Ryan Merkley is one of the smart, passionate people defending the open web, and he’s just been nominated for the board of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. If you have a .CA domain, you’re eligible to become a CIRA member now (there’s no charge) and to vote for their board in September.
The open web needs people like Ryan in that position. He’s facing off against candidates who’d drop CIRA into the pocket of the giant domain name registrars, and I’d hate to see that happen. So I’d love it if you’d consider supporting him.
You can find out more about Ryan from his candidate statement and Q&A. Here’s a little background:
I have spent my career working on communications and strategy for organizations of all sizes, primarily in the non-profit and government sectors. It would be my great pleasure to serve on the Board of CIRA.
Most recently, I completed three years as Chief Operating Officer of Mozilla, a global non-profit best known as the creators of Firefox. My primary responsibility was the development and launch of Webmaker, a product to inspire young people to move from being users of the web to makers of the web.
Previous to my work with Mozilla, I was director of communications for the city of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Games, and worked as senior advisor to Toronto Mayor David Miller, where I spent seven years at City Hall leading the city budget process and working on initiatives like open data. I started my own marketing consultancy, Antfarm, which worked primarily with non-profits to create social change.
If you’d like to join me in voting for him, Ryan has posted the details about about how to join CIRA now, and vote next month .
And if you’d like to pepper him with questions, you can find him on Twitter at ryanmerkley.
Thanks, folks!
