RIPE 87 Working Group Chair Meeting Summary
30 November 2023
Sheraton Rome Parco de’ Medici, Rome
Attendees:
Ignas Bagdonas, Erik Bais, Massimo Candela, João Damas, Will van Gulik, Doris Hauser, Julf Helsingius, Alex le Heux, Paul Hoogsteder, Achilleas Kemos, Florence Lavroff, Desiree Miloshevic, Moritz Müller, Brian Nisbet, Bijal Sanghani, Marcos Sanz, Christian Seitz, Peter Steinhäuser, Benedikt Stockebrand, Stephen Strowes, William Sylvester, David Tatlisu, Willem Toorop, Leo Vegoda, Martin Winter, Peter Wehrle, János Zsakó
Chair: Mirjam Kühne
RIPE NCC staff: Sandra Gijzen, Wan-Min Huang, Hisham Ibrahim, Phillip Oldham, Marita Phelan
Scribe: Antony Gollan
1. New/outgoing WG chairs
New chairs were welcomed: Doris Hauser (DNS), János Zsakó (RIPE NCC Services), Alex le Heux (Address Policy), Christian Seitz (IPv6), David Tatlisu (Database).
Outgoing chairs João Damas (DNS), Kurtis Lindqvist (RIPE NCC Services) and Benedikt Stockebrand (IPv6) were thanked; João and Kurtis especially were chairs for a very long time (in Kurtis’s case, since the RIPE NCC Services WG was formed).
2. Chair selection processes
Mirjam noted that all the chair selection processes were different for each WG and this was confusing the community (and even WG chairs), which was evident during RIPE 87. She was working directly with WG chairs to address this. She knew from the community that people liked term limits. As for the selection itself, some WGs were now using Meetecho during the meeting rather than the mailing list. She would be in contact with some of the chairs to discuss their processes.
3. RIPE 87 feedback
Mirjam said, in the PC Submission System, they had the speaker, abstract and affiliation for each plenary talk, which was published on the meeting website. She recommended the WG chairs include this information with their agendas when they send them to the RIPE NCC to publish.
It was noted that the latest Meetecho changes had made it much more usable. Having extra screens towards the back of the main room was helpful; if this were to be done again, it would be good to have one screen with the stenography and the other with slides.
There were issues with the heating/ventilation in meeting rooms, and it might be good to add CO2 monitors and/or portable air filters to the meeting kit. The RIPE NCC should silence mics between talks as otherwise the people on Meetecho could hear. People liked the pronoun stickers, but these could be promoted a little more.
Due to issues with the hotel, there were fewer power points available in the meeting rooms, and some hotel rooms had cold showers.
Labelling of food had been a problem for people with allergies or other requirements. It was suggested they have more fruit in the breaks. Water had not been provided in the side room for some sessions.
There was some discussion about the meeting venue. It was explained that this was partly due to more competition as other groups started up their events after COVID, but the longer planning cycle they were moving to should help with this. However, if they wanted to cover their wide region properly, they might have to accept that sometimes the venue would not be ideal in all respects. Finding appropriately sized venues was becoming an issue, and they also did not have much flexibility on dates as they tried to avoid clashes with IETF, ICANN and other RIR meetings. Some people missed the old tradition of having one ‘easy’ meeting in Amsterdam every year. It was noted that Euro-IX had run a survey in which 80% of respondents indicated they preferred meetings to be held in capital cities.
4. Feedback on WG chairs training
There was positive feedback on the new WG chair training that the RIPE NCC was now offering. There was no objection to sharing this with the RIPE community. It was noted that additional modules would become available after the meeting.
5. AOB
Brian noted that the PC had set their timelines a lot earlier for this meeting, and they would continue with this approach next time. Chairs were reminded that they could let the PC know if they wanted talks for their WGs, and this could work the other way as well–chairs could recommend that people submit talks to the PC.
Regarding the schedule for the next meeting, Mirjam noted that there were some less ideal slots such as Friday morning or the morning after the Whisky BoF, but they had a tight agenda and so it was inevitable that some people would have to get the short end of the stick. There had been a clash this time between Address Policy and Anti-Abuse, where some people had to join one WG remotely from within the other.
João noted that there was often a reason for the way things were structured in their meeting agenda. For example, the GM had traditionally been on the Wednesday evening because they had to count paper ballots, but this was no longer the case, and so it might be worth checking whether the original logic still applied in some cases.