Reply #29: Many of them.

[Igel]

The more bottom-up they purport to be, the larger the set of attendees, the more things are preprepared so as to facilitate discussion and keep the conference 'on task.'

If you get 500 organizations together, there'll be chaos and discord, and that's a no-no. So they mitigate the chaos by having a working group put together the document they want approved on the issues they deem appropriate. There can be amendments, but given the cast of characters and the desire for "consensus" that's unlikely. For the same reason, most amendments are trivial or follow the same lines as what was originally proposed. They also mitigate the discord that would ensue--those that vehemently disagree don't show up, allowing the charge that they simply don't want to talk; those that disagree and show up either have to raise a stink and get the bad press or merely stay quiet.