There's been a lot of discussion on the weaknesses of the current structure for individual participation in ICANN. I wrote a pretty long response via email on this topic, and decided to post it here as well.

Some history:

In 2000, ICANN held "global" elections for Board seats. I put global in quotes, because the elections were not advertised in Trinidad and Tobago, and even though we only have 1.3 million people, we are a country, and need to be included in any "global" event. So LAC had a representative on the Baord, but the Caribbean didn't geet a chance to vote, so (even though he 's a wonderful person) he can't have been representative of us.

Since  then, the structure is indirect, but designed to be able to reach out more globally. there are 5 regions, and we've created 4 (so far) regional organisations that consist of groups involved with individual users in the region. The regional organisations elect 2 reps each to the Committee. The Committee currently appoints a non-voting liaison to the Baord.  Some people, especially in North america, feel that ths strructure is worthless and powerless, and want to go back to direct Internet-based elections. Some of us disagree. I believe that wth more representative global participation, we can prove that we deserve to choose Board members, and I think that as the organisation gets larger and more gobal, we'll get there.

So - that's the intro. 

For the rant - click the read more link...

I recently ran unsuccessfully for the Chair of ICANN ALAC. I did this via remote participation in the Sao Paulo meeting, as I could not attend owing to my father's car accident. (See updates on Daddy Blog )

So here - I'm posting my email candidacy statement.