As part of my now nearly complete service on the ICANN Nomcom, I had to think about what skills make for a good member of the ICANN Board of Directors. It seemed to me one way to think about it was that skills should be defined by what I wished the Board did; but that another way to think about it was that that skills should be defined by what the Board actually does.
But what does the ICANN Board actually do? I decided to find out. Or rather, I made my research assistant find out. The results surprised me, and I've posted them now at ICANNWatch, under the title What Does the ICANN Board Do?.
Here's the first paragraph:
In an effort to identify the skill set that would best serve future Board members, we conducted a quick and crude analysis of the most visible evidence available of what the ICANN Board actually does: the ICANN Board meetings. We recognize that this is perhaps not the best evidence imaginable: much of what the Board does is done in secret, and Board meetings have been criticized as somewhat scripted. Nevertheless, many Board members reject these critiques, and even if it were true that meetings are scripted, they remain important events and do memorialize many of the most important things that ICANN does. Besides, one has to start somewhere.
