Going Dutch
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...I was delighted to recently welcome to Nominet Roelof Meijer, CEO of SIDN the registry for .nl, as part of a job swap auction for our senior management we held last year to raise money for our chosen charity.As we shared ideas and experiences it was quite fascinating to discuss the fact that our respective registries have many similarities. We are both running country code Top Level Domain registries that are experiencing continued growth and we are both working hard to improve our systems and services. SIDN have also won the contract to run the registry for ENUM within the Netherlands, as we have for the UK. For both organisations this represents a significant opportunity to diversify from our core businesses of running country code Top Level Domain registries. Both registries are also taking more of a leading role internationally. This is in order to share best practices and experiences, but also to ensure that the interests of our local Internet communities are taken into account in international discussions.
Roelof was particularly interested in Nominet’s corporate governance arrangements, where we discovered some similarities but also some significant differences in approach. Roelof attends SIDN Board meetings, but is not a legal Board member like myself. This seems to be down to European corporate structures, as we both have similar responsibilities and liabilities. SIDN has a Supervisory Board but, unlike our own Board, all of its members are independent and appointed by the Board. He was interested that the recent Nominet governance consultation sought views on the introduction of independent appointed Board members to the Nominet Board.
We also discussed the plans to form the Nominet Foundation as a charitable organisation to fund educational, research and development initiatives for the benefit of the UK Internet. SIDN is a Foundation itself – SIDN stands for Stichting Internet Domeinregistrartie Nederland, which means the Foundation for Internet Domain Registration in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands a business formed as a foundation has no members, and it does not need to serve a purpose of general interest, though commercial activities are allowed if they are within the purpose of the foundation. The Foundation we are creating will have charitable status.
Roelof really enjoyed his visit to Nominet and we were very pleased to host him. It is always fascinating to compare business practices with a ccTLD colleague and we both found the experience interesting. I look forward to an equally interesting visit when I complete the second part of the job swop in several weeks’ time.
(4.67 out of 5)