RIPE 85 Working Group Chair Meeting Summary

27 October 2022
Metropol Palace Hotel, Belgrade

Attendees:
Sandoche Balakrichenan, Nina Bargisen, João Damas, Markus de Brun, Massimo Candela, Ondřej Filip, Antony Gollan, Julf Helsingius, Paul Hoogsteder , Raymond Jetten, Shane Kerr, Remco van Mook, Brian Nisbet, Niall O'Reilly, Marita Phelan, Peter Steinhäuser, Benedikt Stockebrand, Massimiliano Stucchi, Stephen Strowes, William Sylvester, Willem Toorop, Leo Vegoda, Alexandra Vos, Martin Winter.

Chair: Mirjam Kühne
Scribe: Karla Liddle-White

1. Feedback about RIPE 85

There was general agreement that the meeting was going well and there had been very few complaints. The venue was discussed with issues like the size of the coffee break area not being big enough, the lack of barista, lack of variation with the food and air quality. Attendees had also experienced issues with the taxi services from the airport. The length of the time slots given to each WG on Wednesday was discussed due to the GM being at an earlier time. There had also been positive feedback about Meetecho but it was noted that Spacial Chat hadn’t been available on the first day of the meeting and a number of WG Chairs said that information hadn’t been provided to attendees in a timely manner.

There was also a discussion on the submission system and how it could be improved and there had been some confusion over whether Working Groups accepted commercial presentations.

2. Mailing list consolidation and RIPE

Leo Vegoda raised the question of how to stop the community fragmenting when other methods of communication were introduced and whether these forms of communication were needed. He explained that the new RIPE NCC forum looked good, as did the NANOG system. He noted that his concern wasn’t new technology. He said that it was change management and members of the community not talking to each other when they were on different systems, for example someone on Discourse may not talk to someone on the lists and vice versa.

Mirjam added that while the forum was a RIPE NCC initiative, the community had been using it and there were clear guidelines and moderators sending people to the lists when required, for example for policy proposals.

There was also general agreement that different communication methods were a positive way forward with people being able to choose between them but it would depend on what the community wished to use in the long term.

3. Mailing list moderation for WGs

Mirjam reminded WG chairs that there is a documented process for WG chairs for moderation of WG mailing lists. She added that as admins of WG mailing lists, WG Chairs should be transparent about their moderation decisions.