Hi Panos and all,
Here are my two cents worth in my personal capacity. I agree on inclusion in general, so I do believe some work in reaching out is necessary and valuable. Furthermore,there are some CNs that have already reached out to us, like Gufinet, that seem like very natural participants and they should be integrated asap.
On the other hand, I think it will be valuable to reach out to CNs that are perhaps not represented in other groups and whose input has not been considered before. My point here I guess is that we don't only end up reaching to the organisations we all know, but research further to incorporate others more "out of the loop" - maybe aiming at some regional diversity but mainly to push ourselves to go further than the norm.
This leads me to another point, which is that we should avoid duplicating efforts made by others. In order to not duplicate we need to understand what we are doing and what has been/ is being done by others. For me one of the first tasks we need to do (perhaps within the WGs) is to understand what prior work/efforts are valuable to our work. This may lead in some cases to rather partner/ have regular meetings with other groups or organisations than to integrate everyone into this SIG.
In summary, I would make a lean procedure to accept CNs that are "obvious" candidates which have requested to be part of the CNSIG. Maybe a council member formally nominates them and the council has a short period to approve or object. For further reaching out, I would first aim to create a comprehensive list of CNs and groups that are relevant to the CNSIG (maybe within the WGs) to get a clear idea of what there is/ who is out there and what our relationship would be (member of the CNSIG? partner? etc).
What do you think?
Sol