So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Background: Nominet is the organisation responsible for securely managing nearly 11 million .uk domains. In 2021 our Founder Simon Blackler organised an EGM to intervene in what he and other members thought was mismanagement of the company. The EGM was successful and he later joined the board for a 3 year term, which is coming to an end in October. The below is adapted from an email sent to supporters of the PublicBenefit.UK campaign.

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I never intended to be on the Nominet board. I was, like many members, disappointed and frustrated by the behaviour of successive generations of Nominet’s leadership team. I couldn’t understand why an organisation with a simple mandate and monopoly-like position needed to be diversifying into “Cyber”, “self-driving cars” or any other business or project. I particularly couldn’t understand why management thought it was acceptable to reduce public benefit donations 65%, increase their own pay 70% and fight and gaslight members along the way who were appropriately critical of their behaviour.

So, after a pint and a curry with a couple other members, I decided to do something about it. Given that being reasonable and polite hadn’t changed anything in over a decade, I organised an EGM in stealth mode. The objective was to try and rescue Nominet from what I thought was a bleak future where members were disenfranchised and had even less input and control. My biggest fear was that ultimately commercial interests would overwhelm Nominet’s public benefit mission completely and leave members obsolete.

With the help of some brave initial support (there were concerns about possible repercussions) from Krystal, 20i, Hosting Heroes, HostPresto, PAC Hosting, Stabelepoint, Any-Web, Astutium, adsonline, Unlimited Hosting, Sonexo, Nokta, UKDedicated, Kualo, 4UHosting, eukhost, Namecheap and Tucows we had the initial 5% needed to trigger the EGM and surprise the board. I’d like to thank those early supporters and everyone else who turned their voices into a deafening roar that couldn’t be ignored. I was confident that we’d easily pass the motions…

In the end it was a tight-run thing. The vote fell, Brexit-like, 52.74% FOR, 47.26% AGAINST (Results).

I was surprised by the narrow margin. I felt that logically members couldn’t have had a problem with a leaner, more focussed, more philanthropic, more inclusive and more respected Nominet. It was a valuable lesson for me in the power of politics, personality and persuasion. And fear. The FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) the old board sowed to legitimise their behaviour and safeguard their paychecks was both brazen and eye-opening. When presented with the facts they decided to fight, instead of accepting that they worked for the members, demonstrating humility and sitting down to actually listen. This backfired as most members could smell the bullshit and their campaigning actually grew our support, but along the way they wasted about £500k of members' money. (Small fry to the £18M lost on CyGlass I hear you cry!)

I felt that if I didn’t continue, the old guard still remaining in senior positions would exert their influence and the organisation wouldn’t really change. So I decided to stand for the board and see it through. It’s taken another 2.5 years of patience but I’m now confident the culture has changed for the better and will continue to do so.

What did we achieve together?

Pricing

• Kept the wholesale price of domains at £3.90, despite inflation from January 2020 to now being ~23%.
• It’s likely to be kept at this price for the foreseeable future too.

Tech

• Unlocked a large amount of capital to complete the technology refresh needed, after years of neglect.
• This will provide significant cost savings from 2025.

Membership & Engagement

• Reinstated the Community (sadly the lost data couldn’t be recovered)
• Hired a Community manager (replacement currently being sought)
• Ran an increased number of membership events
• New annual board report format, and new half-year reporting to increase transparency and accessibility.
• Attempts to improve engagement but still a major area of weakness. I’m hopeful it will start to improve with recent changes.

People & Culture

• COMPLETE replacement of the board;
  • Chair, CEO, CFO, SID, Company Secretary and member elected NED’s
  • Nobody in common with pre-EGM board - providing opportunity for the culture reset that’s happening.
• Finally recruited a CTO, to lead a technology company (Imagine…) who promptly knocked 3 tech teams into 1 to improve performance and progress stalled projects.
• New Chief Customer Officer (CCO) role replacing the legacy MD Registry/Public Benefit, with a focus on customers. This should improve how Nominet interacts with members massively, watch this space.
• Recruited a Procurement Officer to negotiate with suppliers and drive down costs.
• Recruited a CISO who’s implemented a massive programme of security improvements, improving our security posture significantly.

Public Benefit

• The Chair created a Public Benefit Committee (that I was appointed to) to oversee the donation of an additional £50M from reserves over 3 years (£65M total) for Public Benefit activities. Flagship projects included;
  • Micro:bit - £5M
  • Institute of Coding (IOC) - £12.4M
  • Good Things Foundation - £4.5M
  • Southwest Grid for Learning - £5.1M and
  • £2.6M towards countering harm via Internet Watch Foundation, Lucy Faithfull & ParentZone.

This is an INCREDIBLE amount of good work that WOULD NOT HAVE happened without the EGM. I’m very proud of it, and members should be too!

Miscellaneous

• Closed aforementioned PB committee because the board realised that public benefit activity should be integral to the core thinking of the company. At this week’s board meeting a member of senior management said “we don’t have a profit motive so...”. Correct!
• Won Gov.uk contract.
• No books published! (Telegraph article linked cites Andy Green, Nominet's chairman: "The book is of no value to the Nominet of today. Given the circumstances, I am surprised that the author decided to continue with its publication."!)

I’m confident that we have made Nominet better for ALL members, regardless of whether they supported the EGM campaign or not. We’ve had difficulties but those have been mostly inherited or macroeconomic e.g. CyGlass, losing the UK PDNS contract, inflation etc. I’m certainly not saying that Nominet’s perfect or the work is done - it never will be. It still moves too slowly for my tastes but perhaps that’s the nature of the beast when you’re so critical to so many.

But I’m also happy to step aside because I genuinely feel like I’m no longer needed. The current board is superb and while we don’t agree on everything, there’s a healthy level of debate and we’re no longer looking back all the time. Instead we’re focussed on the future. I’m leaving things in great hands. The board has completely transformed from when I arrived, from defensive and awkward, to fragmented and unsure, to finally unified and understanding what the organisation is about.

Evidence of a brighter future is everywhere, if you look for it. For example, there’s a larger pool of candidates standing this year with some totally new faces. I’d like to think that’s because Nominet’s image is improving. Long may that continue. Ashley has been phenomenal for the organisation and members and I’m delighted she’s standing for re-election.

Whomever is eventually voted in, I believe the most important point is that if you want to change something for the better, just get involved. That’s kind of the point of me writing this: it’s only through increased member engagement and constant vigilance/interest that we can safeguard Nominet for the future. And it’s a future worth fighting for.

(Main image courtesy of Midjourney.)