Interim Working Group Chair Meeting Summary (November 2021)

3 November 2021

Attendees:

Ignas Bagdonas, Sandoche Balakrichenan, João Damas, Constanze Dietrich, Rob Evans, Ondřej Filip, Antony Gollan, James Kennedy, Shane Kerr, Brian Nisbet, Niall O'Reilly, Leo Vegoda, Alexanda Vos, Denis Walker

Chair: Mirjam Kühne

Scribe: Karla Liddle-White

1. Changes for RIPE 83

The chairs heard from Alexandra Vos, RIPE NCC Events Organiser who said there would be two parallel sessions at RIPE 83. Both the Open Source and Connect Working Group (WG) sessions would start at 14:30 (UTC+1) and the DNS and MAT WG sessions would start at 16:00 (UTC+1) on Thursday. She also noted that the General Meeting would be starting an hour and a half earlier than usual at 16:30 (UTC+1) on Wednesday, 24 November.

Changes had also been made to Meetecho. Alexandra noted that participants could now select which rooms they would like to be in and could turn their camera on by themselves when asking a question (at previous meetings they had to request video once they were given audio). In RIPE 82 feedback, participants said they had received too many emails, so for RIPE 83 the most important information would be shared in email and a dedicated updates page on the website would inform people of what was happening at the meeting.

With a virtual setting for RIPE 83 again, the chairs were reminded to submit introduction videos for their working groups which would be available on the RIPE 83 website.

There will be no separate social event for newcomers this time. Instead, newcomers are encouraged to get to know other RIPE Meeting participants via ‘Time to Talk’ on SpatialChat – where participants could meet the Executive Board, RIPE Chair Team, and WG chairs in different ‘rooms’ – which combined a socialising aspect with the Newcomers’ introduction. Chairs discussed the length of time participants could spend in each room and the length of the introduction at the beginning. It was agreed that participants could decide how much time they spent in each room. There will also be a meeting lobby room.

2. Updated Agenda and Meeting Plan

It was noted that the meeting plan for RIPE 83 would be finalised on 8 November. The group discussed the various agendas for the plenaries and WG sessions.

Mirjam said that the new RIPE Code of Conduct (CoC) was in place and asked chairs to become familiar with the code before the RIPE Meeting and take their responsibility – together with everyone else- in ensuring the Code of Conduct is followed. She also said that people registering for RIPE 83 had to agree to adhere to the CoC. As an interim measure, the Trusted Contacts had agreed to stay in their role for the meeting.

The group discussed the lack of mentor sign-ups for the mentoring programme. It was noted that it was more difficult to mentor at a virtual meeting since it wasn’t the same as an in-person event where you could show someone around and introduce them properly. It was noted however that this was still an important activity, especially in a virtual environment where it was more difficult to socialise.

The chairs discussed the report from the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force. It was noted that not all recommendations would be put forward at the Database WG. Some would likely be presented in the Address Policy or Routing WG sessions. The chairs were asked to look through the recommendations to see which of them would best fit within the scope of their WG.

Mirjam encouraged chairs to make sure they were following the process and deadlines for selecting new co-chairs and noted that the RIPE NCC could provide support with keeping track of deadlines.

Action: The RIPE NCC to provide time keeping support for Working Group chair selections

3. AOB

Mirjam highlighted the new LinkedIn page for the RIPE community: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ripe-community/ and encouraged chairs to link to that instead of the RIPE NCC where necessary. This page is in addition to the RIPE community group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/39159/   

Niall noted that there were a number of documents being prepared; one on the definition and responsibilities of RIPE task forces and another looking at overall participation within the RIPE community, which would include four key pillars of openness, usefulness, transparency and integrity. He advised that he planned to make both documents available to the Working Group Chairs for information, once they were drafted.

The group then discussed the RIPE 83 meeting agenda and whether some slots could be swapped if timing was an issue for any of the WG chairs.

Mirjam also updated the group on RIPE 84, noting that the current plan is to hold it in Berlin unless the COVID-19 situation won’t allow that.