ICANN’s board is composed of appointees from a number of organisations including the ASO. The ASO is essentially “the numbers community” which is made up of the respective regional address registries (RIPE, ARIN etc.,).
The ASO gets two seats on the board, though their terms are broken up so only 1 seat is up for election this time round.
The seat currently held by Ron da Silva is the one that is currently up for election, with either da Silva being replaced or re-elected at the 2018 ICANN AGM.
The ASO have announced a slate of 4 candidates for the seat:
- Johan Mikael “Julf” Helsingius
- Kris Seeburn
- Ron da Silva
- William Michael Cunningham
All 4 candidates have some level of experience with ICANN, so none of them are complete outsiders. Of the four, however, there are a couple with much wider experience and knowledge than others on matters internet governance related. I’d recommend you take a few minutes to peruse their candidate statements and take the time to submit comments if you can.
You can find out more about each candidate as well as commenting on their nomination here.
The timeline for the appointment is as follows:
- Nomination Phase: 2 October 2017 – 17 December 2017
- Comment Phase: 18 December 2017 – 18 March 2018
- Interview Phase: 17 January 2018 – 18 March 2018
- Selection Phase: 19 March 2018 – 18 April 2018
- Due Diligence Review: 19 April 2018 – 17 May 2018
- Announcement: Around 19 May 2018