[ripe-list] The NomCom Requests your Support

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the RIPE community,

If your feeling is something like "Oh no, not another long message from 
the NomCom! I wish they would just get on with it." you do not need to 
read further. It would certainly help us if you explicitly told us 
briefly to "just get on with it".

Thanks

Daniel

------------------

 From:

Daniel Karrenberg - Chair of the RIPE 2020 Nominating Committee.


To:

Christian Kaufmann  - Chair of the RIPE NCC Executive Board,

Franziska Lichtblau - Chair of the RIPE Program Committee,

Hans Petter Holen   - RIPE Chair ad-interim & Chair of the RIPE WG 
Chairs,

RIPE Community.


Christian, Franziska, Hans Petter, Friends and Colleagues,

The process to select two persons to succeed Hans Petter Holen as RIPE 
chair has been under way since September 2019. The NomCom has worked 
diligently to run the process that has been agreed by the community and 
codified in ripe-727 and ripe-728. We have called for nominees, 
canvassed when we had only one nomination and received four further 
nominations. We have dealt with the unforeseen withdrawal of Hans 
Petter. We have recognised the increased urgency that Hans Petter's 
resignation as RIPE Chair puts on the process by slightly tightening our 
time line without compromising on running an exemplary process. We have 
held three formal and two informal meetings, talked to the nominees by 
teleconference and received substantial input about all nominees from a 
diverse set of people in the community.  We have kept the community 
informed by announcements on the RIPE mailing list, by providing a 
dedicated blog, by publishing complementary material on RIPE Labs, by 
reporting to the community plenary at RIPE80 and by talking about our 
work whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Last week, during RIPE80, there were some calls from within the RIPE 
community to stop this process and start over.  There also have been 
suggestions to issue another call for nominations and then continue as 
before. Since our mandate does not extend beyond executing the process 
along an agreed time line we are extremely reluctant to deviate from 
this unless we observe a clear and strong consensus in the community to 
deviate for the sake of pragmatism.

We have discussed this extensively and decided against changing the 
planned time line because we see no such consensus. We also considered 
the consequences: Deviating from the plan at this time would put Hans 
Petter into the difficult position of having to work a new and demanding 
job next to filling the RIPE Chair ad interim role. This is too much to 
ask of anyone even without taking into account the recent discussion on 
ripe-chair-discuss. Hans Petter has told us that he accepted the 
ad-interim role on the assumption that we will finish our work on time 
and that he will likely have to resign if we take significantly longer 
than planned.

Unfortunately during the RIPE 80 community plenary there has been no 
discussion that provides further guidance to us. It is difficult for us 
to assess whether this was due to the virtual format of the meeting, 
widespread agreement with what we have done so far or any other reason. 
We certainly expected those who had called for changes to the process 
earlier during the week to speak up and a discussion to take place that 
would provide further guidance for us. This has not happened.

We have therefore decided to briefly pause our process and not to start 
candidate selection after RIPE 80 as originally planned. We have 
continued with preparations but have not started discussing the nominees 
among ourselves yet.

We ask the RIPE NCC Board, the PC, the WG Chairs and the community at 
large to give us timely guidance on how to proceed. The question before 
us is whether we still have the support of the community to continue 
with the agreed process and time line or whether there is consensus in 
the community that we should do something different. We need this 
guidance now so that we can keep the delay in the time line as short as 
possible.

We also ask the community as a whole to support us once we do proceed.

Daniel Karrenberg,
Chair,
RIPE 2020 Nominating Committee