RIPE 92 - RIPE Community Plenary Minutes
Thursday, 21 May 2026, 16:00 – 17:30
Chairs: Mirjam Kühne and Anna Wilson
Scribe: Ulka Athale
Status: Draft
RIPE Chair Team Update
Mirjam Kühne and Anna Wilson
The RIPE Chair team, Mirjam Kühne and Anna Wilson, started off by providing an update on their activities. They highlighted the new RIPE Fellowship programme and thanked the coaches for supporting RIPE Fellows, the mentors and the first-ever community Meet & Greet team. Mirjam then opened the floor to a discussion on the review of the RIPE Working Group Chair job description and whether there was a need to align the Working Group Chair selection processes.
Benedikt Stockebrand (Stepladder IT Training + Consulting Gmbh) stated that there are different kinds of WGs, some very policy oriented, with money and legalities at stake and others very technical. This could provide grounds for different procedures.
Franziska Lichtblau (SAP Cloud Infrastructure) said that she was not a fan of term limits, however she would like all Working Groups to consider having removal procedures. As a Working Group Chair herself, it’s important that the group should be able to remove her if needed.
Leo Vegoda (Leo Vegoda / Peering DB) commented that the selection process should protect RIPE against someone who intentionally wants to disrupt the Working Group, RIPE or the RIPE NCC. Other instances of failure such as a non-functional Working Group Chair are easier to recover from.
Rüdiger Volk remarked that he was surprised to see the discussion of the selection process under the label of the Working Group Chair Job Description document, given the difficult history of the selection process.
Mirjam replied that the current version of the document included the selection process. Additional context has been added to this section.
Addressing Benedikt’s comment, Remco van Mook said that the only time he’s run into issues with a WG Chair was not with a policy group. Regarding remote chairing, he added that the intention to be inclusive was appreciated but in practice hasn’t been feasible.
Mirjam clarified that her reference to remote participation meant allowing online attendees to participate in the Working Group Chair selection, and not to have Working Groups chaired remotely.
Sasha Romijn (Reliably Coded) commented that the RIPE community runs selections for Working Groups and not elections, the terms are often confused. While there is a case for allowing different processes, that does not mean there should be 11 different methods. The current processes are either excessively light on documentation or over-complicated. Fundamentally the processes should be based on consensus, a middle path should be found.
Daniel Karrenberg (RIPE NCC) agreed with Sasha and said RIPE needs to have transparent processes that are understandable for people who are newcomers. The less transparent these processes are, the more RIPE looks like a closed community. He further added that it is within the RIPE Chair’s role to review the Working Group Chair selection processes, formalise them and provide guidance to Working Groups.
Jim Reid (RTFM llp) said that it was important to avoid over-engineering processes and that Working Groups should be allowed to get on with their work. He added that getting volunteers to take on these roles was a more pressing question.
Mirjam replied saying she believed the two issues were connected.
Next, Anna Wilson (RIPE Vice Chair) presented on the upcoming RIPE Meetings. Anna pointed out that in the past, RIPE Meeting fees paid by attendees contributed to roughly 50% of the cost of a RIPE Meeting. This is no longer the case, with the RIPE NCC currently bearing the majority of the costs of a RIPE Meeting. Anna opened the discussion to attendees to share their thoughts on the future financial sustainability of RIPE Meetings.
Remco van Mook (no affiliation listed) commented that raising fees to 900 euros would make it very difficult for individual contributors and would impact the number of people who attend. He added that the RIPE NCC also gets good value from the RIPE Meeting.
Sasha Romijn stated that cost of raising prices would mean that individual contributors might no longer be able to participate and would impact new participants in RIPE. Differential pricing is a well-established concept in several communities and should be explored further.
Stefan Wahl (Route 128 Gmbh) commented that the cost of a higher meeting fee combined with flights and accommodation is likely to mean fewer companies will send people, particularly younger people.
Silvan Gebhardt (Openfactory Group) said that an increase to 900 euros means that it makes financial sense to open up a new LIR to get two free tickets to a RIPE Meeting.
Mirjam clarified that this is no longer the case – only new RIPE NCC members (not LIRs) receive the option of getting two free tickets to RIPE Meetings.
Lars-Johan Liman (Netnod) asked if a more detailed breakdown of costs could be provided because there probably are areas where costs could be reduced. He added that an increase to 900 euros would be steep.
Will van Gulik (Romand-IX, AS2613) said that he agreed with Sasha that it would not be possible for contributors like him to make it to RIPE Meetings with a substantial fee increase.
Tina Morris (Amazon Web Services) asked whether the cost of 900 euros included sponsorship and what the cost per person would be with sponsorships included.
Anna replied that sponsorship amounts vary heavily per meeting and that 900 euros is roughly half the underlying meeting cost per person.
Tina stated that the meeting and attendance were valuable and reasons for her company to be a sponsor. As sponsors they get their names on a banner and they provide quite a bit of money to help keep the meetings affordable to people, and she supported this. She said that she would like to see more creative funding for meetings if necessary. She also mentioned her time served on the NANOG Board and expressed empathy for meeting planners who need to balance costs. She reiterated that she would like to see more sponsors to help the meeting organisation.
Anna thanked Tina for her comments.
Randy Bush (RGnet OÜ) commented that the discussion was about deciding who should pay – the attendees or the members.
Anna thanked the audience and handed the floor back to Mirjam.
ICP-2 – Approaching the Finish Line: Key Issues and Next Steps
Hervé Clément, Constanze Bürger and Andrei Robachevsky
Hervé and Andrei presented an update on the ongoing work to revise ICP-2. They shared an overview of the most recent status report outlining progress made on various issues since RIPE 91.
Paul Rendek (D-Stream Group) thanked the NRO NC for their work. He said that he liked the document and he was glad they were going to restructure it. Articles 4.1(A) and (B) are crucial, he appreciated the inclusion of financial independence and operational independence as they are clearly identified in the geopolitical context in which we are operating. He stated that he felt ICANN was given a lot of prominence in the document.
Regarding Article 2.3 (B) (i) (c) concerning the derecognition of an RIR, Paul pointed out that there are three paths to derecognition – by an RIR, by the community and by ICANN. He asked why ICANN was given this position as their community does not really overlap with the RIRs. He added that the document places a lot of responsibility on ICANN and changes the dynamics between the RIRs and ICANN.
Andrei thanked Paul for the feedback. He replied that ICANN’s position stemmed from community feedback about the need to have a party to break a deadlock. He pointed out that ICANN can trigger the derecognition process, as some people felt that a party outside the RIR system should also be able to do this. He said that he would take his feedback about ICANN’s presence in the document back to the NRO NC for further discussion.
Paul thanked Andrei and added that he could see the work done to create accountability but there’s a lot on the ICANN level.
Hervé commented that decisions are made by the entire council, but they report back on the comments from the communities.
EU Competition Law – The Role of the RIPE NCC as an RIR
Athina Fragkouli, RIPE NCC
Athina provided an overview of an external legal analysis regarding the RIPE NCC’s position in terms of EU competition law as articulated in Article 101 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The analysis concluded that RIPE NCC’s activities do not fall under the purview of this article.
Niall O’Reilly (Tolerant Networks Ltd.) thanked Athina for her presentation and asked whether an increased meeting fee would become an economic barrier and if that would affect the RIPE NCC’s position vis-à-vis competition.
Athina replied that this was out of scope for the analysis she presented.
Digital Legacy
Robert Kisteleki
Robert spoke about the need to think about digital legacies or personal continuity plans in case of unforeseen circumstances. He asked for support from the community to work on documentation for best practices on digital legacies.
Mirjam thanked Robert and asked whether something like this already exists. She recalled the presentation from NLNOG and that there were good suggestions in the ensuing discussions. She invited the community to support Robert’s work.
Will van Gulik commented that he lost someone recently and had to reset their passwords to sunset their accounts. He was not aware of existing documentation and that he would support Robert.
Lars-Johan Liman said that as old beards they should perhaps go for a CBS repo instead of a git repo.
Jan Zorz (Provision) said that the BCOP Task Force would be a good place to work on the document.
Mirjam thanked Robert for his presentation.
Secret WG – Survey Results
Remco van Mook
Remco reminded the community of Rob Blokzijl’s, paraphrasing, “Most communities fall apart because they start to take themselves too seriously.” He presented the results of a survey and asked for volunteers to continue the good work of keeping the RIPE community from taking itself too seriously.
Niall O’Reilly thanked Remco for offering an excellent and lighter example of the digital legacy that Robert was talking about.
Mirjam thanked Remco for his work and for staying on.
Remco invited volunteers to join the effort.
Will van Gulik volunteered to enter the smoke-filled back room.
Jen Linkova said that she hoped this WG would not have a standard Chair Selection process.
Remco agreed and said this was a complicated selection process that can’t really be written down.
Open Mic
Shane Kerr, IBM pointed out that the mics have cards asking speakers to state their names and affiliations. He said that it’s important that the audience knows who financed their presence at the RIPE Meeting.
Mirjam referred to the Working Group Chairs lunch where this was discussed and the Address Policy Working Group session. There was agreement that this should be encouraged, even if it’s hard to enforce.
Randy Bush said that it was good manners to do so.
Niall O’Reilly said that he had held leadership roles in RIPE over several years. He encouraged the attendees to review the transcript from the Address Policy WG session earlier that day, when Franziska Lichtblau brought up the topic and asked the group to guide the WG Chairs in executing their role. He added that there were 174 first-time attendees who do not know the people at the microphones.
Lukas Rose (Dusseldorf University) a first time attendee said that it was very helpful to know who everyone is and where they are from. He did not expect the speaker to be commenting on behalf of their organisation but that it was valuable to know affiliations.
Nico van Thadden (Pfalzkom) said that while on the topic of etiquette he noticed that many people are not wearing their badges correctly and, in some cases, not at all. He asked if everyone could please wear their badges correctly.
Lee Howard (unaffiliated, ARIN Board) said that he had noticed timekeeping being a recurring issue over the meeting week. It was important to give discussions space.
Gert Doering (Spacenet AG) said that having been a WG Chair for a while he was aware that time management could be challenging and that sometimes things go wrong with the best of intentions.
Niall O’Reilly pointed out that it’s a balancing act and if there were no discussions the question would be about having too much slack in the time slots.
Mirjam and Anna closed the session and invited the audience to stay on for the BoF on AI in the upcoming session.