ACADEMIC-INDUSTRY COLLABORATION - TOWARDS A PRO-ACTIVE IFIP ROLE

There is reason for concern with the imbalance been academics and practitioners at IFIP events. In general academics dominate the working group membership; they dominate working conference committees; they are in the majority when it comes to working conference contributions; and they attend working conferences in far greater number than do practitioners. While this situation has its exceptions, the pattern is sufficiently consistent across all IFIP working groups to give cause for concern. Concern that led to today's symposium entitled ''Encouraging academic-industry collaboration''. This paper gives some background to the problem; it gives pragmatic and professional reasons as to its significance for the IFIP community; and it proposes changes to IFIP's way of work to redress the problem without losing the reputation for research excellence IFIP enjoys.