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RIPE Meetings Explained

RIPE Meetings are five-day events allowing community members to meet in person. They take place twice a year – in spring and in autumn and are held in different locations in the RIPE region, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, also completely virtually. You don’t have to travel to a RIPE Meeting, you can also participate virtually. Each RIPE Meeting follows a very similar format, and if you’ve never attended a RIPE Meeting before, we have events meant especially for newcomers and a mentorship programme to pair newcomers with an experienced RIPE community member. Working Groups hold sessions during RIPE Meetings and these events bring members of the community together.

RIPE Plenary sessions and the RIPE Programme Committee (PC)

During the week of a RIPE Meeting, the agenda is split between plenary and working group sessions. Traditionally Monday and Tuesday (and parts of Friday) are for Plenary sessions, while Wednesday and Thursday are for WG sessions. Generally speaking, the plenary is for presentations and discussions that are of interest for the wider RIPE community.

RIPE Programme Committee (PC) is responsible for sourcing interesting content for the plenary sessions. The PC is a group of RIPE community members that serve a defined term and are elected by the RIPE community during the meeting week.

Ahead of each RIPE Meeting, the PC will issue a Call for Presentations (CfP) to the RIPE community. People who want to present at a RIPE Meeting are asked to submit an abstract along with some draft slides that indicate what their presentation will cover. 

The plenary is also where decisions affecting the broader RIPE community are made. More recently a RIPE Community Plenary brings together most of these “inward-looking” RIPE-centric topics into one session.

Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions

BoFs are informal one-off sessions that usually take place during the week of a RIPE Meeting week (though they can also happen between meeting. Often these are useful when the topic being doesn’t easily fit within the agendas of the various working group or plenary sessions at RIPE Meetings (whether due to the nature of the topic or because of time constraints). 

For example, if you wanted to propose a new working group, you might first hold a BoF to get a sense of how much interest there is in the topic. RIPE Task Forces will also sometimes hold a BoF to get input from the community before their work is finalised. Many other BoFs are really just about having an informal discussion.

A BoF can be as lightweight as a handful of people meeting together in a café or bar after the RIPE Meeting has finished for the day, though they are often a little more organised. The more organised BoFs will be in the meeting agenda and receive support from the RIPE Meeting organisation team (who will provide a meeting room and a microphone/projector).

Getting started: If you would like to arrange a BoF at a RIPE Meeting, you can send a request via the submission system. A link for this is published with a Call for Presentations (CfP) ahead of each RIPE Meeting. You can also mail pc@ripe.net and the RIPE Programme Committee (PC) will answer any questions you have. Arranging a BoF can also be as simple as announcing during the RIPE Meeting that anyone who wants to discuss a certain topic can meet you nearby at a certain time. Feel free to go this ad hoc route, and report back to the community if anything interesting comes out of the discussion!

Get Support to Attend a RIPE Meeting

RIPE Fellowships

Although RIPE has no membership, you must buy a ticket to attend a RIPE Meeting. To make RIPE Meetings more accessible, we offer a limited number of RIPE Fellowships which include the cost of the RIPE Meeting ticket, economy travel to the Meeting location and accommodation for the duration of the Meeting.

The RIPE Fellowship programme is currently being deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect to reinstate and issue new calls for Fellowship applications once in-person events resume.

RACI

The RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative (RACI) is an effort to enhance sharing of knowledge between academics and researchers looking at topics of interest to the RIPE community, and network operators. If you work in academia or research, RACI can help you present your research to the RIPE community or provide funding to attend RIPE Meetings.