Folks - As a result of the Internet's growing social and economic importance, the underlying Internet structures are receiving an increasing level of attention by both governments and civil society. The recent revelations regarding US government surveillance of the Internet are now greatly accelerating government attention on all of the Internet institutions, the IETF included. All of this attention is likely bring about significant changes in the Internet ecosystem, potentially including how the IETF interacts with governments, civil society, and other Internet organizations globally. In my personal view, it is a very important for the IETF to select leadership who can participate in any discussions that occur, and it would further be prudent for the IETF leaders to be granted a sufficient level of support by the community to take positions in those discussions and make related statements, to the extent the positions and the statements are aligned with established IETF positions and/or philosophy. The most interesting part of the myriad of Internet Governance discussions is that multiple organizations are all pushing ahead independently from one another, which results in a very dynamic situation where we often don't even know that there will be a conference or meeting until after its announced, do not know auspices under which it will be held, nor what the scope of the discussions held will ultimately be. However, the failure of any of the Internet organizations to participate will not actually prevent consideration of a variety of unique and colorful proposals for improving the Internet and/or the IETF, nor will it preclude adoption even in the absence of IETF input... The IETF is a very important Internet institution, and it deserves to be represented in any discussions which might propose changes to the fundamental mechanisms of Internet cooperation. It would be a wonderful world indeed if all of these discussions started with submission of an Internet Draft and discussion on open mailing lis, but that hasn't been the modus operandi of governments and is probably too much to realistically expect. /John