Introduction. Part of the UCAR University Relation Committee's charge is to help plan for the UCAR Members Meeting. At the April 2002 URC meeting, the URC discussed the idea of holding a Forum focused on better understanding the rapidly changing nature of relationships among the public, private, and academic weather and climate sectors. A URC subcommittee produced this whitepaper (John Merrill, Mohan Ramamurthy, Jack Fellows, and Ron McPherson and Kelvin Droegemeier). The Board of Trustees should provide input on the proposed Forum. This is likely to be a multiple year dialogue and will need to be coordinated with a range of similar efforts also mentioned below.

Forum Components:

• Title: How to Participate Effectively in the "New" Private, Public, and Academic Weather and Climate Sector Partnerships
• Goal. Begin a dialogue between these three sectors to (1) understand what each is doing, (2) the constraints and needs of each sector, and (3) what are the best ways to work together (maybe describe a few partnerships that are working today).
• Introductory Plenary Session: Provocative speaker paints a picture of what these relationships might be in the future based on current directions. This would essentially get people's attention and help them understand what is changing in these relationships and how and why the universities need to respond to these changes. The speaker would focus on:

1. What are the emerging opportunities for these sectors to work together?
2. What kinds of employees are needed and how can universities best prepare students for these new careers (e.g., critical skills, new ways to teach, etc)?
3. How will these new relationships deal with issues like intellectual property, tech transfer, and free and open data exchange, conflict of interest, balancing open scholarship with privacy, etc? Barriers?
4. What can the government to do support or unintentionally impact these new partnerships?

Suggested speakers include:

• John Lumsden (head of privatized New Zealand met service)
• John Armstrong (NRC Chairman whose committee is looking at these issues
• European private sector representatives (e.g., Harry Otten or Daniel Soderman)
• Jim Mahoney, NOAA Deputy Director

• Panel: The Plenary speaker would be followed by a panel of private, public, and academic speakers that would briefly describe case studies of these evolving relationships and report on their own experiences with the four issues mentioned above. These speakers would have to be selected with great care relative to the Plenary speaker. Suggested Panelists include:
• Kevin Droegemeier volunteered to develop a case study on relevant activities at OU.
• Phil Krider, Perry Sampson, Ray Ban, George Fredricks, Brad Hoggart of Aquila, David Montroy of Williams, Nick Keener of Duke Energy, Richard Larson of Mars Candy, and NCAR Adv Council members from the private sector.
• Public policy person like Roger Pielke, Jr to discuss this from a public policy standpoint. Roger chaired the recent USWRP workshop on research needs for the private sector.
• Get a case study from other areas (e.g., biotech, biomed, engineering, etc).
• AMS Board of Private Sector Meteorology and Committee Economic Development
• Jim Mahoney or Jack Kelly to discuss the government's role, etc.

• Breakout Groups. The Panel discussion would be followed by breakout groups in the second, third, and fourth areas mentioned above so that others can share how they are dealing with these issues. Not clear that we need a breakout group on opportunities. This will probably come up in each group. Breakout groups would be lead by panelists. The groups should also explore next steps in improving these relationships. No presentations. Just discussion with rapporteur capturing the discussion.

• Next-day Plenary Session. Group leaders would summarize breakout group discussion and suggested next steps in making these relationships more productive and pervasive. This output would be part of the BAMS article.

Other Activities that the Forum Will Be Coordinated With:

1. AMS/AGU Heads&Chairs. The AMS and AGU Heads&Chairs will be meeting in joint session right after the UCAR Members Meeting. They also plan to focus on some aspect of these relationships.
2. AMS User Forum. UCAR and the AMS are exploring a Users Forum at the AMS 2003 Annual meeting (February 2003). This Forum will focus on successful weather and climate information users telling other potential users in their economic sectors (e.g., energy, agriculture, transportation, etc) about the importance of weather and climate information.
3. Congressional Advocacy. UCAR and the AMS take the messages from these Fora to the Congress in the form of briefings and visits on how these sectors are working well together. This advocacy effort would be in support of the FY04 budget and designed to show that these sectors work well together by showcasing (1) how effective the tech transfer is in this community and (2) the importance of long-term weather and climate research investment to our nation.
   
4. BAMS Article. The result of all or some of these activities might be summarized in a BAMS article to make the broader UCAR and AMS community aware of the discussion.
   
   

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