I am writing this on October 17, 2001.
ICANN's Executive Committee of the Board of Directors held a meeting yesterday. Of course, I was not part of it. The minutes may be found at: http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-16oct01.htm
I am a member of ICANN's Board of Directors, but I am not a member of the "Executive Committee".
I did not learn about the meeting until after it had occurred.
And did I learn about it afterwards from ICANN's management? No. I learned about it via the ICANN Blog.
This is simply outrageous; it is an insult to the Internet community.
And it indicates extremely poor corporate management.
As I mentioned the last time the Executive Committee held one of its meetings (August 16, 2001) "[o]ne would hope that the Executive committee of ICANN would be used only for exigent matters in which there is simply no time to convene the entire board."
Were the matters decided yesterday of such moment and urgency that the full board had to be kept in the dark about not only the matters to be decided but also about the existence of the meeting itself? You can decide for yourself from the items listed in the minutes of the meeting.
Repayment of a large loan.
Payment of legal expenses.
Reimbursement of the President's expenses
I don't know about you, but I don't find anything in these matters that was so urgent that not only had it to be handled "right now" but had to be handled without even giving the other members of the Board the courtesy of an e-mail describing what matters were going to be discussed.
We had a board "meeting" a mere two weeks ago on October 1. (It was a meeting in which there were no resolutions on the agenda so it was apparently never made public.) Is ICANN's staff so unaware of the corporation's financial obligations that two weeks ago they were unaware of the nearing repayment date of a large loan? And those legal expenses - they were from last July. Was it impossible to let that invoice age until the next full meeting of the Board - a meeting that will occur less than 30 days in the future?
As it stands, I know that I have serious reservations about ICANN's legal expenses, and I have been trying for a long time to even learn the details of those expenses. I see from the minutes that these expenses - which annualize out to more than a $1,000,000/year - are for but one topic out of the array of legal matters facing ICANN.
I do wonder what other surprises will be raised and handled in the black cabal of ICANN's "Executive Committee"?