Post-RIPE 81 Working Group Chair Meeting Summary

10 November 2020

Attendees:
Ignas Bagdonas, Erik Bais, Sandoche Balakrichenan, Nina Bargisen, João Damas, Constanze Dietrich, Gert Döring, Rob Evans, Ondřej Filip, Will van Gulik, Julf Helsingius, Paul Hoogsteder, Achilleas Kemos, Shane Kerr, Florence Lavroff, Martina de Mas, Remco van Mook, Brian Nisbet, Niall O’Reilly, Marita Phelan, William Sylvester, Brian Trammell, Denis Walker, Martin Winter.

Chair: Mirjam Kühne
Scribe: Antony Gollan

1) RIPE 81 Feedback

Meetecho and SpatialChat were seen as good improvements over Zoom in terms of greater interaction during the meeting, though there was room for further improvement.

Meetecho could use improvements on the client side, it didn’t work well on small devices, it took up a lot of bandwidth, and was sensitive to connectivity changes (e.g. switching to a new WiFi connection). The polling functionality was appreciated, but it was suggested these could be done non-sequentially. There could also be an etiquette in terms of minimum bandwidth/processing power – if presenters couldn’t meet these requirements, they might want to keep their video disabled. It was also noted that speakers were not be able to see the timer if they used full screen in Meetecho.

SpatialChat could have been better integrated with the meeting agenda – for example by clearly indicating where informal discussion could continue after a session ended (there was a “Speakers Room” for this purpose, but this was not clear). SpatialChat could be resource-intensive, which was an issue for people with smaller/older devices. During the Thursday social, it was hard to hear the bingo/comedy due to an issue with the audio on the platform.

It was noted that some discussions which weren’t directly linked to a presentation were harder to find in the meeting archives (due to the way videos are attached to presentations). These elements were nevertheless archived and also covered in the minutes produced by the RIPE NCC.

One pre-recorded presentation during the meeting hadn’t worked very well, and it was noted these should be streamed via the RIPE NCC rather than by the presenter directly, especially if they didn’t have a solid connection.

An attendee at the meeting had raised an issue from the General Meeting in a number of different WGs, which had been disruptive. RIPE NCC staff had reached out to them directly. In light of this, potential spam issues were something to consider – RIPE NCC staff should be proactive to alert chairs about people who had interrupted earlier sessions.

Some WGs that struggled to get participation in physical meetings found they were receiving more questions in a virtual session.

The group discussed whether pre-recorded presentations should be more accepted. It was noted that this allowed greater security for the presenter at the cost of interactivity. However, if a person was going to be speaking into a computer anyway (in a virtual meeting) perhaps there wasn’t much difference between a ‘live’ presentation, provided the speaker was available for the Q&A afterwards. It was noted that the NANOG meeting had been fully recorded, which had worked well but had required a lot more shepherding from the PC, as presentations were typically recorded several times.

Many people felt that 45-minute sessions hadn’t allowed enough time for discussion. There were suggestions to add a second track or to switch to one-hour sessions. However, given that most people were attending from home (with family and work responsibilities) a more demanding agenda could also be problematic. It was noted that whichever approach was used (short vs long sessions/breaks, single vs dual track meeting), it would come at a cost to some other aspect.

It was noted that the RIPE NCC Policy Officer’s report had been in the Address Policy WG (as usual) but the meat of the report had involved the Anti-Abuse WG, which had confused some people.

2) How the RIPE Chair Team can support WG chairs with policy proposals3) Review and status of recent PDP appeal

It was agreed that these items would be discussed on a future call.

4) AOB

There was an open call for nominations for an ICANN Executive Board seat. Chairs were encouraged to nominate anyone who might be suitable.