Two new InternetNZ councillors, two exits, one new fellow

Four InternetNZ councillors were elected at the non-profit's AGM last night, held after the first day of the organisation's latest Nethui event, now on in Wellington.

InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) is pleased to announce official results in this year's InternetNZ Council elections and the appointment of a new InternetNZ Fellow.

There were eight nominations for four vacancies on the 12-person council, which holds staggered elections for three-year terms.

Lance Wiggs and Neil James were re-elected.

Amber Craig and Richard Wood were elected to the spots vacated by councillors Michael Foley and Jonny Martin, neither of whom stood for re-election.

Ms Craig is a former systems technology architect at Telecom and current senior technology architect at Westpac.

Mr Wood is a former Computerworld editor and InternetNZ collaboration lead. His current role is senior communications manager for Xero.

The unsuccessful candidates were Scoop's Alastair Thompson, Hautaki Ltd's Karaitiana Taiuru, Nga Pu Waea and Central DHB board member Richard Orzecki and Vodafone NZ public policy GM turned regulatory consultant Hayden Glass.

New fellow
The Annual General Meeting also saw a new InternetNZ Fellow appointed – Don Stokes.

InternetNZ Fellowships recognise members of the Internet industry who have made an outstanding contribution to the development of the Internet in New Zealand or the Society.

March says Stokes has been involved with the Internet in New Zealand since it first appeared, making largely unseen and highly technical contributions to its security and stability.  

In the early 1990s, Mr Stokes helped set up the network infrastructure for the national Universities network and has since been involved in many large scale technical architecture deployments.  

He has been associated with InternetNZ since its inception, providing considerable input on policy and technical matters, most notably through his membership of the ‘Hine Commission’, which gave rise the .nz Shared Registry System.

Over the last ten years Don has been active in the technical networking community. His contributions have always been of a substantial and important nature, including implementing DNS infrastructure for .nz Registry Services for New Zealand’s Top Level Domain operations.

InternetNZ administers the .nz domain, and campaigns for an open, uncapturable internet.

The non-profit - which is currently advocating for reforms to the GCSB and telecommunications intercept bills before Parliament - recently named acting CEO Jordan Carter as its full-time chief executive.

InternetNZ recently released its 2012/2013 financial statements. 

The accounts show retained earnings increasing from the previous year's $9.18 million to $9.38 million.

Income fell from $700,500 last year to $191,100 as operating expenses increased, and InternetNZ contributed to projects associated with the Christchurch rebuild.

Revenue - primarily derived from wholesaling .nz domain names - was up from $7.09 million to $7.70 million.