--On Sunday, 21 December, 2014 11:49 -0500 IAB Chair <iab-chair@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Jari and I were invited to join representatives of the > Internet Society Board and the ICANN Board at a meeting last > week. There were two topics: the IANA Stewardship Transition > and the NETmundial Initiative. After the meeting, Bob Hinden > and Steve Crocker released a statement. Here is a link to > their statement: > http://www.internetsociety.org/news/joint-statement-isoc-icann > -meeting Russ, I continue to be concerned about the appearance of "statements" from small group meetings and their possible interpretations relative to our commitment to broad, bottom-up, community consensus processes. This one seems innocuous at worst but, if these sorts of meetings are going to continue, and continue to release statements, I hope you can encourage your colleagues to make those statements absolutely clear about who is making them and on what authority. When I first read it, I assumed it was a statement by the group present at the meeting and presumably speaking for their respective organizations. Now that you have mentioned "Bob Hinden > and Steve Crocker released a statement", I can certainly see it that way. However, especially against a background that some of us interpret as deliberate misinterpretations by a few individuals of support and consensus, it is each to get from sentence fragments like "representatives ... met to discuss...", "Everyone agreed that...", "We agreed to further strengthen our joint efforts...", could easily cause the statement to be interpreted as a consensus one, even though only Steve and Bob signed it. No complaints about this one, but I continue to believe that small, closed, invitation-only meetings like this create vulnerabilities when they are followed by "statements". I therefore hope that, to the extent possible, great care be taken that such statements either reflect the procedures and norms of each body that is in any sense represented or that they are extremely explicit about in whose name and on what authority they are made. best, john