General meeting 10 May 2017 At 6 p.m.: NIGEL TITLEY: Welcome to the RIPE NCC general meeting 2017, if we could all settle down and take our seats.  ‑‑ welcome and preliminaries, I don't know if there are any more preliminaries, item number two report from the RIPE NCC and you already have this one as well this is given And that is me, so ‑‑ that is better. Right. Good. So, this is the report from the RIPE NCC Executive Board, I am Nigel Titley in case you tonight know, I am the Executive Board chairman. And this is my report. Now, the Executive Board members, there is myself, there is Remco van Mook, who is raising his hand, Christian Kaufmann, Dimitry Burkov who is not raising his hand because his visa has run out and he has had to leave the country by midnight, he will get a new one but not while he was here. Maria Hall, who is not raising her hand. She is. Salam Yamout, and Janos and he is over on the right‑hand side. We are different nationalities which makes for interesting mix, sometimes. We have had two Executive Board members since the last general meeting, one on 15th of December, always time to coincide with the RIPE NCC Christmas party and 17th of March 2017, and we published the minutes of the board meetings and some two weeks to the minute after the meeting, and we also published a summary of the decisions, just in case you don't fancy reading through the whole boring thing. The board welcomes comments on them, we seldom get any but occasionally do and send them in via the members discuss mailing list. What did we do at the December meeting, approved the activity plan and budget for 2017, we instructed the RIPE NCC management to redistribute the surplus amount to the members which means you got your discount back or your repayment back. And we decided that new membership applications from legal entities that are related to each other should be processed one at a time. This introduces a sort of damping factor on the speed at which people can spin up new LIRs and request more /22s so it slows things town a bit and it has actually had an effect, so we are quite pleased with that. And we approved the updated RIPE NCC treasury statute. Those of you who don't know about it, that tells us where we can put any surplus money, and it basically says it should go into stable bonds and bank accounts and things and not allowed to put it on the horses. It needs tweaking now and again, particularly because more and more country bonds in particular are getting less and less favoured. At one point we only invested in AAA plus bonds, these are getting more difficult to find. But we still invest in pretty solid resources. In the march 2017 meeting, we agreed on the financial report 2016 which will come in today and you will be voting on it. We approved the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2018 to be presented to the members, we instructed the RIPE NCC to report any cases of fraud to the relevant authorities. Now, the RIPE NCC comes across a number of cases of fraud in applications for memory ‑‑ numbers, and we have to some extent in the past exercised discretion on whether we report these to the Dutch police. We have decided that any case of fraud will be reported to the Dutch police. And it's really up to them to make a decision whether or not to chase it up and prosecute it and so forth, which we think is probably a better way of doing things. And we finally decided that the RIPE NCC will not join the SEED Alliance at this time, it didn't really align itself with the NCC's aims and it's still on the wards, we are still keeping it on the back‑burner but for the moment we have decided not to join it. Charging scheme. Every year we discuss the charging scheme. And in September 2016 we opened discussion again and we actually put a request out on to the members discuss list for people to actually talk to us about their ideas for the charging scheme. Several different models, a number of different models were suggested by various members across the region, and there was no real clear guidance. We had a number of suggestions but nothing that really sort of settles being a consensus. And so ‑‑ and we also had another bunch of members who expressed support for the current model, that is one LIR and one fee. And on the principle of least surprise we decided to go for at least this year the current model, one LIR one fee, since people supported it and there was no obvious one alternative. So, we decided to retain the current model and propose it to you for you to vote on today. This is for the 2018 charging scheme. We are a year ahead, as usual. Outreach. This was discussed a bit earlier in the NCC Services Working Group. From 2018, the RIPE NCC plans to support one regionally focused meeting per year in the ENOG, MENOG and SEE regions and we think this is probably a better way of using the RIPE NCC resources to get to the majority of people in those regions, rather than having ‑‑ well, two large meetings in the ENOG region, for example, one meeting and a number of national local meetings will probably get through more people. This is actually starting working quite well in the MENOG region, that decided of their own free will to go to one meeting, one large regional meeting and multiple local meetings. So, and we think that will probably work in the other regions. If you are violently object to go this please let us know and we are always open to consideration. And of course the existing scheme continues to run for this year, so 2017 there will be two ENOG meetings, things will only change next year. The usual member lunches, training courses and other things will continue as they always have. I would like to say that the budget for outreach has not decreased, it's actually slightly increased, so this isn't about budget, this is just about using the members' money in the most appropriate fashion to get to more people in the region. And this is going to take place throughout the service region. Ongoing work for the Board. First of all, we are planning for the activity plan in the budget for 2018, this is an ongoing job, once we finish one we start planning for the next one. And we feel that there has been advantage in the strategy meetings that we have for the RIPE NCC management team and we will be having another one in June, so we meet up with them for a couple of days and thrash things out, find out what they were doing, and actually decide on forward strategy. We of course continue to engage with the membership and the community, on line and wherever we meet you, basically. We liaise with other RIR boards and occasionally hold joint board meetings but we talk to them quite a lot, we attend other RIR meetings, and of course we supervise the RIPE NCC management and again make sure that Axel doesn't put all the money on the horses. You need to help us, we are representing you, we are basically taking decisions on your behalf and we need to know what your needs and wants are. Obviously we may not be able to satisfy them but we need to know what they were so at least we can make an informed decision, so you need to let us know what you think, now at the general meeting, on the members' discuss mailing list, which we all listen to although we may not respond to it immediately, always informally, I am usually out at the coffee so are the other members, you can always back me into a corner and ask about things or tell me your opinions. You can also talk to the RIPE NCC staff and it will get back to us. It's a completely open and transparent organisation. And you can also e‑mail us directly at the Executive Board mailing list down at the bottom and we all look at that and we will respond, usually it will be me that responds but we will all have looked at and discussed whatever you post. But of course, ultimately, the biggest impact you can have is by voting on the resolutions that will be presented to you at the general meetings and and on the Executive Board elections. We have three members coming up for re‑election, and we have three resolutions to be voted on. And these are all ‑‑ the resolutions are all regular resolutions that we do every year, we have to accept the financial report for 2016, we have to discharge the Executive Board, which basically says we haven't done anything illegal, as far as, you know, and we have to vote on the RIPE NCC charging scheme. There is actually going to be a short presentation on what discharge of the Executive Board means because it's obvious that some people don't understand this. But it is basically about the legality of what we have done as directors of the RIPE NCC. We have five candidates for the Executive Board election, three retiring candidates, Salam, Maria and the German one, whose name just escapes me at the moment, I am getting older. Christian: I will introduce myself later. NIGEL TITLEY: My memory is getting terrible sometimes. Of course the people you elect represent your interests and it's good to talk to them if you can and find out what their views are and as I say, we have five candidates for three positions, and that makes a good election to be honest, it does mean we have some sort of competition. Questions. Any questions? ALEXANDER ISAVNIN: Internet citizen and representative of some LIRs. As we see from your presentation you already decided ‑‑ board already decided to cut support of NOG meetings, my question is simple: When RIPE meeting will come to ENOG region? When RIPE meeting, this meeting, will come to ENOG region? NIGEL TITLEY: When will this RIPE meeting come to your region? When you place a bid for at a RIPE meeting. ALEXANDER ISAVNIN: I was informed the charter of such meetings is so high ‑‑ NIGEL TITLEY: Are we talking about RIPE meetings, this sort of meeting now. It's a matter of placing a bid. The board has absolutely nothing to do with where the board meetings are ‑‑ not board meetings ‑‑ we know where the board meetings are, we don't know where the RIPE meetings are. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. I shall move across the room back to where I was sitting. NIGEL TITLEY: Next item is adoption of the RIPE NCC Financial Report, so we first have a presentation on the financial report. JOCHEM de RUIG: I am the CFO of the RIPE NCC and I will be presenting quite a short presentation on the financials, there is a detailed financial report published on line, if you want to have more detailed information, but let me talk you through the highlights. As you probably have seen throughout the last couple of hours, we had tremendous membership growth over the past year, it's been the highest growth ever for us, and this has of course led to substantial extra revenue coming in with the extra signup fees so the revenue was well above budget and even a bit above last year's, while we had the fee decrease from 16 to 1,400, so there was substantial growth in the revenue. Our over all expenses were also a bit below budget, you have seen some presentations, we have increase in expenses in different areas, we also had quite a big project in relocating to new office space and we have made quite some investments to do that, especially some really basic infrastructure investments like flooring, air quality systems, things like that. Last meeting you voted on redistribution of the surplus and I will show you how that is going where we are now and what has happened. So first membership development, this graph shows again it's going up, we were well over 21100 extra members last year, while five years ago we were around the 600 mark, so this continues to increase and continues to increase our revenue, so when you look at the different indicators some of these key indicators, you see the income part, we ended up with 27 .5 million, that is before the redistribution. So that was up from the budget and up from 2015. Do keep in mind 2015 we have the fee of 1,600 and in 2016 it was 1,400. So that is a 12 .5% difference in fee. Incoming including redistribution, comparing it to the budget, it's not so interesting because we tonight budget for redistribution, compared to 2015 it's a bit up, that is related to the growth in expenses, which you see below there, 23.5. It was below what we budgeted for, over all most were below budget and we also had a change in accounting principles with regards to the depreciation which we actually aligned with the fiscal depreciation for the future to have less of a gap between the fiscal and commercial surplus, so the going to make it easier to see the redistribution and forecast the redistribution. All in all we had a small commercial surplus of 300,000, and the fiscal surplus of course is exactly zero because that is all the extra income we return to you. Capital expense, I did already mention this, we made quite some investments in new office location, up from 2015 quite a bit, but still we made the budget which we were quite happy about because as you know with renovations they tend to get extra items in there which you weren't really counting on. Number of members, over 15,000. 17% up from the previous year. Average expense per member is decreasing compared to the budget and compared to the previous year. And our capital expense ratio tells us something about how our reserves relate to the total expenses and as you can see it's still above that 100% mark which means the reserves are larger than our total expenses. It is decreasing because of course we are not generating any surpluses at the moment. Well, looking a bit at the revenue a bit more, I think when you look at the annual fees, that is all the service fees we get from existing members and new members, well, it's very similar when you look at the budget the previous year and the actuals for 2016. Again keep in mind 2015 had quite different fees so you can see the enormous increase in number of members. The big changing factor is signup fees especially from the budget, almost 175 million difference, that is all the new members coming in. We had more than 3,000 applications, of course not every application makes it to a new member, some of them come and go, we hear nothing of them, they don't pay but a lot of them do. Other income comprises of RIPE meeting income, sponsorship income, some VAT returns within the EU. There was a bit up, there was one of item this year, but that won't continue to be much higher. All in all 27 .5 and then the redistribution comes in as a negative income, 3.9 was the fiscal surplus so that is deducted as negative income, leaving 23 .6 as a total income. Talking about the redistribution, just to show you what happened, we had about 20.5 million in service fees paid, as you can see the excess contribution we calculate to 3.9, there was a bit left over contribution from 2015, which is a margin we keep so we don't give you back too much because the tax authorities don't look favourable upon that so we always keep a small margin. All in all we are returning this year 4.1 million to you. Over about 15,000 members, there was about 100 members who became member in December, people who become members in December don't pay service fee for 2016 but for 2017 so they are not eligible for any return. The average redistribution is ‑‑ was 274. Looking at our expenses over the last year, we have seen a growing staff level, it's gone up with 6 FTE and a bit above the 2014 level, we do see more and more work throughout the different activities and more members creates also more work. If you look at it in comparison with the FTE growth it's still quite moderate, you can see over the last five years we have been well above the 10% membership, our FTE growth has been quite low and has been negative in 2015. I tried to simplify the expense split a bit this year, if you look at personnel and consultancy items it's about 65%. This has been the case for last couple of years, it's very similar. Operational cost in percentage‑wise have gone up a bit, main reason we have changed the financial expenses, the depreciation which is the largest item within financial expenses, other items are bad debts which is very low still, it's almost half a percent or something we have in bad debts. Very few people leave the membership. And here is the detailed chart. It's also in the annual ‑‑ financial report, do take a look if you have an interest in the different items. As mentioned before most items were below the budget, personnel expenses a bit move, we did have a bit higher employers' tax than we expected and we had some one‑off items that came in there. Some items were below, actually housing was below what we forecasted, we expected to have quite a long overlap between the old and the new building, but we have had been able to renegotiate with our landlord that period became a bit shorter so we had a bit lower cost than we expected. The last item I wanted to mention is the depreciation, you see the change in depreciation with a lot lower expense in depreciation. Over all 23.5 million in expenses, below the budget but up from 2015. Expense per member, it's been decreasing for the last five years, again in 2016 and this trend is continuing with the growth in the membership. The balance sheet, well, again you see the housing coming in, the tangible fixed assets have increased quite substantially, that is all the investments we have made. Over all we see the total balance sheet is not growing that much any more because we are returning the surplus to you every year. Having said that, the clearing‑house this year will grow a bit with the 300K surplus we have made, as you may remember we have a tax ruling where all the capital gains we have in the clearing house we can accumulate in the clearing house tax‑free. The redistribution of member fees, 4.3 million you see on the balance sheet at the end of the year, just want to show you what is happening with that. So that is item you saw at the end of the year and this is where we are now. So, we have send out most of the invoices for the year in January and so far we have returned 3.3 million to you. People with quarter invoicing, half‑yearly invoicing still are waiting a bit of the return in the coming periods. And that is it. Are there any questions? NIGEL TITLEY: Any questions for Jochem. BRIAN NISBET: It's possible I should have asked this question somewhere else, anyone who is based in the EU has of course been repeatedly told by about GDPR over the last year and this is the new ‑‑ the new privacy, the new ‑‑ yes, the general data protection regulations, so I am wondering, I am assuming the plan the NCC have in regard to the new regulations and what is going to be required by them under those, I am wondering what are the preparations like for the NCC? JOCHEM DE RUIG: It was very difficult to understand your question. BRIAN NISBET: What are the NCC's plans with regards to the GDPR regulations that will be coming in in a year's time? NIGEL TITLEY: Our lawyer will answer this one. ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Hello, this is Athina Fragkouli head of legal from RIPE NCC. Thank you very much Brian for this question. It's actually something we are already working on, it's a huge project, and it requires involvement of the whole ‑‑ of all departments, all the organisation, we are reviewing all of our data and we are evaluating this data with regards to this new regulation and we are planning to be ready when the new regulation will be in place and be implemented. Thank you. BRIAN NISBET: Cool. That is within the current budget, etc., etc.? There is no exceptional pieces there. ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Yes. AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Erik Bais. I have a question, I don't know if you followed the Address Policy today, but there was a discussion about reducing the minimum allocation size which actually has an impact on perhaps the new members actually signing up. The question is ‑‑ you don't need to answer it at this moment ‑‑ but if that policy proposal actually comes in play it would actually be good to have an impact analysis specifically on member take‑up and the financial impact on that. JOCHEM DE RUIG: Very good point Erik. NIGEL TITLEY: We would look at that in the impact analysis part of the PDP. Hank: When you have a bad debt do you reclaim any of the resource that is have been allocated to the member? JOCHEM DE RUIG: Yes, there is a whole process for that, a closure and deregistration procedure, we have a whole time frame it's mainly my colleagues, legal again and registration services who take care of that. Hank: If the resources have been transferred to another outside region? SPEAKER: Andrea, I think you are better suited to answer this. AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I will repeat. If a member has defaulted and you basically have written it down as a bad debt and you now want to reclaim the resource that is have been allocated to them but they have transferred them previously outside of the region, what do do you? ANDREA CIMA: RIPE NCC. We do not transfer resources away from organisations which have not fulfilled the payment for the full year so we will only transfer resources away to other regions or to other organisations within the region once the outstanding invoices for the member has been fulfilled. AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you. Elvis Velea: One question ‑‑ I have recently noticed this, we are a member that is based in the United States. We don't usually receive or we receive invoices with zero VAT, however the invoices issued by the RIPE NCC to members outside Europe have 21% VAT added. Could you explain why is that? I am only asking because we are only receiving these invoices with added VAT from the NCC, no other supplier or no other company that we work with has this role. SPEAKER: Yes. Well, I want to make two comments on this. Well, I think under EU regulation we provide a service in the Netherlands and within the EU, when we have a legitimate VAT number we can shift the VAT to the other organisation. For organisations outside the EU, we can shift the VAT as it's kind of seen as export. So that is how we treat that. The second point I wanted to make, there is ‑‑ legislation has changed a bit in the US and we are now looking at the impact that has, possibly on us and on you, because it looks like there could be additional tax levy on our members, so we are actually in the process of really digging into this, it's not so straightforward for us because we don't have the contact there but I would be very happy to have a chat with you on that because it's quite tricky circumstance. ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: And I do have a second question, which is related both to maybe the first presentation and yours, and it has something to do with the charging scheme ‑‑ well, not the charging scheme but the requirement of a member to pay all of the invoices the RIPE NCC has issued or not even has already issued but will have to issue for the current year in order to be able to transfer parts or all of their IP addresses. Now, I have talked to a fair amount of board members about this, and I was not extremely happy with how the board has reached its decision, the initial /TEGS was maybe up until one or two years ago that if a member transfers all of their resources then they would have to pay for all the invoices before they close, now I understand that a decision has been made that if a member that pays annual invoices of course will have their first invoice issued in January, it will have a 30‑day due date and up to 90‑day, according to the billing procedure, but they will have to pay this invoice even if they want to transfer their IP addresses or parts of their IP addresses in let's say the first week, so the invoice is not yet due; however, the RIPE NCC will not offer the service of transferring IP addresses unless that member pays its invoice entirely ‑‑ well of course but it forces the member to pay the invoice before the transfer is approved. DIMITRY BURKOV: There are two things, one of them is that there is an annual fee which has to be paid, the fact that you pay quarterly is an advantage which is provided by the NCC but it doesn't mean that you don't have to pay it for the full year so therefore if the rule says you have to pay the annual fee in front ‑‑ so just before the transfer is done, otherwise it won't be done then you have to pay the whole annual fee. So if it was not invoiced yet the NCC will issue an invoice and you will have to pay for it. Now, the other thing is that if the invoice is not overdue yet or not even due yet, you still have to pay the invoices issued, so that is how the rule is set. I think this ‑ I hope this answers your question. ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: That is what I was asking. Let's forget about the quarterly thing. The NCC issues an invoice on the 17th of January. On the 20th of January the member decides I want to transfer some of my IP addresses. The invoice is only due on the 16th of February. However, the member is forced by the NCC to pay their invoice before the transfer would be approved. DIMITRY BURKOV: Correct. So the rule says you have to pay all your invoices and annual fee before the transfer is done. So, and if this has been issued and it's not overdue yet, you will still have to pay for it. So that is the rule. It doesn't say that you will be invoiced for the annual fee; it says you have to pay the invoice. Does it make it clear now? ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: Yes. When was this changed? When was this rule made? When was this decision taken? DIMITRY BURKOV: So this is I think a procedural thing. I think it was taken back in two years ago, roughly around the board meeting we had in Beruit. ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: You thought this does not need consultation of the members? DIMITRY BURKOV: This is a procedural thing, this is not a policy thing. AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is Bogdan Mihai. I want to agree with Elvis and I want to say that there was a time when it was too more comfortable to work but now this procedure, it makes a lot of problem for transfers and usually makes some delay but it doesn't bring anything we need. It makes life more complex. Thanks. DIMITRY BURKOV: The problem is we have seen some instances when ‑‑ where people transfer their resources and later forgot to pay their invoices. And this is what we would not like to happen because that harms you, the members, who are paying their bills. DIMITRY BURKOV: I think in the case of the member would quickly cancel the service like transferred all the addresses, I think in the sub sequentially RIPE should refund them by the invoice due date they are not a member and I think they should request a refund and that would prevent both attempt to not pay the bill and quickly transfer resources out but in subsequent should be refunded. I don't want to discuss this, that is procedural thing. Pay now get it refunded later if you are getting everything within a month and closing membership. REMCO VAN MOOK: I am trying to follow the reasoning. So, and I am probably understand ‑‑ probably not fully understanding what you are suggesting, but are you suggesting that transferring resources before paying your invoices means retroactively cancelling your membership to a prior date and therefore you are not due invoices or ‑‑ what is the rationale that ‑‑ BOGDAN MIHAI: I am saying if you bill before it's due then the member is entitled to refunding if they are under due then that fee should be returned. These are separate issues, the procedure of having no outstanding invoices mean that RIPE NCC bills the revenue when you have accounting not on cash basis but outstanding invoice basis, that may be fine have it at 90 term. Once the fee is no longer due it should be refunded subsequently; these are separate issues. REMCO VAN MOOK: So you are a member of an association and as such with the charging scheme the amount of the membership falls due on January 1st. And since that is pretty inconvenient for most organisations to have an invoice due date of minus 17 days the NCC as the operating entity is kind enough to give you a payment term that is more reasonable; however, within the rules of the association there is nothing that says that you don't have to pay. BOGDAN MIHAI: These may be corner cases ‑‑ REMCO VAN MOOK: My apologies but I think this is ‑‑ these are as you say, corner cases, and if there is any ‑‑ so if by changing this rule to prevent basically fraud from certain parties badly affects your business, then by all means come talk to us and we will see what we can do about that. BOGDAN MIHAI: That is not issue ‑‑ we pay ‑‑ anyway. REMCO VAN MOOK: Since you are here you are all members in good standing and you are all paying your invoices. BOGDAN MIHAI: And we don't intend to cancel REMCO VAN MOOK: Of course you are not. BOGDAN MIHAI: I am standing for the hypothetical user REMCO VAN MOOK: If hypothetical case could outline me the actual issue they have I would very much want to hear it and see what we can do about that as a board. ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: So because there were a few cases where you say there was some kind of an abuse happening people no longer paying their bills you are now forcing all of the members, even the ones that have been very old and have no intention to close or do that abuse, you are forcing them to pay their invoice even before it's due. Is that really fair? REMCO VAN MOOK: So as I am saying and tried to explain, your membership amount falls due on January 1st regardless of whether the invoice was sent and how many invoices you get sent a year. So in that sense there is ‑‑ there is ‑‑ it's not a matter of when the invoice is due; your membership fee is due for the entire year because that is what you signed up for. ELVIS DANIEL VELEA: Then issued on tease ‑‑ December 1st so that by January 1st all of the invoices are paid and then ‑‑ REMCO VAN MOOK: I am sure Jochem would love to. NIGEL TITLEY: Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Right. So thank you, Jochem. We will be presenting the acceptance of the RIPE NCC financial report as resolution number 1 and that will take place under agenda point 8. Right. Discharge of the Executive Board. Item number 5. I think we have a presentation from Athina. Yes, I did remember her name. ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Hello again. I am head of legal from RIPE NCC, and I will explain a little bit what discharging of the Executive Board means. Before I do so, I should give some background information. So the Executive Board has certain duties that accompany their role, and these duties are specified in the law, are specified in Articles of Association and might arise from internal procedures or agreements and of course they are coming from the general principle of corporate good faith. All these duties, the Executive Board, must perform properly. That means for the best interests of the RIPE NCC, RIPE NCC being in principle the members, and the staff. If they don't perform these duties properly, then they are exposed to liability, and the liability can be divided into groups, one is the internal liability and the external liability. Internal liability is liability the Executive Board has towards the association for actions that damage the RIPE NCC, the association as a whole, not individual members. And the external liability is a liability towards anyone else, external parties or even members but acting on their own capacity as individuals. So, discharge of Executive Board refers to the internal liability. So by discharging the Executive Board, the GM waves any potential claims the association would have against the Executive Board, but that would refer only to activities they have a good knowledge of. Activities that have been described clearly in the annual report and in the financial report. And that is what discharge of the Executive Board means. Thank you. NIGEL TITLEY: Any questions for Athina? ALEXANDER ISAVNIN: You know my topics today. So, if member of RIPE NCC I think that the decision of board to cut down support of ENOG is inappropriate and may harm for us association in full, and I may vote for charging ‑‑ for not discharging Executive Board, is it right? ATHINA FRAGKOULI: It is ‑‑ you are right to vote yes or no, if you feel Executive Board should not be discharged from their duties ‑‑ ALEXANDER ISAVNIN: I just need a comment. For sure I could abstain, I could vote anyhow, but does this descriptions fill your explanation or not? ATHINA FRAGKOULI: So you have to actually, if you want to claim damages you have to prove that there are damages in the association as a whole because of this decision of the Executive Board. So even if you don't discharge them you still have a lot of work to do and to prove that there have been damages there. ALEXANDER ISAVNIN: But I have not been ‑‑ I can vote anyhow but I don't need to ‑‑ okay. NIGEL TITLEY: Anyhow you like, yes. ANNA WILSON: Anna Wilson, HEAnet. I would like to address the previous question if I may because I know that the legal advice on the Board must quite rightly say that the members have a duty to vote as they see appropriate on these resolutions, and that is quite right. As a fellow member, I would be very, very concerned if matters like this became negotiated through the question of whether the board would be discharged, I think it's a very, very serious matter and we have to think very carefully before going that far. NIGEL TITLEY: Thank you. Any other questions? HANK NUSSBACHER: . Two parts. One, does any of the board members have liability insurance as provided by RIPE? I will take that as a yes because Nigel indicated yes. The second part was, nothing was mentioned in your description of willful malice or anything willfully done poorly; in other words, someone brought up the example of he doesn't like the decision. That is nothing that is really talked about on the discharge but what if someone had embezzled money, is that part of what you are trying to discharge? ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you very much, that is a very good question, that is why I described the duties first of the Executive Board, and that is why I talk about ‑‑ HANK NUSSBACHER: Could you go back on the slide? ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Yes. So duties must be ‑‑ some of the duties really arise from the principles of corporate good faith and performing properly means without negligence, gross negligence in any case, but I would like also to mention, to highlight the following: Acting properly as an Executive Board does not guarantee any results. It shows that I am doing my best here. HANK NUSSBACHER: Which is fine. I am just ‑‑ I am trying to understand the discharge if they are acting properly or acting improperly. ATHINA FRAGKOULI: So if you discharge them now and later we find out that they showed gross negligence, there is a way to ‑‑ I am missing the word ‑‑ to challenge the resolution of the discharge. REMCO VAN MOOK: So, having dealt with Dutch law quite extensively and corporate law as well ‑‑ some people are laughing, I am not ‑‑ there is no structure under Dutch law that can get you discharged from any form of criminal liability or criminal negligence so I hope that answers your question. Sergey: Just a  RIPE NCC member. Can you please repeat what will be the consequences of a decision not to discharge the Board? ATHINA FRAGKOULI: There aren't really any big consequences. If you do discharge the Board, then you wave any potential claims of the association against the Executive Board for activities that they have done within their duties, within the scope of their duties and as they have been clearly described in the annual and financial report. AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you. NIGEL TITLEY: Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Right. We have to vote on the discharge of the Executive Board and that will be ton under agenda point 8. Okay. Let's move on to the charging scheme which I think is Remco. Thank you very much Athina. (Applause) JOCHEM DE RUIG: The charging scheme 2018. I just want to quickly run you through how we look at this and how we come to it our proposal. Well, first of all we look at membership developments, well this graph you have seen probably way too much, you can dream about it tonight, anyway this graph is continuing upwards, over 2,200 members at the moment on a yearly basis become members. So that is one of the bases we use to develop certain scenarios and this is not super rocket science or anything, but I just extrapolate different scenarios for next year and then look at what the consequence possibly is. So we always look at a zero growth scenario as would be quite a negative impact, a lower growth if we see reduced pick‑up, the current growth and then a higher growth if it even goes faster than we think. Well, I just want to show you a bit what the impact would be. Don't pin me down on these figures because we haven't even started on budgeting cycle for next year so he be expenses are based on extrapolating the average expense over past years. When we look at zero growth scenario it would probably lead to negative result for 2018. All the other three scenarios would lead to possible positive result which then could be returned to you via a redistribution. Here you see the bandwidth of the different scenarios potentially could give. Then we start looking at the expense levels and average expense per member because as you may remember from our previous presentation it's still a bit higher than the service fee we are charging. For this year expected to drop again to a bit more than €1,500 and when you compare that to the service fee we are charging, you can see since 2013 we have reduced service fee last ‑‑ this year, we have kept it at €1,400, but you will see there is still a gap that is thank has to be covered by signup fees and other source of income we have. So some considerations we look at, of course we have the redistribution tool, it's worked last year, it's working this year. So any excess fee that are being paid we can return to you via the redistribution. So the Net annual fee probably again next year is around €1150, somewhere along those lines. This actually, the redistribution rewards people who remain members, so it actually is a kind of a reward for longer term members. The NCC fees are already quite low, lower fees may actually attract even higher membership growth and may make a ‑‑ a bit more attractive. The last point what Erik mentioned, membership growth is uncertain in both ways, if a policy change happens it could really pick up, we may have to look at the impact of that but it also could go the other way. So for 2018 we are proposing not to change, stick with the current charging scheme, service fee €1,400, independent resource 50, signup fees €2,000 and if there is any excess funds we can return them via the redistribution. Any questions, comments? NIGEL TITLEY: Any questions from the floor? Okay. Thank you very much. We will be ‑‑ thank you, Jochem. (Applause) You will be voting on this resolution under agenda point 8. Right. Now we come on to agenda point 7, which is the RIPE NCC Executive Board election. Do we have a presentation on how the election goes? And is it at this point? Yes. It looks like it. There is an opportunity now for the five candidates to to make their pitches, and ‑‑ as I have said, as I have said, Christian and Maria and Salam are the three standing down, we have five candidates, Christian, I will say this in alphabetical order of first name, Christian, Maria, Peter from Sweden, Peter from Poland and Salam and I am suggesting they stand up and do their pitches in order of first name. CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Christian Kaufmann, CK or since today the German. NIGEL TITLEY: I am sorry. CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: I found it actually funny. So, it actually happened twice, so approximately six months before my re‑election or before my term ends people come around and say so are you running again? And then usually my answer is actually I don't know yet. Which is interesting because first of all it baffles them, there is always the expectation when you have a position like that you run until you get kicked out. So giving them a different answer is already a surprise for them. The second part, this is actually where people give you feedback. This is where you get the most feedback, you should run again or you should run again and do X, Y, Z different. Fair enough, nobody was so brave and said you suck, can you please step down. So, this is then when I start thinking about it. There is a certain time and energy commitment to the position, right, and it's a volunteer position so you don't get exactly rich with that. So the thought process is for me at this point, do I still add value? Is it something I want to do or can do different, and does it help the organisation, does it fit in my calendar and do I have the energy level to travel around or have board meetings when all the other people are having parties and/or having lunch and we sit in the room and wait? Well apparently standing here the answer to that question is yes, I am running again. Another topic is, I actually believe in transparency and accountability. So I am not just on the website and the bio you might have seen state actually what I want to do, I also state what I promised three years ago and what the outcome was out of my perspective. So making that very short, I looked a lot into the management and KPI aspects and the objects for Axel, everything around the tech redundancy part which we did for the database of the other parts I had an eye on it and as of course the math which is RIPE Atlas related usually comes the way and I have a comment on it. The more explanations you find on the website so I am not going into all the points. I also stated there what I will do. One part is I really believe in the cooperation with the other LIRs. I did that in the past and I continue to continue that. If you were around during the day you have seen that in various activities which we already have where we work quite closely with them together especially with the APNIC. I also believe that the registry and the stability of the same is very important, so having accurate data and having it stable from an organisational but technical perspective is something I am quite interested in and stand for. So, if you have read the bio and these things resonate with you, then I would be delighted if you vote for me today and with that vote I make the commitment that in the next three years I will to the same with the same energy level as I did the last six years and travel around the world on your behalf. Thanks a lot. (Applause) NIGEL TITLEY: I don't know if anyone wants to ask any questions of Christian? Obviously not. Right. Okay number two will be Maria. MARIA HALL: Thank you very much. Hello everyone, and I think you have seen me before around here during the week. It's been three years since I was elected for the RIPE NCC Executive Board and the last board election I think resulted in a diverse group, in my mind, what I believe is that actually brought some new and positive dynamics in the team, so we had three years of really some good discussions and interesting topics, important topics, of course we had some challenges, of course, but we also had three years of pleasure actually to serve the community and the membership. We had good ‑‑ with the good support of RIPE NCC of course. And when I look at all of you I feel fortunate to be part of this community and I am happy to see all of you but I am especially happy to see all the newcomers because they make this community even richer. We have an increasing number of members, you have seen all the numbers presented before, and three years ago I think it was like so thousand members, now three years later almost 16,000 so how do we best serve our community and reach out. That is something I think we need to elaborate even more. So how do we do it, geographicically based or based on different sectors and different interests and maybe different needs and according to the last survey for 2016 RIPE NCC is doing a very good job, in the many different areas and different activities they have. But the community is also constantly evolving and I think that the way we reach out and the way we serve the community also have to constantly evolve, and I take in particular interest during this time to follow and see the strategic future direction of the RIPE NCC and actually I was one of the drivers mooning few of us also on the board to have a strategic board retreat which we had last summer and we are actually going to have this strategic board retreat once again this upcoming summer I think in a month or so‑so I am continue to discuss the future direction for the company. And another area of my interest is also to raise awareness on how Internet works and RIR system but also how well things actually work, with all these different players and all these different actors in this community and I know that okay, Geoff Huston ‑‑ hello Geoff ‑‑ were a little bit negative or hesitant or had a bit concern in your speech yesterday, but I have to say that I very much agree on your perspective on the Internet of things or Internet of thrash you even said, there are quite a few things we need to take care of, there are issues we need to address, so thank you very much for that one. About raising awareness that I said, RIPE NCC has an increased engagement with external organisations like technical coordination organisations, public regulators, industry groups, academia institutions and so on, and this is to kind of broaden the support for RIPE or the RIPE community and for all the RIR systems and actually I think that mutual understanding and I know that mutual understanding is a much better tool than, for example, regulation or other actions or activities that might one or the other way actually interfere in our business and the way in a way we don't like it. This is a reason that at the last RIPE meeting I think ‑‑ I know it was at RIPE NCC service Working Group in Madrid that I was talking about this topic and I was also talking about the resources that are needed to support this, so actually I am very happy to see this is now been put in play. A third area of my interest is actually the global perspective and this is something that on my agenda also as the CEO for the Swedish national research network, I mean our network is a part of the global resource networks, and the ‑‑ chain is not stronger for the weakest link and also for the RIR system and global accountability and here I have to say that I am proud of the work done by RIPE NCC and many other persons here in the community in this space. And this is much supported by me in the role in the board. So I am looking forward to another three years on the RIPE NCC Executive Board, I would like to continue to support and continue to contribute in particular these areas I was talking about, but I am also interested to contribute in all other areas actually for the RIPE NCC that doing for the community and for the memberships first but also doing for other stakeholders, and I can think ‑‑ I think and I know I bring some experience here from the national research network community but also from my ten years working for the Swedish Government and also little bit from the time when I was building local optical fibre networks that was by the way the first time I ran into RIPE NCC, a long time ago when I was actually wanted to be ‑‑ wanted to be LIR and that was interesting and that was a long time ago. Anyway, I have a passion for the technical community and its position in the Internet space. So with that I will say thank you very much for listening and I am looking forward to your support. Thank you. (Applause) NIGEL TITLEY: Thank you Maria. Any questions for Maria? No. Okay. Thank you. The third person on the list is Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi. We have received neither a biography nor motivation statement from him and we tonight think he is here but if ‑‑ are you in the room,Peter, by any chance? Okay. So I am afraid we are going to skip over his motivation presentation. And we will move on to Piotr, who I hope is in the room. . PIOTR STRZYZEWSKI: Ladies and gentlemen, friends, colleagues, hello, my name is Piotr Strzyzewski ‑‑ the registration puts 007 on my badge so I think I should introduce myself like bond, James Bond. So from now on consider me as a special agent for the board of this nice organisation. But going to be more serious, you can find some personal and professional about me and few nice pictures behind me, but rest of the biois on line, what I want to say, I am going to be focus on if you will be so nice to vote for me and of course there will be more votes than the others. I would like to concern on few things. The first one is I would like to concern on more engagement for people from the central Eastern Europe, it was already mentioned during the NCC services working group this ENOG case, I would like to investigate that and maybe take care about that, to some extent. As you can see on the screen, I am passionate about travel so I am willing to travel to all those single places and talk with the members and ask what is going on, why they are not attending RIPE meetings, these meetings, in more general form why they are not trying to invite RIPE meeting the ENOG region or even other regions. So that is the first area of interest. The second area of interest because I am ‑‑ I would like to work with legal department, which is Athina. I already spoke with you, Athina, and that considered the question raised by Brian Nisbet about general data protection regulation which will be in force at the end of next May, I am really about that, about the changes within the region. I would like to take some care of that. I know it's your job but I think a member from the Executive Board should look at that somehow. So that is the case. And the third area of my interest is quite similar to Maria's. I have an academic background, I work for the university and I am passionate about inviting more scientists to these kinds of meetings. We have all heard these fascinating presentation about the Quantum Internet which is kind of future, about Internet of thrash, things, as Maria said. And so are we going to be prepared for that kind of future, like for different medias, for different needs of our users? I would like to take care about that, or at least have a kind of look at that from the Executive Board perspective. So, anyway, if you find me a good person to do that job, I will be more than honoured if you vote for me. Thank you very much. (Applause) NIGEL TITLEY: Any questions before he vanishes? No. Okay. Thank you very much. And last but not least Salam, who comes last regardless of whether we sort by first name or last name. SALAM YAMOUT: Thank you for saving the best for last, Nigel. So I am from Beruit, Lebanon. Three years ago you elected me to represent you on Executive Board and first I wanted to thank you for this because it was a learning experience but a very rewarding one for me personally. So what did I bring to the board, what was my contribution these last years? I brought non‑commercial, neutral perspective, I brought a regional perspective and I brought a gender perspective, because I am a woman engineer. Specifically, I contributed to the following: Good for the Internet initiative, RACI, the regional engagement approach and the strategic planning of the RIPE NCC. I am very keen on the role and with the responsibilities that lie on the shoulders of our organisations, RIPE NCC is recognised as a leader among its peer. Only few organisations in the world have the responsibilities to manage Internet resources. After the IANA transition the ranks are being reshuffled and the roles and responsibilities are not clear any more and they have to be re‑thought. We find ourselves in the middle of this debate and at the forefront of it. We have to continue demonstrating that we are a public interest organisation not a self‑serving one by empowering our communities. We have to defend the values that have brought us so far transparency, inclusiveness, openness, accountability; these are not only words. So, the eyes and expectations are on us, we have to lead the way and show the path. We have to communicate and extend to others, especially to governments. But IANA transition is not the only factor that is changing our environment and how we are working, how we are operating. We have heard that many times in the past, few days by many speakers, the Internet is not any more what it used to be. And the Internet is now the fourth essential infrastructure like water, electricity, roads. The Internet is carrying our economy, our education, our communications, our entertainment, everybody and everything and everybody is dependent on it, and everyone wants a part of it. So, our role as a board member is to look out for how to steer the ship in these changing seas. Our role as Executive Board is to ask the right questions, are we trusted? Will we be relevant in ten years? For how long will we sustain ourselves financially and operationally? How can we sustain the whole Internet ecosystem as it is today because if one of us fall we all fall. And most importantly, how do we adjust the course as needed without rocking too much the boat? So I believe that your Executive Board, as it stands here before you today, is able to take RIPE NCC to the next level. We have the diversity needed to have foresight and to be able to brainstorm. However, we complement each other and we are able to come together to make realistic decisions together. And for that, I ask you again for your trust and for your vote of confidence. Thank you. (Applause) NIGEL TITLEY: Thank you, Salam. Any questions for Salam? No. Okay. Thank you. I think now we have a presentation on the voting procedure before we move into the actual voting. Michael Frearson: I am from the RIPE NCC. Let's talk about voting. Out of the 14,547 LIRs eligible to vote in the general meeting, we have 1,381 registered. I have got a nice line graph there going back to April 2012 on the bottom left, all the way up to today on the top right, so you can see there the progress that we have made over the past five years. The rest of this you can see for yourself. 72 countries which is a spread we are quite pleased with so thanks very much for that. There are two ways you can cast your vote at the GM, some of you have paper ballots, some of you chose to vote electronically. We will start the voting at agenda point 8. Please, if you have a paper ballot don't leave the room with your paper ballots, hand them in to us before you leave the room, otherwise they won't be counted and can't be counted so me and a couple of colleagues will be going around the room with buckets to collect your paper ballots, make sure you give them to us before you leave the room. If you have an electronic vote, you have longer to cast that vote. You have until Friday morning at 9:00 to cast your vote electronically. So for the resolutions. For a resolution to pass it needs to receive more than 50% yes votes. We do note the abstentions, if you abstain, but they don't count towards the total. If you chose to vote electronically you should have received a link to the electronic voting in your e‑mail already. If you haven't, please come and see me. This is what the paper ballot looks like for the resolutions. Please make a mark in one box for each resolution, otherwise we can't count your vote. In the board election, as you heard there are five candidates. We use a system called instant run‑off; that means you only have to vote once, we don't have to keep you in the room all night going over and over. This is how instant run‑off works: You number your candidates in order of your preference, number 1 is your highest preference, number 5 your lowest. If you want to, you can just select one candidate but in order to ensure that your vote counts, we ask you to number each of the candidates in your preferred order. So, a candidate needs to receive over 50% of the votes in order to be elected on to the board. So what happens in the first count: We look at all the first preferences and if none of the candidates receive more than 50%, then we look at the candidate in fifth place, we eliminate them and then we redistribute the preferences accordingly among the remaining four candidates. So until we have a winner with over 50% of the votes we continue this process. Once we have a winner with over 50% of the votes we remove them from the ballot and we move on to the next seat. So again, please, fill your preferences from 1 to 5, 1 is your preferred and 5 is your least preferred. Okay. Here is what the paper ballot looks like for the election. It's an example. You have the box on the left and then you can list your order of preference 1 to a 5 or you can abstain. If you chose to vote electronically, this is what the e‑mail looks like that should come to your inbox. I have put a red arrow to show you the link that you click to take you to the electronic voting software and then cast your vote. In the electronic voting we use a trusted third party called bigPulse, they handle it for us. With the paper ballots we collect them now as I told you with a couple of independent adjudicators, we take them in a box to the hoe sell safe at reception and keep them in the safe until Friday morning, on Friday morning at 9:00 we collect them from the safe and take them to a room and we add them to the number of the electronic votes and we have a sum total. The results of the voting will be announced in the first coffee break on Friday morning, at about 10:45 in this room on 12th of May. The results will be announced by Nigel, the Chairman of the board. It will also be broadcast live on the web stream for anybody who is participating remotely and there is a link to the web stream. Does anybody have any questions? AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Sergey: Can you clarify if there are 71 paper votes you told, does this mean 71 attendees are eligible to vote or 71 paper ballots? MICHAEL FREARSON: 71 paper ballots. NIGEL TITLEY: Any other questions, everyone is happy they know how to vote. Good, thank you, Michael. (Applause) Right. Now we move on to item 8 which is the actual voting. I will read through the resolutions so that you are all quite sure what they are. So resolution 1 is that: "The general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC Financial Report for 2016." We have discussed this resolution under agenda point 4. Resolution 2: "The general meeting discharges the Executive Board with regard to its actions as they appear from the annual report 2016." We have discussed this resolution under agenda point 5. Resolution 3: "The general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2018". And we discussed this resolution under agenda point 6. And then finally there is the Executive Board election voting, which has just been described to you for the five candidates that have presented to you. I think it's now time to actually cast your votes and I think I suspend the meeting at this point. Yes. So voting is now open. I will suspend the meeting at this point and reopen it Friday. A reminder that you have until 9:00 UTC plus 2 to cast your votes if you are casting them electronically, and a reminder if you are casting a paper ballot you must cast it in this room, there is no point ‑‑ yes, before exiting. We have had occasions where people have chased after with us paper ballots and too late. So thank you everybody for turning up and I will see you all again on Friday at ‑‑ in the coffee break to tell you the results. (Applause)