Proposed new working group: Collaboration

In message <021a01c8e746$54d17800$0601a8c0 at allison>, at 10:27:29 local 
time, on Wed, 16 Jul 2008, tp <ripe at dial.pipex.com> remarked:
>I find the use of public sector, as in "The Collaboration Working Group 
>is a forum for discussion focusing on collaboration between the private 
>and public sectors on Internet matters." somewhat strange and perhaps 
>misleading.
>
>My (not insignificant) country has a public and a private sector, and 
>the former has grown steadily over the past 10 years, encompassing a 
>wide variety of services and businesses.  To me, public sector means 
>state owned, state run, answerable to ministers, as opposed to private 
>sector, run by a board of directors, answerable to share holders.
>
>Is this really what you mean?  I suspect not.

There's an old saying that goes something like...

"The World is divided into two sets of people:

  Those who divide the world into two sets of people

  and

  Those who don't"

Multistakeholder discussions often get off to a bad start if too much 
time is spent defining rigid boxes to put the stakeholders in.

I would encourage those who wish to see this WG succeed, to think about 
ways of expressing the idea that a major objective is demonstrating 
outreach from the "traditional RIPE Community" to "everyone else", but 
particularly Governments, Regulators and NGOs, who we are trying to 
bring into our community.
-- 
Roland Perry
Public Affairs Officer, RIPE NCC