General meeting, Wednesday 13 May, 2015, at 6 p.m.:  General meeting, Wednesday 13 May, 2015, at 6 p.m.:  


NIGEL TITLEY:  It's 6:00.  Can I ask for the doors to be closed, please, and let's get underway.  Thank you.  

Welcome, everyone.  Thank you for coming.  This is the annual General Meeting, 2015.  We have got a a reasonable amount of business to get through, so let's get started.  

That is the first item on the agenda.  

The second item is the report from the RIPE NCC, this has already taken place in the NCC Services Working Group which preceded this, so if you were at the NCC Services Working Group you have already seen it and if you weren't, bad luck.  There is always a webcast, yes.  

Item number 3, which is presentation of the RIPE NCC financial report, 2014.  And Jochem is going to come and tell us all about that.  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  Good afternoon, I am the Chief Financial Officer of the RIPE NCC and I will explain a bit more about the financial report.  I have to say this year it looks quite differently, maybe some of you have read it.  And the main reason for that is we changed the structure.  We wanted to fully comply with Dutch general counting principles, so looks quite differently so do have a look.  

First of all, a bit of the highlights, I think the main highlight has been in the previous years, is the strong membership growth:  1,200 members, which equates to 12%, more than 11,000 members.  This resulted in high revenue of more than 24 million, which was 10% over budget.  So a lot more than expected.  

Our expenses were within the budget we set, so those are correlating, 3% below, 21.2 million, leading to an overall surplus of 3.4.  In between there is a financial result we have on the capital we are holding.  Overall, our capital increased with up to 25 million, a bit more, and as I mentioned the last highlight is the compliance with Dutch.  Officially we don't have to comply as a Dutch association, but the Board felt it's prudent to do this.  I will just tell a bit more how that changed the report.  

The whole structure of the report changed, so you will first see all the tables and the figures, then you have the accounting policies, which is quite, well, how to say, quite detailed financially.  And then you have the notes which is maybe a bit more interesting for you to read on why certain figures are the way they are.  

There is a lot of additional information, we have some cumulative tables to show ‑‑ to reflect the differences between the capital, for instance.  There is a bit more detail on the expenses we had for the Executive Board, which is a compliance we have to have for the accounting principles.  The profit and loss statement has changed; we added sponsorship income and depreciation, bad debts is bundled together with all the other expenses.  And lastly this is quite a big change in our figures, we used to activate software development on the balance sheet, and because we can't give it an economic value, we can't really sell the software we have, the consultants didn't agree to keep that as an activated item so we removed that from the balance sheet.  

Well, the financial indicators as mentioned, a lot higher revenue than last year and then the budget.  

Expenses below the budget set, as planned for we did have an increase from 2013, with 10%.  Surplus, a lot higher than the budget, we aimed for about half a million; surplus was 3.4.  

Capital expense lower, especially from the budget, of course the software development was taken out as well.  

Number of members up from the budget and from 2013 as mentioned.  

Average expense per member is decreasing also from the budget, and the capital expense ratio, which is one of the indicators we look at how our reserve buffer is about 1.2 years in total expenses.  

Member development as mentioned, you see since run‑out it started increasing and now it's over 1,200.  And so far this year, already, it's even further increasing.  So we really see a steep growth there.  Well, this reflects in the revenue obviously.  

The member fees, includes some of the new member fees coming in, 4% up from the budget, but the second line item you see the signup fees, you see big growth ‑‑ and even 30% up from last year.  RIPE meeting fees, a bit up, we had more attendees at the RIPE meetings, and the line of sponsorship income is sponsors for RIPE meetings and Atlas sponsorship, some VAT returns is other, etc.  

Just to give you a bit of an idea of the revenue split, 71% is recurring membership fees; then we have 14% signup fees and 7% new member fees, so about 20% from new members and some smaller items, 1% for reopening fees, people who close down and have to pay an additional signup fee, RIPE meeting about 1% sponsorship quite low and other income.  

Independent resource about one million.  

Expenses, I just want to highlight two things:  First of all, the personnel expenses are a bit up from budget.  We were one of the above‑budget so that was part of it, but a large part comes from software development which we used to take out of some of the personnel expenses and we had a bit higher secondary social security cost than expected, than budgeted for.  

The second item, and I think we saw Paul's presentation, we have done a lot more outreach and next year ‑‑ actually our travel costs had increased, we had a lot more trips especially within the region but also the IANA transition has cost quite a bit of additional cost.  

Just to show you a bit of a comparison, so, on the left‑hand side you see the expected surplus of about half a million, and on the complete right you see the 3.4 million which was the end result.  You see the big first item, the income chunk, which was the additional income we received.  You see the red items, which were cost ‑‑ which were above budget, personnel already mentioned, housing was roughly on budget, office costs were below budget, this includes also entertainment and catering costs for meetings.  

Marketing, ER below budget.  

Contributions a bit below, contributions include ICANN distributions, ISOC.  

As mentioned, travel was a bit above budget, consultancy below budget.  

Bank and bad debts are still very low.  The number of people closing for non‑payment is low.  Depreciation again here, software development is having a big impact so actually the costs were a lot lower and financial expenses are some of the interest income items.  

Well, expense split, I won't take very long.  I think the main message is 60% of our expenses are personnel expenses.  And here you see the other items.  

On the balance sheet, well, as I mentioned there was no software development, that was taken out of the balance sheet.  

The capital increased to 25.3 million.  And this year the Board approved the booking to put the alt reserve into the clearing‑house with the new tax ruling make sense to combine this all into the clearing‑house which is there for the membership.  

The capital expense ratio increased to almost 119%.  

And just this is my last slide, you see in the bars you see the increase to a bit more than 25 million and you see how the expenses relate to that in the percentages, and at the moment that is 119% of total expenses.  

And that is the presentation.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Any questions?  

KURTIS LINDQVIST:  So you said you had ‑‑ I can't remember the number ‑‑ very low bad debt, but when the increased number of members and have you done any analysis on stress test and risk analysis because although you seem to have a healthy margin, if you compare to the budget, the budget was actually pretty slim compared to this, to see if you would have had slightly less new members, decrease in members you would have been into a loss?  Given the capital research it's not a major issue, but if it turns out to be ongoing trend, when there is no more v4 space, are they testing on what this means?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Yes, the Board does multiple scenarios before we actually even look at setting the budget, and we try and select a conservative set of items, of growth items.  But yes we do do stress analysis before we actually set the budget.  

KURT LINDQVIST:   I think it's quite interesting given the budget, how the ‑‑ the very large fluctuation, so far we have been lucky they fluctuated up towards ‑‑ 2001 and 2002 they fluctuated downwards and I think having some of those stress test published or GM could be quite interesting because it seems to me that we might be fooling ourselves... 

NIGEL TITLEY:  I think the thing is, IS that we have, as you point out, quite considerable reserves.  If we lose money on a particular year then there is plenty of time to actually take evasive action, as it were.  

KURTIS LINDQVIST:  I agree, but that is what we thought in 2001 as well and 2002 we had quite a large loss.  I am not saying we will repeat that mistake because we have much larger reserves.  Without understanding the undergrowth we are currently seeing, at least I would be interested to hear, yes, 3.4 million losses that ‑‑ you don't have that much time to correct; you have three to four years.  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  Well, given the level of reserves, I mean, if that were to happen, it would be more like 6 or 7 years before we run out the reserves.  But knowing that aside, well, we do look at this carefully and we make do evaluations, I think we can share some of that in the next general meeting if you like.  

SPEAKER:  I have a short comment, this is one of the reasons why the statutes have been changed and the general meeting doesn't accept ‑‑ doesn't approve the annual plan, rather they approve the charging scheme.  So that is the ‑‑ the possibility for the Board to intervene if there is any problem which appears during the day ‑‑ during the year I mean, so between GMs.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Yes, that is exactly the case.  

SPEAKER:  So membership fees were like 2% above budget but sign off fees were 60% above, that doesn't really make sense because did you forget about those last year?  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  Yeah, so, actually, for existing members we can budget quite well what we expect.  With new members the signup fee can fluctuate.  

SPEAKER:  You expected growth of 10% and there was a growth of 12%, it wouldn't be like 60% difference.  Where does that come from?  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  That is the signup fees, the difference.  And actually when you look at overall membership that is not such a huge number.  But, I think ‑‑ let me just skip back to that slide.  I think this is the slide you are referring to.  To this item?  

SPEAKER:  Yes.  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  And actually, that growth, if you see we ‑‑ you can see from the budget it's a huge item, but in number of members, compared to our total number of members, that is not a huge item.  It's only 2% of the membership, additional membership.  And that is....  

SPEAKER:  Peter, could you please go back to the slide with the chart with the number of numbers, it was almost at the beginning of your presentation.  That one.  If I'm correctly seeing from here, about December of 2014 there was a slightly decrease in number of members, something like 1,000, even, or less.  So, do you know the mannerism behind that?  

And the other question is:  Do you predict that this year there will be similar situation to that one?  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  Yeah, maybe I should give a bit more explanation on this slide.  This is a rolling forecast so this is a 12‑month average of the growth.  What happens, we do see quite some closures in the end of the year.  People do say, OK, this is ‑‑ I want to close down, they might say it in October and they will close them down in December.  They have paid for the full year.  Maybe this year it was a bit higher, we didn't see enormous increase, but I think someone made a comment in the address policy that there was a bit of increase.  And also the Board adopted a resolution to avoid people from especially becoming a member in the last quarter and then closing down in the same quarter.  

PETER KOCH:  Peter Koch, DENIC.  You might want to clarify, this is just growth right, not the numbers?  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  Yes.  

PETER KOCH:  Per month?  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  Yes, it's per month.  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  This is the rolling forecast over the last 12 months per month.  So, the 1216 you see is the growth for month over the last 12 months.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Any other questions on the financial report?  OK.  Thank you very much.  Right.  So, that is item number 4 on the agenda.  No, it isn't, that was item number 3 on the agenda.  
Item number four is adoption of the audited RIPE NCC financial report, and obviously voting on this will take place under agenda point 10.  But the resolution is:  "The General Meeting adopts the RIPE NCC financial report 2014."  You will vote on that at agenda point 10.  

Right.  Agenda item number 5.  This is discharge of the Executive Board, this is required under Dutch law.  It basically says that do you think the Executive Board have discharged their duties over the past year?  And again, this is a resolution which will be voted on under point 10.  And it is:  "The General Meeting discharges the Executive Board with regard to the actions as they appear from the annual report 2014."  And you will vote on that at agenda point 10.  

So, item number 6, this is the RIPE NCC charging scheme, and we will have a presentation again by Jochemde.  

JOCHEM DE RUIG:  OK, the charting scheme 2016.  Firstly, how did we arrive to the ‑‑ actually, the two resolutions we have, I think we had a discussion at the last GM in November about AS numbers.  Nigel sent a mail to the membership in January about the way we should move forward and there was general consensus the Board should come with a full proposal on the charging scheme, which happened.  There was a bit more discussion and then finally there was a decision to have a charging scheme and a separate vote on the AS numbers.  And I have combined the presentation for these two resolutions.  Well, first of all, the charging scheme 2016, it's a continuation of the existing model, so we have one LIR, one fee, the fee is euro 1,400, 13% decrease.  Signup fee remains at 2,000 euro and there will be a separate charge for 50 euro for PI assignments and Legacy Resource assignments.  For Legacy Resource holders with a direct contract, it will be the same scheme as 2015.  

Kurtis already mentioned and this is some of the stress analysis we do when we build a charging scheme, so we look at four different scenarios in membership growth with an expected forecast in cost growth, which for next year was 3.5% as an initial indication.  We looked at different fee schedules, 1,600 euros for 15 and 1,400 euros.  And in the end, the Board decided to go for the scheme with 1,400 euros.  And indeed, let's say we have zero membership growth next year we could run into quite a loss of almost 4 million.  Having said that, if we see that coming and that means actually from now on zero growth until then, that is not an expected scenario.  If we look at the continuation of membership growth it would even look, we would still run a small surplus of almost half a million.  

Charging for AS numbers, well, I won't really go into discussion, I will just mention some of the pros and cons mentioned.  The garbage collection was mentioned as a reason, protect scarcity of 16‑bit AS numbers against what some people said it adds a complexity to the charging scheme and the fee is so low, 50 euros, that it isn't of good use for garbage collection.  

The financial impact it will have if it's voted ‑‑ if the resolution is voted in by you, we have 25,000 AS numbers, roughly.  80% of you have an AS number, 30% of LIRs have AS number and PI assignments and it would be approximate 1.3 million in additional revenue.  So the voting is split, there is one vote on the charting scheme 2016 and a vote on whether to charge for AS numbers, 50 euros, yes or no.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Any questions on the charging scheme?  Wilfried.  

WILFRIED WOEBER:  Yes, local registry, just for clarification, the potentially additional 50 euros per AS number, would they be levied on all the AS numbers, also those which are part of the local registry itself or just for those where the local registry sort of is the sponsoring LIR?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  It's all.  

WILFRIED WOEBER:  All, OK, thank you.  

GERT DORING:  I just want to state in public that I appreciate the effort of actually having this up as a voting item, and I promise to be quiet on this from now on.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  We do try to listen.  Any other questions or comments on the charging scheme?  Ruediger.  

RUEDIGER VOLK:  OK, the regular annoyance.  Will we get certificates for the AS numbers we pay?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  I am sure we could print out pretty piece of paper for you.  

RUEDIGER VOLK:  Within the domain of these certificate system we all know?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  We will think about it.  Any other comments?  OK.  Thank you.  

Right.  OK.  So that is item number 6.  Item number 6 has an associated resolution which is:  "The General Meeting adopts the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2016."  And again voting for this takes place under agenda point 10.  

Right.  Agenda point 7, charging for AS numbers.  We have already discussed this, or we have already spoken about this in the current presentation, the previous presentation.  Does anybody want to mention anything further on this?  Any new arguments?  

No.  OK.  In which case there is a resolution associated with this, which is that:  "In addition to the charging scheme the General Meeting approves the separate charge of 50 euros per ASN."  And again, voting for the resolution take place under agenda point 10.  

Right.  Agenda point 8, that is me.  Report from the Executive Board.  

This is my twice a year report on what the Executive Board has been doing over the last six months.  So, off we go.  Start with Executive Board members, you can see them signature up in front of you here, there is myself, Nigel Titley, Remco, Christian Kauffman who is second from the end there, Dmitry, who is next to Remco, Maria Hall, who is right at the end, Salam, who is waving her hand there and then finally there is Janos who is not part of the Board but is part of the Board and we value his unique insights.  Dmitry's term ends this general meeting and as, you know,  the board expands to seven members at this GM so there will be two vacant positions which you will vote on later on.  

We have had four Executive Board meetings since the last general meeting.  The first one was in November, 2014.  19th of December 2014, 19th of March this year, which took place in Beruit, and 1st of April, 2015.  And the minutes of all Board meetings are published after each meeting and we actually have an internal deadline of two weeks to publish those meetings, at least ‑‑ those minutes in draft.  And we also, for your viewing pleasure, bring out a summary of the decisions made, to make it easy for to you find out what we were actually thinking about rather than having to read all the way through the minutes.  

OK.  So what do we do.  In December we approved the activity plan and budget so it could be sent out in plenty of time for the GM and which was previously discussed at the autumn GM, and which has been sent out.  We reviewed and approved updates to the data protection report.  We reviewed and approved updates to the RIPE database for use policy and the IPv4 transfer policy terms and conditions.  And these are all available.  And we obviously agreed to engage with the membership on the charging scheme, 2016, which we have done.  We have sent notes out to the member discuss list and we have also talked it over with anybody that was interested.  And we also discussed the Good of the Internet initiative, as part of which we actually agreed to spend 50K on the crypto project, which we felt was definitely for the good of the Internet.  

March and April, we resolved that LIRs must pay the full annual fee for the year in question.  We had seen a rash of LIRs opening a ‑‑ opening in December, getting their /22, paying a quarter's fees and then closing again almost immediately.  And we felt that this was probably contrary to the spirit of the policy, and so we decided that LIRs must have paid a full annual fee before transfers can actually take place, which helps to close up this loophole a little bit.  We approved the RIPE NCC annual report 2014 and we proposed that the charging scheme that you have just been seen presented to you which is basically continuation of the flat fee with reduced fee going onwards.  

And we also, following the discussion on the members' discuss list, we agreed that members should be allowed to vote on ASN charging since it was no obvious consensus from the discussion on the discuss list.  

And we also discussed a joint RIR stability fund which I will talk about at more length later on in this presentation, which is designed to safeguard the RIR system in the event of problems.  

Ongoing work.  Well, there is the IANA stewardship transition process that you are all familiar with; there is the RIR accountability efforts which we have been working on; there is continuity of services to all RIPE NCC members.  This concerns the statement that we made that we will attempt, in less unless prevented by Dutch law to continue to provide services to all RIPE NCC members, we will not engage in politics of any sort.  Our primary concern is to get number resources out to the global Internet, and in particular to our bit of it.  And that is basically our requirement.  

We supervise the RIPE NCC management and we make sure that Axel and jock em don't run away with all the funds.  We monitor development of the RIPE at /PHRAS project, from this year onwards there will be no further funding for RIPE Atlas probes and they would all come from response /SHEUFPLT we assessed feedback from the membership, and we follow up on any actions that you ask us to do.  And finally, ongoing work is the RACI project which has been expanded out into MENOG and southeast Europe and we have seen members of the academic society actually coming to those meetings.  

Ongoing work, again, draft activity plan and budget, we have obviously produced one draft activity plan for this ‑‑ for 20156789 we now start work on the activity plan for 2016 (2015) and we will carry won this until the end of this year.  

We do a lot of liaison with other RIR boards.  It's very, very useful to be able to discover what other boards are doing, and to also give them advice on what we have been doing.  And all in all we feel this strengthens the RIR system globally.  

We liaise with membership in the RIPE community.  As I have said before.  And finally, we represent the RIPE NCC at various regional and global events, we try and cover ‑‑ we try and ensure there is at least one board member and preferably two at all regional events, so MENOG, SEE and the various regional meetings and ENOG and this involves a fair amount of travel for us.  

Now a little bit on the RIR stability fund.  We have been talking about this for several months and it's been minuted and so forth in the board minutes.  There has always been an informal agreement of mutual support between the RIRs we have always helped each other as necessary, and this is really just slightly formalising that, so that we can actually have it written down somewhere.  The NRO Executive Council proposed a slightly more substantial commitment to support the stability of the RIR system, and we decided it would be good idea to actually get this in place while there is no problem, and so that if there are problems in the future, not that we conceive any ‑‑ no, we can conceive of them but we don't see any coming ‑‑ so, we have started to put a framework into place.  It's not triggered by current events; it's intended to prepare for unforeseen events that might destabilise the RIR system, which we really don't want to happen.  

So basically, it's there to ensure that the RIR system continues to operate even in the event of external attacks of some sort or another.  And the goal is to make sure, ultimately, that RIRs are able to deal with things themselves, if possible, only in the ‑‑ in extremis with the joint stability fund be called upon.  

So, sort of scenarios, natural disasters.  Certain parts of the world are prone to natural disasters and it's quite simple to conceive of an RIR being swept away by a Tsunami somewhere, less likely to happen in Amsterdam but it could happen, and in that event we would probably want to try and support the operations of that RIR.  

Political instability.  That is regrettably more common than Tsunamis and could easily affect the operations.  

Financial distress, well, that could happen, some of the RIRs are not quite as financially stable as we are and it's possible that there might be short‑term cash‑flow problems.  

And finally, criminal activity, cyber attacks, hacking, etc.  It would be nice to think that if our servers were overwhelmed by DDoS attacks that we could actually call upon the other RIRs to actually host serves or whatever for us.  

So, in order to cover this sort of thing, the Board decided merely to earmark one million for this fund.  We are not actually spending this or putting it aside, it's just earmarked, in a sense, so gives a sort of fleshing out of the amount of money that we would think of spending if necessary.  

And of course that would not be just cash, that would include support through staffing and through housing etc.  

And obviously requests for support from the fund would have to be through a properly formally documented procedure, which is in the process of being sorted out.  It obviously has to be sorted out among the five RIRs together.  But that is, that is in process of being produced.  

As usual, that is boilerplate /SHRAOEURBGSD we want to hear from you, we are here to represent you ‑‑ ‑ we are your representation into the RIPE NCC.  Your organisation.  And we appreciate discussions.  You have seen had a we actually listen to the exchanges on the various e‑mail lists but we are also available in the hallways here or privately or whatever.  

You obviously hold discussions twice a year here and you talk to members discussion.  

So, talk to us and let us know what you think, how we are do, what you want us to do, we are at RIPE meetings and regional meetings, we are available by e‑mail and we are also at the meet‑the‑board events at RIPE meetings.  We have given up on the meet‑the‑board breakfasts since nobody ever turned up, but we do offer drinks and people do turn up to those, which is nice.  

And, the biggest impact you can have on the Board is by casting your vote, and we have elections this time, we have elections for two seats.  We have resolved to maintain the extended voting window and ‑‑ which means that the voting is now open for 36 hours or thereabouts, from the point at which we open it here, that allows everybody in the region to have a chance at voting in some sort of social hour.  They don't actually have to get up at 2:00 in the morning to vote like they used to.  So, we think, we have seen remote participation increase markedly since we extended that period, and so we think it's probably a good thing.  

We are also expanding the Board to seven members, so there is an additional seat, we expanded by one last year and another this year, this takes us up to seven; that, in my view, at any rate, is probably the largest size the Board should get to because over seven becomes unwieldly.  We are already getting to the stage where it's getting difficult to set dates for Board meetings and guarantee that all Board members will be there, even though we try and book Board meetings a year in advance.  

We have four excellent candidates standing for the two seats that are there, so, and you will be voting for them.  

And the Board members that you elect obviously represent your interests, will drive the RIPE NCC forwards.  

Any questions?  

ROB EVANS:  Just a quick question.  What sort of commitments have the other RIRs made to the joint RIR stability fund?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  That is a very good point.  Do we know?  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  So it's still ‑‑ so it's being discussed by the Boards of various other regions.  We have been the first to actually make a decision on this, but I do anticipate more Boards to come to resolutions about this in the next few months.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  I thought that was probably the answer.  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  Again at the same time, as long there is no documented procedure in place on actually withdrawing funds there is nothing going to happen ‑‑ 

NIGEL TITLEY:  Absolutely.  

PETER KOCH:  On the very same topic actually, so, these earmarked part of the budget, could you elaborate on how that would interact with the actual reserves and would it be privileged tax‑wise and all the other things?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  It has no accounting impact whatsoever.  It won't appear on the accounts.  It's merely giving some idea of what sort of funds could be available if they were called upon.  

PETER KOCH:  So it's a commitment that wouldn't have to to appear in every other year's budget?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Exactly.  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  This is not part of the operating budget, this is earmarking a part of the reserves that we don't do in the budget.  

PETER KOCH:  OK.  But it's important to have the symetry or asymetry of the contributions to be able to have a symmetric risk assessment on that part, right?  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  You can look it up, the sizes of the different RIRs differ greatly, of course, but we are assuming that every RIR will contribute to the best of their abilities.  Because there is a shared interest.  But I mean, it's not up to us to decide obviously.  

PETER KOCH:  Sure.  Symmetric doesn't mean equal.  Symmetric to the contributed risk, maybe, somehow.  

SPEAKER:  Just a quick question about same topic.  Do you have any idea how to solve ‑‑ like in case of financial crisis with RIRs, in which ways we are going to support them, internal loans, or it's actually just give them money?  

NIGEL TITLEY:  That will be part of the documented procedure which is in process of being produced.  I think what would happen is that we would have to look at each situation as it arose and deal with it as appropriate.  So if it's merely a short‑term cash flow issue then that could be covered by a loan; if it's a housing issue, then we  could deal with it by housing in Amsterdam or whatever.  It's a matter of looking at each situation as it occurs and dealing with it appropriately.  

CARSTEN SCHIEFFNER:  I just wonder, said currently just earmarked because there is no withdrawal procedure in place right now, but I just wonder as soon as there is a formal procedure in place for donating as well as for withdrawal, then why ‑‑ am I clearly off track here?  

REMCO VAN MOOK:  The funds will remain earmarked within our reserves.  There is not going to be a separate institution or a separate bank account that these earmarked funds will flow into.  So, they will stay part of the RIPE NCC reserves until called upon.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Any other questions on the Board report?  

SPEAKER:  It's maybe into the question, but suggestion, to the Board members.  As we seen on previous part of general meeting, we have seen good results which have been achieved on regional approach and as you said, you also are going to visit regional meetings and more activities with members.  So, I am not sure whether that is the right time to discuss but maybe later, and I ask the Board to think a bit more about regional outreach because now ‑‑ success of regional outreach but all activity ‑‑ all RIPE community activities by NCC are mostly in western part of Europe now, so maybe thinking about budget of the next years, think about next year of draft activities, start preparing and improving more regional outreach because, OK, we see at least one member from MENOG region Board, so maybe make more activities in regions, especially because we see other feedback and good results of such activities.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  OK.  Thank you.  We will certainly think about that.  Any other questions or comments?  Thank you very much.  I will stand down and do it from here.  

That is item 8 done.  

So, item number 9, the RIPE NCC Executive Board appointments.  I would like to invite the candidates to stand up, to each make a short presentation, five minutes maximum if they wish to do so.  Dmitry, since you are up here.  

DMITRY BURKOV:  Good evening, my dear friends, colleagues, I am appreciated for this opportunity.  I am a bad speaker, usually I speak only when I see problems or ‑‑ make some trouble.  But this is not the case.  I am really proud that I have got chance in my life to work with the best self‑governed organisation on Internet community and to work in our unique community from Atlantic to Pacific oceans.  I hope that my experience and expertise can be useful to protect your interests.  And for me, it will be a honour if you will elect me for the next term.  Thank you.  Of course, I can make some trouble.  I want to remind you that there are some other solutions for IANA transitions because ‑ enough people with keys in their pockets if something will go wrong we will ‑‑ we can give signature not to Verisign but to us please.  Thank you.  For some people it was a joke.  
(Applause) 

NIGEL TITLEY:  I am going to call candidates in order of nomination, so the next one up is Janos.  

Janos:  Good evening, everybody.  I am sure that most of you know me because I am an active member of the community in the last 20 years.  I have attended most RIPE meetings from RIPE 21 in Rome and I participated in various task force in the database security task force, in the data Protection Task Force and I also gave recently a presentation about IPv6 deployment in Hungary at the RIPE meeting in Warsaw.  

As far as my education is concerned, I have master diploma in computer science from Romanian university.  I have also master diploma in management from the University of Amia in France, and I also have a master diploma in economics from the University of Budapest, in Hungary.  I had the opportunity as Managing Director the ‑‑ TLD registry to use this knowledge and I acquired quite a lot of expertise in these fields of financial, technical and managerial skills, and if you elect me, I commit to use this expertise in the favour of the RIPE NCC membership, basically you.  

I have been on the Board of the RIPE NCC for nine years as treasurer and my goal was to make this association stable, financially stable and accountable, transparent organisation, and this is why the statutes, the treasury statutes have been written up, and when I left the Board I was offered to work as an advisor, which was an honour for me, and this way I could keep in touch with the problems which the association had since.  

I think that the changing world requires the NCC to be flexible and adapt itself to this changing world, namely the IPv4 scarcity and the IANA transition, for example.  And I think that we have to make sure that the NCC remains stable association which works in transparent manner.  

I would be very honoured if you elected me and I could continue to serve the community, to serve you, and I think that we have to make sure that the services which the NCC provides are of very high quality and is for the benefit of the membership of each and every one of us.  

Thank you, and I would be very honoured if you elected me.  Thank you.  
(Applause) 

NIGEL TITLEY:  Next up is Peter.  

SPEAKER:  Ladies, gentlemen, I was given five‑minute time slot, that should be more than enough.  Most of you know me.  I am quite talkative person and I don't want to stand between the voting and a dinner, I assume that everybody is hungry right now.  You know me from various places.  I am ‑‑ it was sometimes described as a pain in the neck.  I am asking different questions and sometimes I am accused of being trying to micro‑manage the Board, like last year.  So, I decided to not micro‑manage ‑‑ I decided to take my chance once again to become a member of the Board, and thanks to the idea which came from the community and has been adopted by the Board, we have the outstanding possibility to have 36 hours of voting window and I encourage you to catch me anywhere this time and have a chat with me, we can exchange some ideas about how I can help you with your goals, how I can help the Board with achieving those goals.  

Yesterday, I was given advice just to say hello and show you a smile, that will be more than enough, I think.  However, I have to stress that the idea which has been presented a few minutes ago by Alexander was at the back of my head for quite a while, you probably notice the same thing like Alexander did, that there is no one from Estonia, from Croatia, from Belarus and very small numbers of people from most of the countries from Eastern Europe region.  And I would like to contribute to the idea of pushing the community to engage in those regions in our work.  And I will be ready or not, not only if you decide to vote for me but if you will decide to have a chat with me and tell me how I can help you.  Thank you.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  We have a fourth candidate, Amir, from Iran.  He has not been able to make it to the meeting.  We have asked him to either upload a video clip or a statement which would be read out.  He doesn't appear to have done either.  Fergal, have we received anything?  

FERGAL CUNNINGHAM:  No.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  His biography is on the website but there is no presentation or anything from him.  

So that is the introduction of the Executive Board candidates.  The election is to fill two seats and again, voting for the resolution takes place under agenda point 10.  And we are now on point 10.  We start with the presentation on voting from Fergal, to tell us actually how to do it.  

FERGAL CUNNINGHAM:  Hello, I am from the RIPE NCC, the membership communications officer.  And I am here to quickly run through how the voting works at the GM today.  We have two ways to vote at the GM, some of you will be voting with paper ballot, but just the people in the room, and we also have electronic voting which is for people in the room and those who are unable to attend.  We informed everyone of these voting rights several times before the GM, and we will start the voting when Nigel makes ‑‑ declares it to be open after this presentation.  

I would like to emphasise that the paper ballots must be handed in before you leave the room today or they won't be accepted.  Sometimes people leave and hand votes in at the desk or things like that.  Please vote counters will be running around and give them your votes before you leave.  

And as Nigel mentioned earlier, electronic votes can be cast until 9:00 on Friday morning.  

There are four resolutions to be voted on.  All resolutions need more than 50% of the yes votes to be approved.  

The abstentions are noted but do not count towards the majority, yes or no.  

And please make a mark in one box only.  

The electronic voting works in the same way, you just click one of the options.  All the registered voters should have received a mail before the GM today.  And the link in that mail will become active as soon as voting is declared open.  

The Executive Board election is slightly more complicated.  We have four candidates and we use the instant run‑off voting method, and this means that several rounds of voting can take place using just one ballot.  On the ballot you need to rank your candidates in order of preference from number 1 to number 4, with 1 being the most preferred.  

You only have to number one candidate too far valid vote but if you want to ensure your vote counts for every round you should fill all the boxes from 1 to 4, and because there is two seats available the lower preferences are likely to be important.  

Again, electronic voting works in the same way, you click a box to pick a number.  For counting the votes we use the third party big pulse system for voting for some years now.  After the voting deadline passes the paper votes are added to the electronic votes in the big pulse system.  Independent observers from other RIRs oversee it and until Friday morning we store the paper ballots in the hotel safe and one of the independent observer holds on to the key.  

So, the counting process.  If a candidate gets more than 50% of the first preference votes he is immediately elected to the board.  If no candidate gets more than 50% the candidate with the fewest first preference is he will eliminated from the count and his second preference get redistributed among the other candidates and this process continues until someone has more than 50% of the votes.  Once that happens, he is elected to the Board.  

For the second seat, the winner of the first seat he will be eliminated from the count for the second seat.  So if your first preference vote was the winner of the first seat your second preference vote now becomes your first preference for the second seat and the process continues the same way as for the first seat.  A candidate still needs more than 50% of the vote and the lowest are eliminated redistributed until someone is elected.  

Announcing the results, Nigel will announce the results at 10:45 in this room on Friday morning.  The announcement is also broadcast live for remote participants at the same link as the current webcast.  

And that is it.  We have uploaded the presentations on line, so I have included some stats afterwards.  We have actually had 590 registrations in 50 countries for this GM.  And I have some total vote counts for previous years.  So we will see how that looks on Friday for this year.  If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them.  

NIGEL TITLEY:  Any questions?  Is that all clear.  So you have until 9:00 on Friday morning, that is 9:00 local time, UTC plus two, to cast electronic votes.  You have until this meeting closes, which is fairly shortly, to actually hand in paper votes.  Don't take paper votes out of the room because they basically won't be valid.  Don't try and hand them in at the hotel desk which has happened in the past, because they won't be counted.  So, hand them in in the room, please.  

OK.  If everyone understands that, and it's the same procedure as before, I will just run through the resolutions formally.  And then I will declare the voting open.  

So, resolution number 1:  "The general meeting adopts RIPE NCC financial report 2014."  That is resolution 1.  

Resolution 2:  "The general meeting discharges the Executive Board with regards to its /A*BG as as they appear from the annual report 2014."  

Resolution 3:  "The general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2016."  Resolution 3.  

Resolution 4:  "In addition to the charging scheme, the general meeting approves the separate charge of 50 euros per ASN."  

And finally, you will be voting for the Executive Board.  I declare the voting open, and I declare this meeting suspended until 10:45 on Friday morning.  So, you should be able to execute your votes from now.  

Thank you.  
(Applause)