Some Whois sleuthing yesterday revealed that someone registered a host of domain names related to “IA9100” as far back as October of last year, suggesting it was someone with inside information from the IAQG. This includes the domain name, “IA9100consultant.com,” thus pointing the evidence at, of course, a consultant.
As we’ve written, AS9100 is set to be updated soon and renamed “IA9100.” But that information was only made public this year, in a blink-and-you’d-miss-it post on the IAQG website in January. This points to someone within the IAQG — which is rife with consultants — using their committee positions for personal gain. Which, by the way, isn’t even against IAQG’s rules for committee participation, even though it might constitute fraudulent business practices under US law.
If the company is publicly traded, then serious SEC violations would have occurred. But most consultancies are private single-shingles, so that’s highly unlikely to be the case.
There is one other explanation. Back around June of 2022, the IAQG did publish a press release related to SAE taking over all publication duties for AS standards, and that release did mention the “IA” rebranding of IAQG standards. But it didn’t discuss IA9100 at all, didn’t say whether the numbering itself would remain the same, and certainly didn’t talk about timelines for revisions and release. Still, perhaps some plucky guy read that release, did the mental calculations to assume AS9100 would thus become “IA9100,” and started handing his credit card over to GoDaddy.
Whoever did it used GoDaddy’s proxy service, so his identity remains hidden. Nothing short of a court order can reveal him now.
That is until he publishes actual content on the pages. Right now, the websites — including IA9100.com, IA9100consultant.com, IA9110.com, IA9145.com. etc. — all resolve to a GoDaddy “parked” page, without any content. But at some point, the guy is going to want to start making money on his investment and add content. At that point, he will reveal himself.
Unless, of course, he reads this and realizes he might get outed for having used IAQG connections improperly, panics, and leaves them parked forever. Or sells the domains outright.
In the meantime, I have filed an official OASIS ticket complaint, asking the IAQG to investigate. If they have consultants who are openly using inside information to gain market advantage, possibly in contradiction of US law, we should know about it.
About Christopher Paris
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 30 years' experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the author of Surviving ISO 9001 and Surviving AS9100. He reviews wines for the irreverent wine blog, Winepisser.
