Further to our email earlier and you comments above…

The paper process was available at tradeshows because onsite we don’t have the space or equipment to set up kiosks – plus tradeshow network connections are, at best, flakey.

The form is fairly short and straightforward and takes a couple of minutes to complete. I was in attendance at the shows myself and we had almost 400 people complete the process on site between 3 events.

The reason you did not receive an email invitation is because you did not have a domain name where you were you were listed as administrative contact prior to the end of June when we finished sending invitations out.

I will be investigating your concerns about the ‘apathetic attitude’ you describe but can’t comment on this now. As I mentioned earlier, we have had a small number of calls and email about voting tokens and we have been working to get tokens to people as quickly as possible. A replacement token was sent to you yesterday after you contacted us and hopefully has arrived by now.

As for ‘spin’, I’m very much hands on and direct as I’m sure you’ve witnessed from our email correspondence and my comments here (and elsewhere.) I was present at our AGM in Toronto last week where I had the opportunity to talk with almost 300 Members in person, and I have attended all our tradeshows this year to meet with the public and our Membership. As someone ‘inside CIRA’ I can assure you, and all our Members, that we take our Member concerns seriously and that we are always looking for ways to improve our processes based on feedback. Mistakes do happen for a variety of reasons and when they do are we make every effort to resolve the issues to your satisfaction.

David

David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)

Thanks for the info, I’m glad to hear that many users did not have to follow the same process that stunted me.

I was given the paper form by a CIRA staff member at the IT360 show in Toronto and told I *had* to fill the paper form in so I could authenticate. I would have gladly used the alternate, web based process if I knew one existed. The question of the day is: “Why are there multiple processes to follow and what is CIRA doing to make sure their staff are trained on the proper process?”

My other concern was with respect to the overall apathetic attitude I experienced dealing with the CIRA staff by phone. “Can’t”, “Unable”, “Sorry” were three words constantly repeated during our conversation. If the process has worked so well, than one has to wonder why these individuals appear to be swamped by phone calls from frustrated members.

I’m not on the inside at CIRA; I can’t comment on the number of success or failure of what still appears to be a flawed elections process.

All I can do is take your communications at face value and trust that you are relaying more than just marketing “spin” to CIRA members.

I have sat through the discussions about “bad” registrars and “bad” registrants. Sometimes the issues are far more complex that what the public sees, and the decisions are based on a consensus, which factors in alot of things.

I didn’t agree with all of the decisions, but I can state that the decisions were all reached after thorough discussions and debate.

I was involved in the discussions a couple years ago about attempting to tighten the legitimacy of the voting membership, as the previous regiments were far too fast and loose, and gave an inordinate amount of influence to a small number of people.

I recall that the imposition of a policy towards requiring one member/one vote was not a small, nor quick decision.

How it ended up as being an offline procedure, I don’t know.

I’m currently living in the middle east, and as best I can tell, my voter token is sitting in a shoe box at my parent’s place in Canada (who are currently on vacation).

I will admit that I’ve been quite distant from CIRA (physically and mentally), and was not paying attention to developments. So, when the elections came up, I just assumed that the token or whatever would be emailed.

I am annoyed that I won’t be voting in this election, but I don’t know that I would call for the election to be abandoned, as I know that the next board will be looking into this and attempting to fix the bits that are broken.

Yes, we will talk tomorrow.

Re-reading your original post, you state: “For instance, before you can become a voting member of CIRA, you are required to FAX, a 3 page document, complete with government ID, to CIRA.”

This is not entirely true – the paper forms were only used by CIRA in a small number of circumstances where additional information was required (for example, the wrong Registrant information was present.)

There may have been some confusion surrounding the use of paper forms as one of our Registrars sent out an email directing people to the paper forms towards the end of the Membership campaign.

The paper forms themselves consist of a 1-page form for individuals (technically the document is 2 pages, but the first one is a brief instruction sheet) http://www.cira.ca/en/forms/membership/membership_photoid_ind.pdf
. There is a 2-page form for non-individuals, e.g. corporations, but it is not applicable to a vast majority of our Members.

In either case, the forms were unnecessary for a huge portion of our Membership. Starting in April of this year we sent email invitations to all dot-ca Registrants inviting them to participate. The process was conducted through an online application (linked from the email), followed by a brief telephone call to confirm your address, and concluded with a letter with a confirmation code. Almost 14,000 Members became members this way. Another 400 became members in person (using the aforementioned forms) at trade shows we participated in, leaving approximately 600 Members (less than 4%) to complete the process via paper forms due to exceptions.

David

David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)

As for CIRA and their intentions, I really believe that SOME people within the organization want to make changes, but they’re missing the leadership to make that happen. I hope to have further dialog with them on this matter tomorrow… but we’ll see.

CIRA could give a flying f–k about the body of individuals they claim they represent. There have been several registrars who violate terms of their agreements, countless registrants who do the same, and a body that is more interested in upping revenue over actually managing the TLD.

They’re worse than NS with .com, which is too bad, because they used to be one of the best managed TLDs out there.

- kev

P.S. – Doug, I’m glad you got the shiny toy. It makes me happy to see that you got something to play with. It’s good to see they’re passing out the “ooh… shiny!!!” toys instead of actually making registrars do what they’ve comitted to.

And the 1GB stick isn’t too bad, its fast enough for Vista’s Readyboost.

When I found out I needed a token to vote, I dug around for the paperwork, only to realize that what I had found was a token to confirm my address and that I had no idea where the VOTING token was … I finally found it. Lucky me …

How much money did CIRA spend on this totally ill conceived process?

…

Thank you for your email alerting me to your blog post.

Unfortunately your email arrived in my inbox at 4:06 and I will not be able to collect the facts of the matter specific to your case until tomorrow AM; before I make any comment I would like to have the opportunity to familiarize myself with the situation you describe.

A large number of Members have already cast their votes, both online and in person at our Annual General Meeting last week in Toronto so the process is working for a vast majority of our membership. That said, in any large-scale activity like this involving a significant number of Members (currently, almost 15,000 strong) problems will occasionally arise. A small number of Members have contacted us with concerns or issues and whenever and wherever possible we have accommodated because the participation of our Membership is critical to us.

I will be in contact tomorrow once I have more information about your situation.

Best regards,

David

David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)