ex-Director’s questions to auDA today

Nearly two weeks ago, auDA Demand-Class Independent Director Tim Connell resigned from the auDA Board. It appears auDA have still not replaced Tim’s position. Tim’s resignation letter can be read in full here. Tim voices many concerns in regards to feeling the need to resign, but most notably mentions the controversial 955 foreign-based members that were signed up by only two or three Registrars in a very short period of time. Most notably Crazy Domains (around 600 new members) and the new Australian domain name Registry operator, Afilias (166 members). In the last few hours of Sunday night, I was sent an email, detailing the following questions Tim Connell would like auDA to consider at the Monday (20th August, 2018) morning meeting:

auDA board meeting today, i wonder what the agenda is? just taking some guesses here: 1) how do we work around 24.1 ? 2) how do we explain why james and joe are allowed in the board room? it will have to be minuted. 3) do we risk dumping the cmwg as they seem to be asking some tough questions? ———— you could pretty much end the meeting there ———- 4) if we IGNORE everything and head full charge to a GM how then do we explain why almost 955 new members need to be deleted ?……after they vote our resolutions in. hang on…we’ll still need them for the AGM ! so bugger we’ll need to ignore that as well. 5) how do we hide the fact that someone is holding 200 proxies? its ok we’ll mix it up with a few from each of the big players to make it look not so obvious ! BUT HANG ON, if these INTERESTED under represented stakeholders REALLY care then surely they would be fully informed and want to vote? so we should expect at least almost 955 + pre-june members to vote. i also loved that great big screen display at the sgm with the “tally so far”, i sure hope we have that again to truly depict how the vote is going on any resolutions. 6) then there will be the “chairs report” that will be something like “i’ve spoken to richard and he is 100% behind our decisions ” IS he? is he ? refer to my resignation letter about not trusting the information being delivered to directors…. just my own opinion mind you. i’d love to see an announcement from richard that states he is 100% cool with audas decisions so far. 7) resolution: make sure we hire those guys that stuffed up the first SGM to do the video again. tim

On Friday just gone, auDA publicly sent a SAVE THE DATE email to everyone on their database that read:

To all auDA members: A general meeting of members is planned for Thursday 27 September, 2018. Further details will be provided soon.

The question that everyone seems to be asking at the moment is: Why is auDA holding a GM in 5 weeks, before the AGM? Does it have something to do with the nominations committee? Does it have anything to do with the 955 foreign-based members or to vote for a new membership model? With most of the new 955 members coming from Dreamscape (Crazy Domains), VentraIP, Synergy Wholesale and Afilias, are people seeing these new members as being implemented by way of a voting agreement?