Post-RIPE 82 Working Group Chair Meeting Summary - FINAL

FINAL

27 May 2021

Attendees:

Ignas Bagdonas, Erik Bais, Ciaran Byrne, João Damas, Gert Döring, Rob Evans, Ondřej Filip, Will van Gulik, Antony Gollan, Julf Helsingius, Raymond Jetten, Shane Kerr, Florence Lavroff, Martina de Mas, Desiree Milosevic, Remco van Mook, Brian Nisbet, Niall O'Reilly, Job Snijders, Brian Trammell, Leo Vegoda, Denis Walker.

Chair: Mirjam Kühne

Scribe: Karla Liddle-White

1. Welcoming new WG Chairs

Mirjam welcomed Desiree Milosevic, new co-chair of the Cooperation WG, and Leo Vegoda, new co-chair of the Address Policy WG. Mirjam also welcomed James Kennedy, new co-chair of the Address Policy WG who could not be at the meeting.

Gert Döring was also thanked for his time and work as co-chair of the Address Policy WG.

2. Images covered by copyright

The chairs heard from Ciaran Byrne, RIPE NCC Legal Counsel, who joined the meeting to clarify the use of copyright materials in RIPE Meeting presentations, he also answered questions from the chairs.

Chairs discussed whether this was a major issue and noted the low number of copyright infringement cases from previous RIPE Meetings. The group discussed the use of creative commons licences and asked the RIPE NCC to review the existing guidance around presentations and copyright guidance and see if this could be improved.

3. Feedback from RIPE 82 

The group agreed that the meeting was very well organised overall and the technical set up was close to perfect. It was generally noted though that people were now experiencing virtual meeting fatigue. The virtual format was also limiting the social and networking aspects at RIPE meetings which was seen as having a negative effect on the community overall.

With virtual meeting fatigue, it was noted that not as many people were using SpacialChat but attendees did use the platform to continue discussions after sessions ended.

Suggested improvements to Meetecho included: the ability to share documents and presentations between chairs, the ability to disable “share slides” for speakers if they forgot to do so, an option for chairs and speakers to raise questions, a single button to grant both video and audio (rather than doing this separately), and the ability for speakers to see how much time they had remaining.

One speaker’s presentation had been on a different topic to what they had proposed. The same speaker also had issues with their wifi connection. It was noted that when this happens, the WG Chairs would be encouraged to end the presentation as it is their responsibility to make sure the WG session is run smoothly.

The group discussed pre-recorded presentations and whether these should be more accepted. It was noted that you could not cut a pre-recorded presentation short in the same way as you could with a live speaker. However, pre-recorded content allowed more time for discussion. If pre-recorded presentations are used, slides with a summary would be useful for attendees.

Chairs discussed the length of the meeting days and sessions, there were suggestions of going back to a two-track format to stop prolonging the days, removing BoFs from virtual meetings or considering whether all WGs need a slot. It was noted that one-hour slots were a positive change, but the longer breaks extended the days. The aim had been for more communication and discussion instead of people sitting and watching presentations but his resulted in much longer days.

 With the current developments around COVID-19, the chairs were optimistic that we could go back to a hybrid format for the next RIPE Meeting – a physical meeting for those who could attend while keeping the virtual set-up using Meetecho.