(Trying to change the subject line because this really isn't about the mission statement) --On Saturday, November 25, 2017 4:52 PM +1300 Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Second, there aren't, and as far as I recall never have been, >> any chapters in New England. (A couple of time folks have >> tried to start one in Boston, and given up for lack of any >> reason to.) Miles, I think "no reason" is a mis-characterization. At least from my perspective, a very significant part of the problem was that the folks who would have needed to be the core of an ISOC chapter (or, if you prefer, without whom an ISOC chapter would not be credible) have been too busy with other things, notably, as the IETF has been putting it, "Making the Internet work better" in technical and substantive ways. Speaking for myself only, although I suspect some who are even more active contributors to the technical work of the IETF may share my view, I'd rather have no ISOC chapter than one that would be of very high risk of being captured by folks who wanted to pursue specific social or political causes in the name of such a chapter and whose take on those issues might be very different than mine, and to do so in an environment in which I wouldn't have time or energy to make counterarguments. Normally, I ignore such things, or on the assumption that diversity of opinions is a good thing, encourage them, but I have been confident that a Boston chapter would be taken (or promoted) as speaking for me whether or not I had anything to do with it. The success of the IETF Boston Hub (or whatever it is called these days) may or may not reinforce that view of the appropriateness of an ISOC Chapter and that, along with the GBC ACM-IEEE collaboration may, further cut into available cycles. Is that fair from an ISOC voting standpoint to those of us for whom an active chapter structure does not seem appropriate? I don't think so either. But, as Brian and others have pointed out, no one has come up with a better suggested arrangement yet. > Local chapters wax and wane, and are very subject to the > personalities and motivations of their founders. Some work, > some don't. (The Geneva chapter, of which I was the first > President in ~1995 iirc, crashed and burned by 2009 due to > lack of activity, but was followed by the current active Swiss > chpater. But most of the chapters today are in the developing > world, which is great.) Great except for one thing, which is that, AFAICT, several, perhaps many, of those chapters have been captured by a small number of people who, judging from appearances, have found them very useful as personal platforms or career-boosters. Maybe that is ok (or the best that can be done in the short term) for a given chapter, but, to the extent to which is gives a relatively small number of people with a focus on very local concerns (even if they have global ambitions) disproportionate representation on the Board, it is something that should at least be monitored as we go forward. best, john