Re: Some thoughts on the "Restructuring of RIPE"

["Mike Norris" <]

Many thanks to Willem for his fine thoughts on the aims
and structure of RIPE.  His mail demonstrates yet another
of the good features of RIPE - the quality of the discussion
on its various mailing lists.  These lists enable the 
functions of collaboration and information exchange between
meetings and have been of great assistance to many of us.

The areas of activity that Willem lists deserve consideration
as it is about time that we tried to align activities with
reality.  These are some minor comments:

1.  Where does "routing registries" belong, under routing or
    under registries?

2.  Is there room for an area related specifically to broadband
    technologies?

3.  While security merits its own area of activity, I would hope that
    this does not give the impression that it is of no concern to
    other areas.  Security is a serious issue and it pervades
    almost all other areas.

I agree with Willem about the size of meetings - the bigger the
better, as far as the attenders go, as this offers us more 
opportunities for information interchange.  Of course, growing
numbers pose problems for the organisers and we must listen to
their problems and suggestions.  Personally, I find the schedule
of three 3-day meetings a year just right, but there have been
large imbalances in the attendances at parallel WG meetings.
A re-alignment of the areas along the lines Willem suggests
would help to rectify this.

Cheers.

Mike