General Meeting
22nd May 2019
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Good evening. Please take a seat, it costs exactly the same money as standing. Welcome. Welcome to the General Meeting. So we're a little bit late, 24 minutes by now but I heard all the controversial topics were already discussed in the Services Working Group and we will recover the 24 minutes easily.
Good. You have probably the agenda in front of you or on paper. Number 2, which is the report from the RIPE NCC, you literally have seen in the Services Working Group, so this part is actually covered and fine. And this is where I start with point number 3, the report from the RIPE NCC Executive Board.
This is us. We have Remco on the left. Ar we sitting in the same order as on the picture? That wasn't the intention. We have Falk, Maria, apparently me, Salam, Piotr and Nigel.
Good. So, what did we do since we talked last time? Well, we had two board meetings, we had a board meeting on 13th December and one on the 15th March. The minutes are published, you have seen them hopefully on the mailing list, they are actually links also in this document, so if you didn't have a chance you can look them up now or later. We made a couple of decisions which we published as well, and our comment as always, we appreciate feedback, we got a lot of feedback ‑‑ and I'll come to that later, to other topics, like charging scheme. We didn't get much to the minutes so we assume everything is fine and move on from there.
Looking at what happened in the last two board meetings. We approved in December the NCC activity plan and budget. We supported the implementation of the yearly billing cycle, I will come to that later in more detail. We approved amendments of ‑‑ to terms and conditions of several RIPE NCC documents. And we also approved amendments to the SSA which we vote on today and you will see more of that as well.
Here is the link of the minutes. Then, this is about the second board meeting, 15th March this year. We approved the implementation of the abuse‑c validation, which was something coming from the community. We requested reporting on what the NCC calls the Integrated Risk Management project. Philip talked about it in the Services Working Group, so now we basically have all the different risks and outlined in a very long list with a small font. And we also have dashboards and have now a better overview what are the various risks, how do they relate to each other and where we stand in that regard.
We thought it is good governance to give you transparency when either board members or sometimes staff have multiple hats. So, we requested a conflict of interest policy, actually I think it will end out to be more a table basically, hopefully you will see the names and positions and then we publish that as well, and then you can basically see who is where. This is just a transparency exercise, it didn't have much more background than that.
We approved the charging scheme, 2020 options, which we will talk about here, have extra slides and Gwen will talk about it as well. We approved the amendments to the terms and conditions for the closure and the deregistration components, and we approved the amendments to the Articles of Association that will be voted on today, which Linda will present.
These are ‑‑ this is an overview of the various meetings we have been or we go in the next quarterish. This is that you can have a little bit of overview where you can find us, as we say there are various options how you can interact and talk to us, there is the mailing list and conferences where we go around, and there is the General Meeting today where you can give feedback, ask questions and comment.
Our ongoing activities, so this is basically the base catalogue of activities we do. The most important part is, of course, fulfilling the corporate governance and fiduciary responsibility. That is the main reason we are here. We are planning for the activity plan and budget 2020. We work with the NCC management in the preparation for the IPv4 exhaustion. There were presentations today as well on that topic once or twice. And we of course guide the RIPE NCC management. So as every other board we basically set the objectives for the CEO and ‑‑ on that. And we liaise and cooperate with other RIRs, but also with ICANN. We had, for example, an inofficial breakfast at 7:30, so, you know, we keep in touch with the other parts of the ecosystem.
Mailing list. One of our famous statements is: If you want to talk about a topic then let's talk about it on the mailing list so that everybody can see it. And this certainly happened for four big topics. One was the annual billing cycle, and some of the members requested updates on the numbers and there was also a conversation about it, why we are doing it, which I hope we explained there. And then the people who felt that the transition was too quick for them, we had special credit arrangements so that they can pay in different versions and don't have to jump immediately to yearly billing. Actually, I think Gwen talks about that as well. Otherwise I pick it up later. That was one of the topics.
Membership termination, a big topic which of course came up in the Services Working Group.
IPv4 exhaustion where we follow the policy and keep track of the steps what the NCC is doing.
And of course the charging scheme, for which I have an own slide.
Contrary to popular belief or some comments of members, we actually meant option B serious. So, we had for a while an easy charging scheme which I think we have since 2012, 2013, and over the time members expressed that they wanted to have a different one. But it was a little bit unclear to us as the board what exactly they wanted. So over the time on the mailing list or in private conversations we got various feedbacks and one of the biggest feedbacks was that some of you ‑‑ and this is always hard to say when you have over 20,000 members and you get a feedback from five people to which part is that representative ‑‑ they talked about that they wanted to have something more which is based on any kind of volume, or, you know, depending on how much services a member take. So, we tried to take that into account. Then, as much as we could see a common scheme there.
The other part is we of course have various obligations from a ‑‑ from a tax perspective but also from our nonprofit standards, so we took that into account, and then we came up with a second option.
The second option will be presented from a detailed and number perspective from Gwen in a bit. But this was basically what we got back from a feedback, what we heard, and what our corridor where we can actually act is.
From a Board perspective, we prefer option A, the one which we have today. I think from an every member is the same and it is equal and also from a processing perspective, I think this is the easiest and makes the most sense. But as you, the members, expressed that you want to have a second one which has a volume component, this is what we then presented to you.
After the first e‑mail there were quite some feedback on the mailing list, then the Board started to write one e‑mail, cleared a couple of points up, I believe, more was coming from you and we sent out a second e‑mail and since then I believe it has really slowed down. We haven't seen many new arguments or many new angles where people want to present that so then we stopped until today where we brought it up to the Board, explain more or put it into context because we thought we answered all of the questions.
Good. One of the ways how you can give feedback and talk to us is of course by voting for board members. We have two seats today. We have the seat from Remco. He is also running again. And we have the seat from Nigel, who is not running again. And these are the candidates. We actually show them later, one by one, and if you haven't made your mind up or haven't read it on the platform or web page then this is your last opportunity to see what they stand for.
At the end we will vote for five resolutions. Resolution number 1 and 2 will be about financial discharge of the Board and we talk about the charging scheme, and the other resolutions I actually will read out later, so I am skipping them now. But at the end we will have the five to vote on.
Here are they all on one page. But I read them through one by one, and this is more that now you have an eye on it because when later the financial report comes or when you see the candidates for the election, you can supposed to vote for them at the end of the session.
And with that, the usual reminder. We are here to represent your interests, so let us know what you think. But the charging scheme I guess that worked quite well so we got a lot of feedback there. In general some of you used that and send emails to the list, let us know what you think and where you want that we go.
And with that, any questions? Good. Then, let's actually look what you have, Gwen.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Hello, good evening here and of course also hello to everyone online, there are a lot of our members online, so that's really wonderful news, I feel there is so much participation.
My name is Gwen, I'm the CFO of RIPE NCC. I joined the organisation in 2017, so ‑‑ and it is my responsibility today to share with you the financial statements from 2018, it's your first resolution, and I think it's safe ‑‑ safe to adopt it. And again, it's my responsibility to share with you today the main conclusions from last year's financials.
I think there are four conclusions. The auditor gave the financial report last year on unqualified opinion, so that's very good. The statements confirm to generally accounted ‑‑ generally accepted accounting principles, in our case that is Dutch ‑ and therefore they do not miss any important facts.
A second key conclusion I think is important to share with you: From an accounting perspective and from a financial point of view, the RIPE NCC is in a very healthy state. So in that sense, RIPE NCC is well positioned for the future, for the years to come.
And also, what I would like to share with you is that 2018, in many respects, was a milestone year because for the first time the RIPE NCC passed the 20,000 LIR threshold. It was also the first year that the average cost per LIR was lower than the flat membership fee. I will talk a bit more about that. And it was also the first year that we gave back to our members redistribution of more than €10 million, the financial surplus last year was €10.9 million, and I think all in all that's very good, and it's been a very healthy year in that sense.
And I think the last important conclusion that I would like to share with you, as you can expect from us, we stay within our budget and I think that's also very important to share with you.
One quick step back for the newcomers. I think if you look at our financial statements, it's important to understand the financial strategy that is behind how we organise ourselves financially. And again, to repeat: It's been said often today that we are not a commercial organisation, we are a not for profit, we do not run a business model, we run a funding model. This is also very important for the charging scheme discussion later this evening. And I think the funding aims to generate enough money so we can fulfil our obligations so roughly we try to fund a 30 to €35 million again to fulfil our mandate for you.
And in the financial strategy, the authorisation of what we do for you is super important. So the whole voting mechanism that is something that we cherish because that is also part of being a membership association that in the end the you the members that decides how we fund ourselves and how we spend our money.
So in that sense, again the fact that you now have a chance to adopt last year's financial report also a chance that you can vote on the charging scheme, those aspects and those elements for us are super important.
Also part of the financial strategy and a compass for the financial team of the RIPE NCC, is that we want to be very, very transparent about our activities, about the costs that are attached to that and also about the efficiency gains. For those of you that were there in Amsterdam at the last GM, I presented a couple of slides on efficiency gains; I plan to do that again in Rotterdam in October. We have promised you, for example, this year that we are going to realise between 300 and €600,000 in efficiency gains. One of the examples that we are doing for you is, for example, the move to annual billing, Christian also shortly spoke about that.
Talking about billing, I think the move to annual is a very good one because we will be able to reduce the amount of invoices, thanks to your support. Unfortunately, we did make a mistake because all the people that are here received yesterday an invoice in the wrong template so I messed up a bit my own numbers there. But I can assure you that we will stay composed and focused to improve our billing cycle also in the time to come.
But again, and we will also create full transparency on what we are doing there for you.
And other management information that we want to give you again is the average cost per LIR, the risk appetite of the RIPE NCC and, again, underlying the whole funding model is we really also value the equality between members and that is also I think an important failing that we want to bring into the strategy and the objectives.
So if you have any more questions please do ask in the end of the presentation.
So now let's dive deeper into the numbers.
The balance sheet of 2018 compared to 2017. We saw a small ‑‑ an extension of the balance sheet that of course had to do with the enormous financial surplus. You can see that, of course, at the bank accounts because that money was waiting for redistribution to give back to you. And you can also see it's under the current liabilities.
What you also see on the balance sheet that we had a small increase in capital, so the market conditions last year were a bit better than the year before, that helped us. Our investment strategy is very conservative so we invest according to our ‑‑ but we were able to realise a small positive result in 2018.
The profit and loss for 2018 also in comparison with the years before that. I have inserted this graph, this slide, because I really want to show to you also the significance of the signup fees. It's a big chunk of our total income, and we want to be very prudent with that, also Axel mentioned in his presentation during the Services Working Group that we are fully aware of the IPv4 run‑out and that we are also fully aware of the fact that membership growth is volatile, members will merge. Also the rate at which we see now the influx of new members, that will slow down for sure. But on the other hand there are other trends behind it. I will talk a bit more about that later in my presentation. But what is important that we are very prudent with it. So all the signup fee income, there is a clear link between the surplus and also what we give back to you. So we try not to invest it too much in our ongoing activities.
So now again let's dive a little bit deeper in that income side. I think this slide wants to show you two important trend lines. The line in blue and the line in green. The blue line shows you the average income per LIR, and of course that line goes up a little bit because of the enormous influx again of new members, and new members because they pay that signup fee of €2000 in comparison pay a little bit more so that drives up, of course, the average income per LIR. But the important one for you and also for the finance team is the green line, because there you see that average spend per LIR has a beautiful trend, it's going down, very important. And for the first time what I mentioned in my introduction, it was a number below the flat membership fee that we currently have so I am also very pleased with that trend.
Further to income, Axel also showed some graphs where you could see the members now versus the numbers, five to ten years ago. Member size doubled in five years, so in 2014 we had approximately 12,000 members, LIRs, I have to be specific, and that is of course an enormous difference, but it also gives you some comfort because in case, as a consequence of the IPv4 run‑out membership will go down, we can also, you know, find new ways how to cope with that from a financial perspective because we are also healthy a couple of years ago. So I also believe the case that would happen we would be able to find solutions for it. But again I am not so concerned and I don't see it as enormous threat because we also really see serious underlying trends that are also new members coming in because they want something else from the RIPE NCC. They want knowledge, or they want to also ensure that their registrations are accurate. So again, there are multiple trends there, and it's going to be an exciting year next year to see how that's going to develop.
Okay. Expenses. The main conclusion is here that the total expenses stayed within budget. So last year's budget was 28.5 and in total our expenditures were 28.2 last year, so we stayed 1% below our budget. And if you look at the circle with colours, of course you can see that personnel expenses are the biggest cost driver, that probably does not come as a surprise because the RIPE NCC is mostly an organisation of people. Last year, our FTE number grew 149 to 155. We did stay within our budget for personnel expenses but the cost went up then significantly because we did do a benchmark so we looked at the market conditions and we made a small incremental increase there. There were also some rising costs of secondary benefits, severance payments, education of staff. So all in all that had an effect on the personnel expenses.
All the expenses or all you see in this graph stayed within budget except for three costs: Office costs, that is for us postage, temporary agency hires for customer services, catering for meetings, travel was a little bit out budget, not the amount of travel but the cost per travel of trip, so that is an issue I would like to look into in more detail to see how we can fix that for this year and consultancy was also a bit higher. I am not so worried about that because I do feel for the RIPE NCC it's really good to have a good balance between consultancy expenditure versus permanent staff members because sometimes it's better just to hire ‑‑ to gain more knowledge and then also to have the flexibility to say goodbye when you have the knowledge inside to say goodbye to consultants, so in that sense I don't mind we do a little bit more there. We have to ensure the agreements with you that they stay here, that they are clear and they are sharp.
If you look at the budget, of course the trend is apparent. I think also you saw in the presentations from Athina and Filipe, due diligence is very laborious, it does have an upward effect on the investment. I think also what you see, the activities are larger in scale so the engagement part of our organisation also requires more time investments and of course also we are serving more LIRs. So ‑‑ and that's in combination with the changing expectations that does have an effect on budget.
I can also assure you it's not our idea to build an enormous organisation. We like our size so that gives us also certain flexibility. And but on the other hand we do have to see how we can deal with these rising expectations in the future.
Again, if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask when I finish my presentation.
Last slide. On capital and liquidity. The solvency rate ‑‑ we are looking into defining also a really good metric for the future, that is also part of management exercise we are doing. Christian mentioned it and I think we are trying to invest a lot of time and effort into defining what are our ‑‑ what capital buffers will be for the future. I think what you see, if you look at our reserves versus the yearly expenditures, that is going down a little bit. On the other hand the RIPE NCC continues to be very solvent because 62% is in itself a beautiful solvency number. So again I'm not concerned but it is, of course, something we have to look into the future to see how we want to build up our financial reserves. And this is, of course, also tied to the yearly redistribution discussion that we are also going to have in Rotterdam in October.
Further to capital in our bookkeeping we saw small revaluation of government bonds only €19,000and again looking, was in fact a lot less then last year, and in combination with interest income on investments, the financial result we saw in capital was a net increase of 245,000 euro.
And this has been added to the capital position. So our new buffer is 25.4 million.
Okay. To wrap up my story about the financial. Statements for 2018, I think a couple of key conclusions:
From an accounting perspective, the RIPE NCC continues to be in a very healthy state. Income expense and capital have developed according to plan, as you can expect from us we stayed within budget. The cost per LIR was lower than the flat membership fee, and the capital strategy and the charging scheme and especially the combination, I think will also allow us to respond to new situations in which they occur.
So again, I sincerely believe that with these results it's completely safe to adopt resolution number 1, but I'm very happy to answer any question you might have on last year's financial statements.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have one remark. There is a mistake in the graph on page 3, wrong numbers on income per year and the ‑‑ description is wrong so you do a change after this is approved because I don't think it's a significant problem but it needs just some small change.
GWEN VAN BERNE: I know it's which graph you mean and it's the income on the table is wrong there. Good point.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: From Netnod. I have just a curious question, the number of staff, you mentioned you were 160 minus something. Do you have a feeling for the turnover, how many people have left and how many have ‑‑ it's one ‑‑ the total is one thing.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yes, it's very good question. I don't have the exact rates. We have seem some turnover but I do know from my conversations with the HR manager they are not uncommon comparing them with the market but of course for the RIPE NCC it's a knowledge intensive business so I would almost say every resource that leaves is one too many so in that sense we are very careful about that and we have lost some really good staff members with relevant knowledge. So I realise that and acknowledge that. On the other hand looking at the total amount of staff members I still believe we are in good shape. We do track it, yeah.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks, Gwen. The next point is very quick. Later when I go through the resolution we have the resolution number 2, which will be for the discharge of the Executive Board. So, after you have seen the financial report please keep that in mind and then please if you agree to that, discharge the Board when we have the voting part. And with that, I actually give it back to you. Told you, don't go too far. And Gwen will talk about the charging scheme ‑‑ as I talk about how we came to it and which kind of input we took and what we tried to achieve, she'll talk about the numbers and give an overview what that actually means.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Here I am again. The charging scheme for 2020, what I also said in my introduction, if you look also at the financial strategy and the objectives of the charging scheme, I do feel that it's very important that I share with you that my end goal is aimed at flat membership fees and preferably as low as possible. Because low equal fees ensure that our services are accessible, which is super important for us, and also of course the other side of it, that we have to balance then our costs with the quality of our service. So we can't jeopardise the quality but out of financial point of view we will do everything to ensure that we try to create a trend where your fees are becoming less and less expensive.
What also Christian mentioned in his introduction, I think it's also very important that you know that we have really tried to listen to you, that you wanted an alternative. So, with that vision in mind, we did everything we could, we have looked at dozens of scenarios to see how we could come up with alternatives that do have meaning and that also are viable and valid, to give you a choice, because I think, again, that is a super important mechanism of the way you are organised, in the way the choice is yours and you should be able to express what you want and need from the RIPE NCC.
So let's go into the charging scheme in a little bit more detail.
Again, the objectives of a charging scheme:
So, it should be supported by you, and by the majority of our members, that is very important. It's really hard to come up with a charging scheme that everybody likes, but as long as it's really the majority I think we are good to go.
Also, of corks when you design a new alternative it's really important what was the target amount, so we have done our calculations, based upon a target amount of €30 million. And that is ex the signup fees so the numbers that you will see later in my presentation kept that amount in mind and are targeted towards that.
Also, charging schemes should be, yeah, efficient and practical. Because if we are going to design something that is going to create a lot of fuss in our operational processes or in the engagement with you, I think we lose also valuable time so also preferably ‑‑ the scheme spectacle.
It should be tax compliant. It's really important that in the outside world that the we emphasise we are not a commercial service provider, that we do not engage in commercial activities. We will, of course, always pay taxes, but we just don't want to expose ourselves to a lot of administration and workload if we are not able to clearly explain that we are a not‑for‑profit membership association, so every charging scheme that we will build will always have that large component of flat membership fee as to the foundation of the structure. That is really important.
What we have also done in the objectives, again we have looked at the charging scheme task force. In 2012, there was a large group also Piotr was in the group and also other members that looked at ‑‑ that looked at the charging scheme principles. So, it's a couple of years ago but the essence and the spirit of that work I think is still very valid today and there were a couple of clear principles. So what the task force wanted is some differentiation between members but also what they clearly stated what they don't want is the majority of the income will be generated by a small percentage of the members. So that is also very important to keep in mind. I do realise maybe for some the alternative B can be a little bit controversial in that sense but I can explain also later.
And also what was interesting, in the task force principles it was stated explicitly that the ‑‑ it should be based upon the quality of service, and not so much upon the workload. But there, I felt that we had to modernise a bit the principles because again if you look at the tax position and our membership nature, it's better to look a bit more at the workload than at the commercial digital service aspect of it. So there we have made some changes to modernise it I think but the essence, the equality between members, I think that is still our guiding compass, also for the options that we are providing you today.
Okay. Two options:
Under Resolution 3, you are going to be asked if you want to tell us whether you prefer option A or option B. Option A is the existing charging scheme. So we will continue with the base annual fee of €1,400 per LIR account, the extra registration 50 per PI assignments. We are doing that, stays the same. And we will continue with the signup fee of €2000.
This is the existing scheme.
Now the alternative:
What Christian also mentioned, there was a clear voice for differentiation, there was also a clear voice for a viable component. We could not look at the amount of address space because that would have put us too much in the commercial corner. We had to look at workloads. So what is our work, as a registry, our work is to register. So we took as a basic foundation and again we have looked at 100‑plus scenarios so this is the result after enormous process to shortlist them, we looked at the workload and the amount of registrations and we also looked at the cost of the registration activities, now that is between 5 and €6 million. And at this particular moment we charge 20,000 blocks but we have 120,000 blocks approximately and that is all the registration that you currently hold within the RIPE NCC, that is IPv4, IPv6, ASN everything. If we would charge an extra registration fee of €50 for all these 120,000 blocks that means we can reduce the base annual fee to €1150 because again the objective was not to generate more money with this scheme so we are able to give you a lower flat fee and then the alternative under B is that we are going to register €50 ‑‑ Serge just asked me to do a short break because we have some problems with the online people that are following us. So if you are okay with it, I think it's better to do a shortstop and that we will continue ‑‑
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Okay. Let's do a five‑minute break and see what this is about. And please don't leave. Otherwise it takes us 20 to go back.
(Short adjournment)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Ladies and gentlemen, we continue. Please come in, take a seat, new one, old one, thanks.
GWEN VAN BERNE: I hope it's not too boring, I think it's better to start again with B. Option B:
Option B: Your alternative choice. Again, option A under the voting resolution number 3 is the existing scheme. Option B is your alternative choice. Let me again try to summarise the differences between the existing scheme and our new proposal:
In the current situation, we have 20,000 approximately registration blocks that we charge €50 for. In total, the entire membership base holds roughly 120,000 registration listings with the RIPE NCC. If we would charge €50 per listing, that means that roughly 5 million to 6 million income shifts to registrations instead of flat membership fees, that enables us to reduce the flat membership fee to an amount of €1150, but it also means then we are going to charge more registrations than in the existing situation. Actually, a registration is a registration, it doesn't matter any more if it's IPv4, IPv6, ASN, legacy, it's all the same, it's a listing in the LIR Portal in a database and that is then what we use as the foundation for the calculations.
The signup fee of €2000 stays the same. And let me show you in a graph what this means financially.
What I tried explain, 120,000 number of registrations, that is the first column that you see. At this moment, we have 21,876 LIRs. We have tried to split them up in four cohorts, the ones with zero registrations, that is over 800 LIRs in total; the ones between 1 and 3 registrations, as you can see in the table that's more than 40,000 LIRs; the ones between 4 and 100, almost 7,000 LIRs; and 100 plus registrants, that is 95 LIRs in our data.
Under the existing scenario, scenario A, these members, you, generate, together, excluding the signup fees, €31.7 million. If we would move to scenario B, so if we would charge now based on registrations, €50 per registration, this would mean that, of course, those LIRs that have less than four registrations are going to pay less in the new situation. There is an average fee Delta, positive average fee Delta for them, so the option B from a financial point of view is beneficial.
Those LIRs with more than four registrations, of course in comparison are going to pay more, and of course it's ‑‑ that is, of course, a very ugly result. The members with 100 and plus registrations on average are really going to pay a lot more in the situation.
The LIR with the most registrations almost has 16,000 registrations so you can imagine that does a lot, 1,600, sorry, that does a lot with your fee.
So the difference in income under the second scenario, we do generate 600K less than in the existing situation, but that in itself is okay because we did not want to do this to generate more money.
And to hopefully give it some more explanation, I think again what is also very important because I talked in the beginning about the principles of the task force, that it was one of the initial principles that the community asked that we are not going to generate the majority of our income with the small percentage of our members. Again, I fully realise this is in that sense a controversial scenario but we have tried to incorporate that principle that at least we are not generating the majority of the income with it. But, yeah, again I will leave it up to you what your preference is, but of course for these 100‑plus registrants this is an expensive alternative.
So then if you look at the fee range for these LIRs, again the four cohorts, again the average fee per LIR with the option B and there on this slide we have also, we are showing you the fee range. So of course the LIR with zero registrations, for them it's beneficial scenario, €1150; then the second cohort, a minimum fee of 1,200, a max of 1,400, etc. So under the option B, the LIR that holds the most registration listings will pay an amount of €80,850. That is a consequence of this choice and I think it's important you understand what it means financially
If you want to understand your own situation better I kindly would like to ask you to view the LIR Portal that gives a really good indication of the amount of listings that you currently have. You can just look it up under my resources and sponsored resources. We are showing our listings in IPv4, IPv6 and ASN, your legacy blocks you will also able to find there. What we do realise, as RIPE NCC organisation, if you are going to vote for option B, if you want us to implement it, of course we will have to work on appropriate tooling to make it even clearer for you how many listings you have and also of course we have to build in the documents in the billing section of the LIR Portal that show you the exact invoice, etc., etc.
So, again, if we are going to do this, we will ensure also that from a practical point of view, that we are going to run this process very smoothly.
I did get also some questions from members that were concerned about the redistribution, and why it was not included in the charging scheme proposal. We haven't done it because it's not changing compared to the existing situation. So it continues to be a pro rata calculation so the more you pay us in comparison, in absolute terms, the more money you will receive back from the RIPE NCC in case the membership votes for redistribution. But the relative percentage is the same for everyone. But of course if you pay us more also the amount of money that you get back in absolute terms is larger.
Okay. So to wrap up the essence between A and B, A in essence is a model that emphasises equal flat fees. Model B is a scheme that emphasises equality between registrations, I would say, and I think what is very important now that you use the power of your vote and the power of the microphone to tell us what you think and I think the final choice for the 2020 charging scheme is completely yours.
And yeah, please, questions?
ERIK BAIS: Good evening. I have actually a very simple question. Personally my preference goes to option A, but did we do mapping of the registered voting for tonight compared to how the two slides back, because that might actually give an indication on the outcome?
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yes.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Given that the registration closed as this meeting opened roughly we couldn't prepare any slides on that and I don't have the analysis for you.
ERIK BAIS: It would be very interesting to see that slide.
REMCO VAN MOOK: I am sure we can come up with those numbers after the fact, yes.
GWEN VAN BERNE: The slide, what is it, five, does give you some indication of where the voting might be in terms of quantity. But it doesn't say anything about values, but you can see the financial point of view is clearly I think in the ‑‑
ERIK BAIS: Yes. Interesting. Thanks.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I also share the concern of Erik, but I don't know if you already get feedback about the point that we are introducing some big LIRs and small LIRs in term of money, that was not fully introduced before. My fear is that bigger LIR will ask for most of than smaller LIR can ask, and we are introducing some really fancy system with that.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Thanks for your comment, I think it's a good observation to bring it to the discussion. Thank you for that.
Alain Davis: I have a question from a remote participant: Was there a test task force for this charging scheme or is Gwen referring to the task force from five to ten years ago, earlier in your talk?
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: No, this referred back to the task force from 2012. It's not ten years, I guess, but yeah, there was not a current one. No secret task force, sorry.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thanks. And then the second question: Sub allocations and legacy assignments occur in my resources will those cost as well under option B?
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yes it's registration, it's the same definition, yeah.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you.
MARTIN LEVY: Cloudflare. Probably speak as an individual after I ask this question. There are no individuals as I am correctly reminded. I don't have a dump of the database, so I can't answer this question myself but you must know this. Who are those 95 and if you go to the next page, who is that one player that is at the top of the list? I would have thought if we are going to vote it would be nice to know who that is.
GWEN VAN BERNE: I wouldn't feel comfortable disclosing that because I would feel I expose personal data.
MARTIN LEVY: Organisational data.
GWEN VAN BERNE: I know who it is.
MARTIN LEVY: It's an LIR, it's a name of an LIR, it's ‑‑ you are in the database business, I thought. So I am asking you a database question.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yeah, I feel very uncomfortable with disclosing that kind of data on members so I kindly ask for guidance from the Board.
MARTIN LEVY: I am happy to get the answer from anybody.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: To answer one part of your question, yes, we know.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: Speaking as myself or as the member ‑‑ since I was partly responsible for pushing this particular proposal or this model I had, I will say that I think this option B is a better than anything that involves number of IP addresses, although I have seen on the list that some people think that that is the way we should go and I read that, that is because you want to introduce some kind of tax on those who are rich in terms of IP addresses, and I think that's definitely against the spirit that I would like to see. When we introduced the existing charging scheme I was in favour of reducing the four or five categories back then to one member and one fee. The thing I don't like about option A is that it's not one member one fee, it's one member one fee plus the provider independent. So I think we have a sort of slightly asymmetry there. So personally my voice goes to one member one fee but then I would kind of perhaps in the future like to see really one member one fee, rather than what we have today and as I said previously in the Working Group today, we should really separate policy from the charging scheme and that's not what we have today. So that would be my personal thoughts on this.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Thanks so much for bringing that into the discussion because I think it's a very valid point. And I am sure to continue to work on it. Thank you.
RUEDIGER VOLK: Deutsch Telecom. Hans Petter, actually I would word your warning about going to charging per address, that would change the charging scheme from a registry service to leasing out integer numbers and I think that is really out of question.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I think the one thing really necessary to be done at this point in time ‑ is a stress test. We know that multiple registration from LIRs existed and we should reasonably and largely expect those LIRs ‑‑ in the foreseeable future. The LIR number will change in next one or two years to a real number of members rather than not inflated number of members, and we should calculate in that scenario how much each us were paying in possible options, because that is a realistic assumption and I don't want to ask to come to the charging scheme two years later because we have way less members than today. Thank you.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yes.
REMCO VAN MOOK: So if there is one positive thing I will say about option B, is, it actually does provide for better long‑term stability in our income side because, if we charge per block of resources, it doesn't really matter what LIR it sits in because it gets charged anyway. And lowering the base fee per member actually reduces some of the risk that comes with members' memberships, consolidating and LIRs consolidating. That said, I don't think that ‑‑ I mean, I don't have the crystal ball to be able to predict how many members RIPE NCC is going to have plus or minus in two years' time, and what that impact is going to be. What will happen, of course, is I mean, as we have had the flat rate option A for a number of years now, but it doesn't mean the number that has been attached to it has been constant and it's been 1,400 now for a couple of years, but it used to be €1,750 and I think it was 1850 the first year we did it. So, even staying with our current model of charging doesn't necessarily mean that we can't change some of the variables inside of it. Thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: More online?
Alain Davis: I have another question from Elvis. So he says so if I make 1,000 sub allocations I will pay tens of K more than if I do not make those sub allocations. Is the RIPE NCC now advising that the LIRs should no longer register anything in the DP?
GWEN VAN BERNE: No we are not advising that.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: I would like to clarify on that, because suballocations has special meaning in the policy and that is not registering the allocations, it's registering a block so that somebody else can do allocations in that, so if I understand the data correctly, it's your assignments that get in there and if you do split that up in blocks for your partners or customers to register in that will be counted. But not the end allocations to all your customers. Then that figure of 120,000 would be much higher.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Exactly.
GWEN VAN BERNE: It's listing of prefix in the LIR Portal.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot, Gwen.
(Applause)
So, I forgot since many years but probably since five, six, seven years we are regularly reviewing the various the articles of the SS A and other components of our framework to see if it is still up to date with either when we have changed practices and you will see when fax is not the only method of communication any more. And for that we also this time do some housekeeping and propose two changes and they will be presented from Linda.
Linda Slaakweg
LINDA SLAAKWEG: : I am legal counsel with RIPE NCC. I will first start with the proposed amendment for the Articles of Association. It will take into account remote participants and about the challenge of the result of the voting at the GM. This topic may sound familiar because Athina did gave presentation on the ‑‑ on another amendment on the same topic at the last GM at RIPE 77 in Amsterdam. It got enough votes to be implemented but unfortunatley we didn't check it beforehand with a notary and when we brought it to their attention it got rejected. So that's why today we are proposing a new amendment but for the same problem.
So, the proposed amendment will take into account members who are voting remotely and the new procedure will make it easier for remote voters to challenge the result of the voting so for the verdict.
The current procedure came into effect before remote participation was introduced. It looks like this. The Chair announces the result of the voting, the verdicts, and this verdict becomes final and binding unless it is immediately challenged by the absolutely majority of the meeting and if needed, a new vote also needs to take place at the same GM. That means that all of this has to happen on Friday when the result is announced.
And this procedure does not consider remote voters because, first of all, voters ‑‑ it's hard to inform about the challenge, and also, for remote voters to have a say of the challenge.
And secondly, it's very difficult to make sure that the voting can actually take place right there.
That's why I want to propose a new amendment and a new procedure to take this in consideration. And that's to remove the possibility of an immediate challenge and then replace it with this procedure. So, the Chair will appoint a secretary that will keep the minutes of the GM, that will include the resolutions and the result of the voting. And then the Chair and secretary will adopt those draft minutes at the end of the GM and they will be published two working days after the end. That means with our current schedule that on Friday, the draft minutes will be adopted and then on Tuesday they will be published.
The minutes will be final and binding unless they ‑‑ the Executive Board receives a notice of objection within three weeks. This notice of objection needs to be signed by at least 100 members. These minutes will become final ‑‑ no, from the date received from the notice of objection, the Executive Board can consider those objections against the draft minutes and then they will become final and binding and again they will be published two working days after they becoming final and binding.
So, with this new procedure, we can assure participants, all participants, so including the remote ones, can challenge the result of the voting and the resolutions and I realise that I didn't click. So this is actually the part that I talked about, the notice of objection and the 100 members that has to sign it off. And here it says that three weeks to consider before adopting the final minutes.
All right. Any questions?
PETER KOCH: I don't really have a question about what is on the slides but about what you said. You said that with the current scheme on Friday the minutes will be adopted. My understanding is that the meeting is usually paused today and resumed on Friday, so two working days after that would be Tuesday next week.
LINDA SLAAKWEG: But the publication of those minutes, that will be two working days after the end of GM
PETER KOCH: On Friday
LINDA SLAAKWEG: When ‑‑ yes, two working days.
BRIAN NISBET: Brian Nisbet, HEAnet. Now, I have been looking at this and I am slightly confused and it may well be because I haven't read it correctly in which case apologies but the original purpose of what was trying to be amended was that if the vote was challenged that another vote could be ‑‑ there was a system that would allow another vote to be taken in that case. We are now talking about challenging the minutes of the meeting and there then being an option for the Board to consider the objection against the draft minutes to come up with a new set of draft minutes. That, to me, and again on my understanding of this, looks like a different result, because let's say we all sit here and there is a vote to agree that the Board is discharged and then someone challenges that vote and there is another vote and it says they aren't, hypothetically, so that's a very concrete, right, this new vote has happened and the result has changed potentially. In the case of challenging the minutes, are we then saying the minutes could be potentially updated to go actually no, and how does that minute ‑‑ the first one allows for a new vote to be taken. The second one doesn't, it's then a change of the minutes. So it seems like a very different potential intent, which may be fine, it's just they are being compared in that particular way and that's where I am just fuzzy on how we got to this point from where we seem to be trying to get to. If that makes sense.
LLINDA SLAAKWEG: Yes, but the adjusted minutes that them can be final and binding can say a new vote needs to take place about the resolution in the next year.
BRIAN NISBET: Right, okay. Fair enough, I think that answers that question. It does gave very long time delay and it potentially leaves the Board in a very complicated position if you have then have a six‑month gap of a contested vote.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Yes, but the other part wasn't easier for me either on Friday where you can challenge me, half of you have left and are voting remote anyway, how do we communicate that, open it, and get it all sorted. So I guess the only way, we have seen, is basically a re‑set and do it again. But then proper again. And now I have a certain interpretation and I am not the legal person, so let's see how that goes. The minutes in that case are proxy for the result. So it's not about were the minutes nice or what was all in the minutes but they are proxy for the result and the result gets challenged, similar as in the room but now we re‑set it and do it at the next meeting which is completely true; it's a long gap. On the other side it's not fair if it gets challenged and on Friday you have a subset of the people not informed and everything you can't make a decision on that either.
BRIAN NISBET: I understand now, thank you for that explanation. I would say that's a risk and there is a whole AGM question there and all sorts of things that that might raise if something happened and ‑‑ would that make the Board unable to act in the case of certain challenged votes. I say this, I do not know, I am not a lawyer either, but thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Was that correct?
I should not have asked that question.
Laurencely man: Next time you do something like this the absolute number 100 strikes me as odd. When we are down 95 members it's going to be complicated. So I would prefer percentage, rounded up to the nearest whole number or something.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Somewhere else in the articles there is a percentage of 2% of the membership, I think to ‑‑ for the members to call a meeting. If I do the math on that one, that is going to be significantly harder than getting a fixed number like 100. So unless we are going to go into point decimals, which I don't really recommend for any articles of association, I fully sympathise but we have got to do something.
Alain Davis: So Pascal is asking how are members supposed to gather 100 signatures with all members ‑‑ will all members be informed of an opposition and give everyone the opportunity to sign?
LLINDA SLAAKWEG: Yes. The procedure is not there yet but the NCC will certainly accommodate for all members so it's clear how it works and will be done.
Alain Davis: What does consideration mean, does it bind the Board to do something or can they just consider it into the nearest recycling bin?
LINDA SLAAKWEG: Yes, that's correct, they can consider it and make up their minds and either change the minutes or not.
Alain Davis: Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Coming back with my working days, I just checked in the Netherlands, I think we are talking about the Netherlands, Saturday is considered as a working day. So ‑‑
LINDA SLAAKWEG: Then we have to speed it up.
REMCO VAN MOOK: No, it's not, sorry. I am fairly confident it's not.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Okay. Perhaps could we recheck this because it reports on Monday and let the weekend to try and arrange the vote.
REMCO VAN MOOK: There is a legal definition of working days and there is five working days in a week and Friday is the last working day of the week as far as I know. Which I mean, I would be terrified if that was wrong.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Definition differs by country.
REMCO VAN MOOK: I am in the Netherlands and RIPE NCC is. I am afraid to say in the Netherlands. So I think we can nitpick all over this. I don't think it makes sense to put an absolute day in there because if we ever hold a General Meeting on a different day that screws up the whole system. So while I agree you might have all sorts of discussions if we hold a meeting in Dubai is Friday a working day. We do the General Meeting on Tuesday, the whole thing gets messed up again so I would strongly urge everyone here to just say yes, two working days, and we all know roughly what that means.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thank you.
LINDA SLAAKWEG: Next up are the changes to the SSA, the Standard Service Agreement. We have received some requests from applicants, new members, they would like to see the current process changed. They would like to see the option that they can send a scanned copy of the SSA to us. That's why the proposed amendment will accommodate the receipt of a scanned copy of the signed SSA by the RIPE NCC.
Currently, Article 2.2 of the SSA is like this, it says "to enter into the RIPE NCC Standard Service Agreement, the following documents have to be sent to the RIPE NCC by post or fax: "
And we will update it with the following: We will add "or they have to be uploaded via the link sent by the RIPE NCC to the e‑mail address of the member"
If you have received the documents that is the SSA and registration documents, it means the SSA is concluded and membership is established.
Does anyone have questions?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: With this proposal ‑‑ your opinion on the possibilities to have fraudulent documents to be submitted? I would suggest you consider options to have ‑‑ to proceed with the documents signed in the electronic way according to EU regulations.
LINDA SLAAKWEG: You are speaking quite soft. Can you speak a bit louder.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Yes, of course. First of all, I said your opinion on possibility to have fraudulent document to be submitted. And second, I would encourage you to consider possibility to proceed with the documents signed in electronic way ‑‑ corresponding EU regulations.
LINDA SLAAKWEG: We have considered some different options with this. We also looked at digital signatures but we decided for this option because for now because we have such a wide service region and this is the most straightforward option at this point.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: And what about processing falsified or misleading documents?
LINDA SLAAKWEG: I am not sure if I fully understand your question.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Accepting the documents uploaded through the web form is another way to provide to the RIPE NCC falsified documents.
LINDA SLAAKWEG: They still need to be signed with a handwritten signature just like we request now, but the document will be scanned, so that is the only change in that process.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Do you think you will be able to recognise a signature made ‑‑ like ‑‑
RUEDIGER VOLK: Is that worse than the fax?
(Applause)
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: So I am objecting to this. Thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot, Linda. Good. Interesting.
That brings us to point number 9, the NCC Executive Board election. And that's not exactly the slides I expected at this point of time. But I start talking and you see if you have them. Good.
So before we actually go to the election and present you the candidates, and go through that process, I actually wanted to do two short things.
Number one is, I wanted to thank Nigel. Nigel was on the Board for as far as I know 11 or 12 years and I thought it would be nice if he has some remarks before he leaves the Board so he actually has a presentation prepared. He had. Do you want to speak without the presentation?
NIGEL TITLEY: Maybe. If I can remember.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Then, please. And after that, we will go through the candidates.
NIGEL TITLEY: Right. I shall try and speak without notes. I have not been on the Board for 11 or 12 years. I have been on the Board for 19 years.
(Applause)
Thank you very much. I have been involved with RIPE for somewhat longer than that, I looked back at the attendance records for the various RIPE meetings, my earliest RIPE was RIPE 19, which I appreciate actually makes me a bit of a newcomer compared to some of the folk here ‑‑ Rudiger ‑‑ but it's long enough. I didn't actually attend RIPE 20 because BT at the time was firmly committed to OSI and I had problems getting the funding but since then I have only missed one RIPE meeting, which was RIPE 50, which was in Stockholm, and which was the year of my 25th wedding anniversary and my wife gave me an ultimatum, either I went to RIPE or looked for divorce proceedings. I'm afraid my wife won out on that occasion.
Anyway, so here we are at RIPE 78.
So, why am I standing down, or rather, why am I not standing for re‑election?
Well, there is a number of reasons. One is I am 63. It's ‑‑ I am over 60 and I reckon that the Executive Board is a position for someone that isn't over 60 to be perfectly honest.
My health has been a little bit indifferent up to the end of March and that has actually meant I have not been so good at doing what I should have been doing. And what else?
You haven't found that presentation, have you? No. This is all his fault.
The German one. This is a long ‑‑ long‑standing joke for those of us who remember.
Right. What did I say next? I am 63. Ah, yes, yes, yes, in order to be on the Executive Board and in particular to be the Chairman, you need inexhaustible supplies of patience. I have realised over the last few years my patience is starting to run out and this isn't a good thing. The other thing is my cynicism level seems to be rising as well, and the combination of these two means that I am in training to be officially a grumpy old man and all of this combines to me not being terribly conducive to continuing with the Executive Board. I have been Chairman for 11 years, I became Chairman when Kase left the Board a good few years ago, 11 years ago, in fact, and I hope I have done a reasonable job.
Okay. What will I miss?
I will miss you lot, I mean, you are awkward sometimes but you are all my friends. I shall miss the RIPE NCC. I shall miss my colleagues at the RIPE NCC. I shall miss RIPE meetings. It's a wonderful opportunity to meet people who are doing things and who have done things. And I will miss Amsterdam. Amsterdam has become a second home over the past 20 years, and I will not see it as much as I have been.
What will I not miss?
I won't miss endlessly recursive arguments on the members' list about charging schemes. They seem to go on forever. I won't miss, what else wouldn't I miss? I won't miss the endless travel, that has really taken its toll over the years, yes.
And finally, I won't miss RGF meetings either. Luckily, Salam has been doing those for me for the last few years so that's something that will ‑‑ which I haven't had to do, thank goodness.
Anyway, I think that's about it, and I think the current Board, they do a reasonable job, they are not too bad. Do keep an eye on them. Make sure you read the minutes. Make sure you read the activity plan. I have seen no evidence over 19 years that anybody apart from the Board reads the activity plan, and it is ‑‑ it does describe what the, what the RIPE NCC is planning to spend your money on next year. You really, really ought to read it and comment on it if you can.
And finally, well, I guess that's about it. I think thank you very much everyone, thank you for tolerating me for this long and I will no doubt see you all in the future. Thanks very much. Bye
(Applause).
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot, Nigel. Well, I just hope that you look at where the RIPE meetings are in the future and, you know, you might want to make vacation in that city at that time.
Good. Now, we have the right slides. Lets go through the candidates for the election. They are sorted in alphabetical order of the surname if one wonders or hasn't figured that out. Number one is Evgeny Antipov, we didn't receive a written statement is he is also not here. So for his support I would urge you as for the others as well to have a look at the web page, see what his statement are and what he stands for.
Otherwise, we move on to number 2, Ondrej Filip.
ONDREJ FILIP: Good evening. I come from Czechoslovakia, currently living in Czech Republic in Prague, and I think I am quite well‑known for very interesting project BIRD which kind of illustrates my life. I started my career with that actually, I founded this project during my study at Charles University in Prague, I studied computer science and it has two areas very important for me: First, it is Open Source and Open Source software, hardware and even ‑‑ openness in general, it's an area I value so something I spend huge part of my life.
And the second part is a routing Daemon, something which is part of the Internet infrastructure and that is the second part of my professional career.
I have worked in the alternative infrastructure in many positions, I saw it from different angles, I started as a software engineer, then I was worked as network engineer and later on a manager and Board member or Chairman of some of the associations. To be able to fulfil this role I studied business administration at University of Pittsburgh so I have experience from that area. And during my long career I work for many organisations, like Internet Service Providers, Internet Exchange providers, I also worked for enRen, and for a while I also worked on the dark side of the force. I was appointed by the Czech government to the Council of the Czech national telecommunications regulator, so I apologise to say that but I was also there but I am back, cured and I am supporting the right side of the force again.
RIPE, the main role, main function of RIPE is to be a registry, and what I can offer is my experience for more than 15 years of running a registry, domain name, registry but still a registry, which I hope I can probably say has a very good reputation, it's a rock‑stable registry that fulfils the main role so runs impartial registry but also supports again the Internet infrastructure by many projects including the mentioned BIRD but also not not DNS, not resolver and many others.
During my career I was involved in many other international bodies, associations, related to security, DNS, Internet Exchange points and also DNS governance ‑‑ internal governance.
So, there was ‑‑ those are I believe my qualifications that I can bring to the Board. So again, my experience, more than 15 years in Internet associations and Internet bodies. I have ‑ I attended RIPE meetings since I think 2003, I presented many times during plenary or during various Working Groups. Although none of the Working Groups, 100% matched my preference so I requested to found a new one, which is now Open Source Working Group and I have been a co‑chair of this Working Group since the beginning.
So, I have to thank Piotr for nominating me. Without him I probably wouldn't stay here, but if you consider me to be the right person to be a Board, please vote for me. And anyway, even if not, thank you very much for this opportunity to stand in front of you because it's a great honour for me to be part of this unique community. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks, Ondrej. Next is Kurtis.
KURTIS LINDQVIST: Hi, many of you know me. I am a long‑standing member of the community. I joined RIPE at the first RIPE meeting in '97 so not quite as long as Nigel. I was part of organising the RIPE meeting in Stockholm that Nigel missed. It was quite a nice one. And my background is as a network engineer, where I started out, I had worked in anything from a small mid‑90s ISP I was part of founding as a small entrepreneurship, and big carrier networks. I have worked inside IETF, I have been on the IAB but maybe more importantly for this role I was part of the I ASA ‑‑ that created a home for IETF today. I spent most of my year working for carriers for not for profits in leadership roles, Netnod at links, both as executive but also as a Board member in various functions and community‑run organisations.
I am and I think this is an experience worth, that I can bring into the RIPE and I can build on. I think one of the fundamentals of RIPE is that it's a core function of RIPE is to be the registry for Internet number resources in Europe as you know, but in a unique position to provide outreach and education and some community services around that. And this unique status that RIPE has I think is ‑‑ requires the organisation, the Board, the governance structures etc., they will all over time to improve, to provide accountability, transparency, and I don't think there is anything acutely broken with the RIPE, I don't think anyone can stand up and say this has to be fixed by tomorrow but over time and as an organisation matures there is much more I could do. We heard today about the maturing of governance and governance structures and I think the background I have I can bring to that, I can help with, I think. As we go forward, we also need to ensure that RIPE's stability so they can continue to provide this core functions, and I think tomorrow will not be today. That's the only thing we know. We need to prepare for that and have a structural organisation in that that can handle that and has the maturity to do that.
I want to take my experience and the background I have ‑‑ and I think that is quite a unique mix and valuable mix for this role ‑‑ to ensure that RIPE does have this governance oversight, resources and capabilities to handle the huge transition we will be going through as you heard in some of the discussions earlier today as well and continue to deliver a very stable core service but also to involve the other community services, where we are capable and needed to do so. I also think one thing is important we continue to do this with transparency because, one, I think that when I joined the RIPE community one of the reasons I start working with non‑profits is transparency in the community aspect work together as the membership to deliver something for the greater good.
So I hope that is something that you can entrust me with and vote for me for the Board to work with it. Thank you.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot, Kurtis. Next one is Remco.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Right. Here we are again. Dear colleagues, about nine years and two weeks ago I was first elected to the RIPE NCC Executive Board. That was in 2010, that was in Prague. I was the outsider candidate, I apparently terrified the sitting Board back in the day. That was when RIPE NCC had about 6500 members and the annual budget was about €15 million. My newly minted fellow Board members back then insisted I take up the role of treasurer and as much as I have tried to find other volunteers in the Board in later years, here I am.
In those nine years and two weeks I like to think I made a difference. I helped to make the organisation more transparent, accountable, professional, the industry in those years has gone through a transition; the old unencrypted trusting Internet is now well and truly dead and IPv4 run‑out has led to all sorts of market dynamics that didn't exist nine years ago. But here we are are.
I am proud of the organisation I helped run on your behalf and I am proud of the work I have done. I co‑authored the world's first transfer policy, I led the charging scheme task force and helped initial Inter‑RIR stability fund, increase communication and coordination between RIR Boards, attended dozens of regional meetings and with other stakeholders, countless ‑‑ countless face‑to‑face conversations with members and community and pushed the organisation to get the RIPE NCC financials to the highest possible level. We are not done. IPv4 pool will be depleted by the end of this year and the consequences of that will undoubtedly impact the RIPE NCC in its activities, structure, funding, membership base. RIPE NCC is probably in the best shape it's ever been and it's in a good position to take on those challenges. I would like to help steer this organisation for the next part of the transition so it can keep serving you the members and the community.
So I am asking you to return me to the Board of the RIPE NCC pretty please. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: So, the next candidate is Flavio, he couldn't make it but he sent us a video.
Video: I am really proud and glad and honoured to be candidate for the Board. I am really sorry but personal problems kept me from being there with you. So I am asking you to support my personal candidation in order to give me a trust for my long time experience in RIPE environment, IP addresses and all network BGP environment, Internet and DNS stuff.
I want to say goodbye to everybody, and hope you are well and see you next time. Bye‑bye. Ciao.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Our next candidate is Rebecca Stanic.
REBECCA STANIC: Hello, so good to see you all today. I have notes because anyone that knows me knows talking is not a problem. Keeping within the time slot is a little more of an issue. To give you a quick overview, hopefully you have been able to read bios but my background is a little different to most of the confirmed candidates we have today. So I don't have technical background, I am predominantly commercial, public affairs. I have worked for IX reach, ITel, and ‑‑ for people that don't know Resin, we have quite an extensive network that covers a lot of RIPE countries, Russia, CIS, ball particulars, east and west Europe so on daily basis I am in touch with a lot of people who are members of RIPE and able to mix with those countries. Because of that hopefully I can help improve member engagement so that is one thing I would like to do. I don't have a technical background, I have a commercial background really, focusing on strategy, business development and product, and I think those are skills that would be interesting to add to the Board especially as RIPE is going through this transitions over the next few years. Mostly my roles have been to look at market and understand challenges, risks and opportunities, and I think that's something that would really add to and benefit the Board at the moment.
Finally, as I mentioned, I have been in public affairs for a number of years of my life. I would like it to continue and improve the open and transparent communication that RIPE has with their members and also work on ensuring that that continues to improve. So that members no matter where they are and the size of their organisations, they feel that their concerns are addressed.
That's it.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot. And the last candidate, William.
WILLIAM SYLVESTER: Fellow RIPE members, as your elected Board member our organisation should focus on member experience and services including amazing tools and training, the RIPE NCC provides to the world. To do this we need to manage our finances responsibly and continue to run a professional organisation. When I say it like that it sounds so easy. It's not that easy.
We need to ensure community is inclusive, we have many different service regions throughout the world. We have members who currently are under served and we need to make sure that we are supporting those members. We are very fortunate to have large cash reserves thanks to the work the existing Board has done. We have many resources to provide services that enable our many services. We provide exceptional services as an organisation. We provide the authoritative registry of who owns which IP numbers throughout Europe. And the Middle East, and other areas. We provide services like RIPE Atlas, we train people, actually some of the training is getting to be very interesting. We also provide RIPE stats, something that people use every day as part of their lives, as part of their daily jobs and as part of what they do. These are just a few of the many great services that are provided by our community. We can't predict what the future has in store for us. With the IPv4 pool depleting soon, we know that our great fortune might run out. New LIR growth may slow, we may see LIR consolidate and that may result in decreased revenue. We must be diligent with our money and make hard decisions between service fees and the services they support. This is not easy. Some members support higher fees, others do not. These are not easy decisions, as you have seen our Board, our task forces, all of it has an incredible work that has gone into it. And as you can see from our current charging scheme, there are a lot of hard decisions that went into that. As co‑chair of the Database Working Group I worked very hard to listen to all sides. We managed to turn contention and conflict into discussion and consensus. We worked to make sure that all opinions are considered as we sought consensus. This will continue if selected, if you select me to represent you for the Executive Board.
Through my experience with the Accountability Task Force, we spent three years reviewing every RIPE document since RIPE's inception. I worked closely with the secretariat, the many great people that enable all of our services every day. I engaged some of the oldest members of our community to learn about the 12 people that sat in a room and kicked off what today we have as a vibrant Internet community.
This provided a deep understanding of our community and the RIPE NCC, an understanding that few have, but this is an understanding that I have.
My registry experience dates back 25 years, to the time of the original registry, the inter nick. This was before we had a global RIR system, before we had organised corporate entities and before we had charging schemes. This provides the perspective to understand where we have come from, while respecting our legacy while being able to respond to the changing conditions within our community and the global Internet that we enable. I ask for your support today, to help maintain a stable and secure environment, to help us keep the Internet growing, especially as we see run out coming. And this is very important while we work to adopt IPv6. Thank you.
(Applause)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot. Good. This brings us to agenda point number 10. So far we have told you what you can vote on, we have presented you all the candidates, as much as were here. We presented you the amendments and the financial report and now Ulka will give us a short overview how you can vote and how that all works.
ULKA ATHALE: Hello everyone. And I work for the RIPE NCC. And I am going to explain how the voting will work for this General Meeting.
But before I get down the details of how the voting will work, here is a quick look at who is voting this evening. We have 17,638 eligible voters and we have 2,159 votes registered. This is roughly 12% of the eligible voters, from 70‑plus countries.
With every general ‑‑ with every year we see the same trend, that the May GM is a bit more popular, people are a bit more enthusiastic, maybe it's the excitement of an election. But this must be particularly exciting because we have I think the highest number of voters we have ever had registered.
These are the top voting countries, and as you can see, as always, large numbers of voters registered from Russia and Germany.
At this General Meeting, there are five resolutions to be voted on.
Resolution 1 requires more than 50% of the yes votes to pass.
The same goes for resolution 2, more than 50% of yes votes to pass.
Resolution 3 is the resolution on the charging scheme, and here you are voting options are RIPE NCC charging scheme 2020 option A or the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2020 option B or abstain. And whichever option receives more than 50% of the votes, will pass. Abstentions are noted but do not count and this applies for all.
Resolution 4 is resolution amending RIPE NCC Articles of Association and therefore requires more than two‑thirds of the yes vote to pass, so that is 66.6%.
And Resolution 5 requires once again more than 50% of the yes votes to pass.
Coming to the Executive Board election. We have seven candidates and two seats. We use instant run‑off voting. So what we will do is give you a list of all the candidates and we ask you to rank the candidates in your preferred order, with one being your most preferred candidate, all the way down to 7.
It's best to rank all the candidates to be sure that your vote counts.
So, even for the candidates, they need over 50% of the votes to be elected. So if in the very first round, if one candidate receives over 50% of the votes, that will fill one seat, and then they will move on using the same list to elect the second candidate ‑‑ elected the candidate for the second seat.
So if no candidate reaches 50% of the votes in the first count, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated so that candidate is excluded, the preferences are ranked again until, and this will continue. If no one has more than 50% then again the lowest candidate, the now lowest candidate is eliminated and those preferences are redistributed until somebody else once again crosses the 50% mark.
So voting will begin once the Chairman declares voting to be open. There are two ways to vote: Either using a paper ballot which is applicable for attendees who are present in this room only. I would like to remind anyone who is voting with a paper ballot that your ballots must be handed in before you leave this room. If the ballots leave this room they are no longer valid.
But the bulk of our voters are voting electronically and this is open to those of you who are physically present in the room as well as all our remote participants.
Electronic votes can be cast until 0900 UTC, which is also 9:00 a.m. local time in Reykjavik on Friday 24th May.
If you are voting with the paper ballot, this is a sample ballot, and what we ask you to do is very simple, to just make a mark in one box for each resolution, it can be a tick mark, it can be a cross, you can colour the box in, whatever you prefer. But of course what's important is that you mark only one alternative for each resolution, otherwise that vote is invalid and we will have to discard it.
For the Executive Board voting, this is what your voting slip looks like. In this case for the empty boxes please just fill in numbers from 1 to 7, the candidates are listed alphabetically and please hand in your ballots before you leave the room.
For electronic voting, those of you should have already received your electronic voting link, voting has not yet been launched. It will be launched once the Chairman declares it open. Click on the link you have received, you will be directed to the voting platform. Don't forward the e‑mail, please.
And also don't put it up on the PowerPoint, not the best idea.
When it comes to counting the votes we use thirdparty system BigPulse so the electronic votes are recorded directly on BigPulse. Paper ballots are stored, they will go from this room after you have handed them in, under observation, into the hotel safe, and once the electronic voting deadline has passed, so that is 0900 UTC on Friday 24th May, we will enter the paper ballots into the BigPulse system in the presence of independent observers from other RIRs. And for this General Meeting Geoff Huston and Craig Ngo have agreed to be our independent observers.
And finally, on Friday the 24th May, the GM will reconvene in this room at 10:45 UTC. The Chairman of the Executive Board will announce the results, the announcement will be broadcast live for registered participants. So, thank you and happy voting.
(Applause)
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you for an interesting presentation. Can you tell me the amount of paper ballots?
ULKA: I will have to check but I think it would be around ‑‑
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: 51.
Blake: Thank you for this. I would like to ask some questions and maybe get some clarification around the rank choice voting system because as we saw, I believe it was in Marseilles the last time we introduced this, and the BigPulse system from what I recall does not require you to fill out all ‑‑ to use all seven of your numbers if you wish.
ULKA: You are not required to use all seven your numbers but of course since it's a preferential voting system we advise you to do it, the system will not oblige you, you can abstain if you like.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Right. I was speaking with someone about that, about the results from the Marseille Board election and there were ‑‑ the three kinds of votes, if you will, there were, there were a whole lot of people that only voted for one candidate, just put a "1" that's it, and that's strange considering there were two seats open. There was another large group of people that only voted for two candidates and then everyone else kind of did the, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, thing, and if in this system you are encouraging everyone to fill out all seven, to use all 7 of your numbers if you will but that's not obligatory in the BigPulse system, basically if you are voting for just one or two people your vote is basically invalid because it will ‑‑ if the bulk of the votes are people going ranking, you know, even people they don't want to see on the Board with a 6 or 7, that means ‑‑ the last ‑‑ last Board election went to the fifth and sixth round for the two seats which means if you only vote once or twice, your vote is basically invalid. And I just wanted to point that out because I think that's not at all clear from the ‑‑ from the slides.
ULKA: Thank you for your feedback. It's the same for paper ballots because you can fill in one or two if you so choose ‑‑ as you say very rightly, it's a ranked system. If you want your vote to count please fill in all seven preferences. Thank you.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: I disagree with your advice. If there is two candidates I would like to see on the Board, if those two candidates are excluded in the first rounds, then my vote will then not be given to any other candidate, which is what I will intend if I only want to vote for those two candidates, therefore if you advise me to rank the other candidates I do not want to give my votes to, my votes will be transferred to those candidates in the later surrounds I think it's very important you give correct information on how this system work if you are going to give any recommendations at all.
ULKA. Thank you.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: I have given this feedback on previous general assemblies as well and I think it's important that everybody who votes understands how the voting works.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That is exactly right ‑‑ that's exactly right, that's exactly how rank choice voting is intended to work. I know because I am a big proponent of it in my country. There is several States in the United States that have adopted this, I mean, for example, and my understanding of it do not vote for anyone who you do not want to see on the Board, full stop.
Ulka: Thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks. So, we nearly made it. We come to my least favourite part of the evening. I am ‑‑ we will go through all the resolutions and one by one.
So. Resolution number 1:
The General Meeting adopts the RIPE NCC financial report 2018. You have the three options: Yes, no, abstain.
Resolution number 2:
The General Meeting discharges the Executive Board with regards to its actions as they appear to be from the annual report 2018 and the financial report 2018.
Again, three options.
Resolution number 3:
The General Meeting approves the adoption of the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2020 option that received the absolute majority of the votes cast.
You have two options ‑‑ three, sorry: You have option A, as we discussed, option B and if you want to abstain as an option I guess you have 3.
Resolution number 4: The General Meeting approves the amendments to the RIPE NCC Articles of Association, which we discussed. Yes, no, abstain.
And the last one: Resolution number 5, the General Meeting approves the amendments to the RIPE NCC Standard Service Agreement.
Yes, no and abstain.
As we said, these are the candidates, 1 to 7. And with that, I am opening the electronic voting.
ULKA: Yes, there will a short ‑‑
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: And then we meet again on Friday, 10:45, in this room and then I will read what you voted for.
And with that, see you on Friday. Have a good evening.
(Applause).
LIVE CAPTIONING BY AOIFE DOWNES, RPR
DUBLIN, IRELAND