In message <021a01c8e746$54d17800$0601a8c0@allison>, at 10:27:29 local time, on Wed, 16 Jul 2008, tp <ripe@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