Chair Update

Kia Ora

Welcome. We’ve had much change in our governance since we last talked so let’s kick off with that. I’m Dave, your new Chair, not to be confused with Dave, your old Tres. Chris is now Treasurer; I’m Chair. We swapped roles – not rigged at all. I’d like to thank Chris for his years of service as our previous Chair. Tom retains Secretary finishing out an officer election as predictable as UFB throughput – sorry, Aussies!

We also welcome Jocelyn Bateman to our committee. Jocelyn brings a wealth of experience to our virtual boardroom, not least from her current Global Interconnection Strategy role for AWS. We’re extremely fortunate to get the level of expertise that comes with the many internationals on our committee. Apologies, Jocelyn, for already loading you up with many roles! We thank the outgoing committee member, Barry Murphy, for his efforts at NZIX. I’m happy to say Simon was re-elected for another term at our recent AGM.

At the AGM, we presented our financials, tech, and other general admin, and then plied all attending with booze and grub – Marketing came up with the idea.

In useful stuff, we’ve commenced our Auckland ring upgrade, which will also incorporate Datacom Orbit Drive into our blazing new 400G ring. Orbit has been a long-requested data centre missing from our footprint, so we’re excited to finally commence this project. I’m sure Aaron gained worthy life experiences from submitting 47 different technical project plans over the last few months. We’ll keep you updated via our socials on how the project advances – or doesn’t, as often is the case with fibre/DC builds.

On the day of our AGM, we held a day-long committee strategy session with separate general governance and technical sessions. This was great; after years of endless Zooms, it was fantastic to see each other face to face and discuss the challenges and growth of the IXs. What could have taken days of VCs we nutted out in a one-day session. One outcome of that session was that we should stick to our knitting, that is, building and maintaining IXs, and not carry on with our Educational ISP concept (for now, at least).

Well, that should bring you all up to speed. There will be a test at the next AGM – the winner gets a bar tab.

Nga Mihi,

Dave Mill
Chair