarding this decision from those who are worried about the future of the .ORG community, and who believe that we – as a non-profit and mission-driven organisation- are risking undermining our own legitimacy and responsibility to the public Internet.

First and foremost, we take the reaction from our community very seriously. Clearly, some members of the community believe that the decision to move forward with this transaction is harming our reputation. We fully understand the concerns expressed by our chapters and members, and we know that a lot of the criticism we have faced since announcing the transaction stems from the fact that we have not consulted openly, or been as clear as we should have been about what this sale would mean for both .ORG, and the Internet Society. It has always been the Board’s intention to be as open, transparent, and Continue reading

Announcing the Internet Society’s New President and Chief Executive Officer

Today is an exciting day for the Internet Society. It gives me great pleasure to announce, on behalf of the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees, that Andrew Sullivan has been selected as the Internet Society’s new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will formally take up his position on September 1, 2018.

This selection now successfully concludes the CEO search process we began last November.

The CEO selection process involved extensive work on the part of the Board but gave us much food for thought. We received a wealth of extremely impressive applications from more than a hundred internal and external candidates covering a huge range of talent and experience. We had some thought-provoking conversations as part of the process and I would like to express my sincere appreciation to everybody who applied for the position.

I believe Andrew’s success in being selected for this crucial role represents an enormous opportunity for the Internet Society and the global Internet.

Andrew brings a wealth of Internet industry and technology experience with him. He has served in a number of past roles, including time at Dyn, now a Global Business Unit of the Oracle Corporation, managing Domain Name System (DNS) development Continue reading

CEO Succession at Internet Society – Status update (June 2018)

This is a quick update on the CEO Succession process at the Internet Society (ISOC). For background, please check my previous notes to the community.

As you know,  the application window for potential candidates for ISOC’s CEO position closed in early April. Let me update you on where we are in the process.

The process for selecting a new CEO for ISOC is progressing well and is on track. As anticipated, and as a consequence of the broad appeal of the role, the open call for applicants resulted in a significant amount of interest from all around the world. The Board received more than one hundred applications from candidates with a diverse set of backgrounds in business and the private sector, government, the technical community, the global NGO space, and the wider Internet community.

The strength and quality of the applications has been very high and it has been an incredibly tough challenge to identify and evaluate the most suitable candidates for this role from such a large and qualified pool of talent and experience.

Nevertheless, given the importance that the CEO position holds for both ISOC and the Internet as a whole, the deliberation by the Board has been Continue reading

CEO Succession at Internet Society – Friday Deadline for Open Call for Candidates

As I informed our community in my last note, we launched the Open Call for CEO Candidates on Friday, 9 March 2018.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 UTC on Friday, 6 April 2018

This means that potential candidates interested in applying still have a few more days to do so. Candidates can apply for the position by visiting the Perrett Laver (our search firm for this process) web site using the following link:

https://candidates.perrettlaver.com/vacancies/726/ceo/

While the Candidate Pack (information about the CEO position) has been available for download on the link above during the whole open call, we have received input from our community asking us to make the Candidate Pack available also on a regular URL outside the search firm’s portal. Accordingly, for your convenience, we have now made it available on the following link as well:

https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Internet-Society-CEO-Succession.pdf

Please, distribute this call to potential candidates who may be interested so that they can apply before the upcoming deadline.

The ongoing open call for candidates will result in a long list of candidates. Taking the long list as a starting point, the whole board (at this point the search committee has already done Continue reading

CEO Succession at the Internet Society – Open Call for CEO Candidates

As I discussed in my notes to the community during the last months, at our last board meeting Kathy Brown, ISOC’s (Internet Society’s) President & CEO, informed the Board of Trustees that she will not seek another extension of her contract. Consequently, the board formed a CEO Search Committee, which is a subset of the board. The CEO Search Committee selected Perrett Laver as the search firm that will support the committee and the board during the whole process. Please, read my last note for further background information.

Per our plan, we are launching the Open Call for Candidates today, Friday, 9 March 2018.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 UTC on Friday, 6 April 2018.

If you would like to download the Candidate Pack or apply for the position, please visit the Perrett Laver web site using the following link:

https://candidates.perrettlaver.com/vacancies/726/ceo/

Per the web page above, if you would like to have a conversation with Perrett Laver regarding the role, please email the lead researcher on this search, Daniel Flynn:

[email protected]

The search firm will generate a short list of candidates so that the CEO Search Committee can make a final decision and select one. Continue reading

CEO Succession at the Internet Society – Status update (Feb 2018)

This is a status update on where we are in the CEO search process. In my last note to the community, I explained that we were finishing the selection of a search firm to support us during the process and that we were planning to launch an open call for candidates in February.

After issuing an RFP and conducting a set of interviews with several firms, the CEO Search Committee selected a search firm. The selected firm is Perrett Laver.

Based on, among other things, all the community feedback we have received on the following email address (you can still send your input to that address), the CEO Search Committee has developed a draft job description:

[email protected]

In order to refine the job description and to make sure we gather all the input we need, the search firm is going to conduct informational interviews with the leadership of our communities. Accordingly, they are going to interview the chairs of the OMAC (Organization Advisory Council), the ChAC (Chapters Advisory Council), and the IETF (the chairs of the IAB and the IAOC will also be interviewed). ISOC’s executive team (staff) will also be interviewed. You can also talk with Continue reading

CEO Succession at the Internet Society – Status update

A few weeks ago we informed the community about the fact that Kathy Brown was not going to seek another extension of her contract and, thus, a CEO search process had started at the Internet Society (ISOC). Please read my previous blog post for background.

In particular, we had asked the community to send us preliminary input, which is treated as confidential within the ISOC board, to the following email address:

[email protected]

We want to thank the community for all the useful input we have received so far. Please, continue sending us your thoughts around this important process for ISOC.

The status of the process at this point is the following. The board has set up a search committee, which is a subset of the board. The role of the search committee is to do a preliminary review of the candidates (in coordination with the selected search firm) and eventually present a short list to the full board, which will be responsible for the final selection.

The search committee is currently finishing the selection of a search firm to support us during the whole process. We have developed a draft job description, which will be finalized once a Continue reading

CEO Succession at the Internet Society

Yesterday, Kathy Brown, the Internet Society’s President & CEO, wrote that she has informed the Board of Trustees that she will not seek another extension of her contract, which will end at the end of 2018.

Before I discuss the search and selection process ahead of us, on behalf of the whole Board I want to express our gratitude to Kathy for the strong leadership and commitment she has shown in taking the Internet Society forward. Kathy has worked tirelessly in the interests of the organization, always putting her job before herself. The changes she has brought about have been both deep and wide-ranging, and she has succeeded in readying the organization for the many challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

While the Board would have been happy for Kathy to continue as CEO for a further term, we also understand and respect the decision that she has taken to dedicate time to her family. When the time comes, I hope you will all join me in wishing Kathy the very best in her life after ISOC.

During the process of searching for and selecting a new CEO, operational continuity in the organization will be a key priority. The Board Continue reading