[ripe-chair-discuss] RIPE Chair appointment procedure

> On 22 Oct 2016, at 15:34, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> 
>> imagine what rob would say about all this
> 
> I talked to him about it, actually. He volunteered that there was a need
> to formalise a mechanism to handle how to choose a ripe chair, and what
> the position would do, and so forth.  He also said that he wanted a
> future ripe chair to handle this, which struck me as being a strange
> thing to say, but in retrospect perhaps not: it was an acknowledgement
> that this was not an easy thing to do, but that he had enough faith that
> the community would do the right thing.

Rob pretty much said the same thing at the last few meetings of the WG chairs he attended. Some discussions about this topic got under way once the bickering over procedures for WG chair appointments began to subside. I think Rob realised that he didn’t have enough time left (or the energy) to wait for the inevitable shed-painting and rat-holing on RIPE Chair selection to end. So he wisely left his successor to deal with this hairball.

BTW this was also why Rob appointed Hans Petter. He wanted a quick and effective solution. He didn’t want the final months of his time as RIPE Chair to be spent on debating a succession plan. Rob very probably knew he wouldn’t live long enough for that to reach a conclusion.

> Regarding the words "election" and "selection", people get them mixed up
> and this is more to do with the fact that they sound similar than
> anything else.  A typo happened and was corrected, so let's move on.

Indeed.