RIPE 82 Programme Committee Meeting

Wednesday, 26 May 2021, 15:00 – 16:30 UTC+2
Zoom Call

Present:

PC Chair: Franziska Lichtblau
PC Members: Alexander Azimov, Jelte Jansen, Dmitry Kohmanyuk, Brian Nisbet, Wolfgang Tremmel, Jan Zorž
RIPE Chair Team: Mirjam Kuehne, Niall O’Reilly
RIPE NCC Staff: Martina de Mas, Alexandra Vos
Minutes: Alexandra Vos

Franziska welcomed all to the call and invited a round of feedback about RIPE 82.

Martina said she thought the meeting went very well and called it the best virtual RIPE Meeting so far. The technical side went very smoothly, there were no major incidents as you could tell from the Tech Report presented on Friday, 21 May. She also stated that the PC did very well in chairing the sessions.

Alexander said he thought the meeting went well but just had one minor suggestion for the future which is the option to detach the main window from the Meetecho browser.

Jelte said he thinks Meetecho keeps getting better and better. SpatialChat was good as he had the best conversations there but also some bad ones. Jelte stated he thought the Security Challenge was a great addition and thoroughly enjoyed it. Something that positionally needs improving is the meeting agenda. The agenda was a bit harder to read because it included the Friday before the meeting. Perhaps adding some white lines between the days would help make it clearer. Jelte also gave the PC a session chairing tip - to make a checklist for yourself. Mirjam stated that the RIPE NCC can provide that for the chairs. Overall, Jelte would look forward to the next meeting even if it’s virtual again. 

Wolfgang thought SpatialChat wasn’t used as much as it was during RIPE 81. He noted that the announcement option on Meetecho that was asked for by the PC was not used. A nice additional feature would be an applause button. 

Brian said he thought RIPE 82 was better than the previous two virtual meetings and they’re consistently the best virtual conferences. He noted it’s very easy to say you’ll be available after a session to chat but once a session is over the first thing he wants to do is walk away from his computer.

A point of improvement would be to have the WG Chair Mattermost rooms ready, these are currently put together by the Chairs themselves, whereas the PC room is put together by the RIPE NCC. Brian would like this to be consistent. The preloaded slides were a great new feature and asked what the mechanics are when removing the slides from the previous presenter.  Martina said that these are removed by the Session Hosts (RIPE NCC Tech Team).

Jan said this was the best online meeting so far. One thing he did not enjoy was being locked in the virtual dinner ‘stage’ space and not being able to leave to go chat to others until after the Talent Show. He would have liked the dinner to be a little less restrictive.

Franziska said in general everything was good, people just seemed to want more time to talk between sessions. Franziska did have one problem with the auto gain during one session where her mic was cut off or went very quiet.  She received some negative feedback about the Friday session before RIPE 82, people didn’t seem to read their emails and missed this. There was some complaining about receiving too many emails which is something to improve on.

Mirjam said some people like the session on the Friday before RIPE 82 as they would like to spread the meeting out a bit more. Mirjam felt a bit rushed during the Community Plenary and would like to see regular updates being added to specific days. Before RIPE 82 there had been discussions on whether more time and space would be made for interaction and Mirjam asked whether this had been achieved.

Niall stated he thinks there are too many categories of plenary sessions and they don’t formally need to be different. One of the announcements was minuted in the Closing Plenary but this should have been in the Community Plenary E.g. Nigel’s presentation for the Rob Blokzijl Foundation. Also, there wasn’t time for Nurani’s lightning talk in the Closing Plenary but it did fit in to the Community Plenary.

Jan asked what the outcome of the SCION BoF was, they wanted a WG but the decision was left hanging. Mirjam said that there is interest but for now there is no WG and they will be more active on the mailing list.

Franziska noted that the PC isn’t the most active of PCs and would like to see people be a bit more active. She will send a welcome email to new members and include the PC mailing list in the email to inform them of their duties and expectations. If people aren’t doing what is expected of them Franziska will approach them directly. Mirjam offered to help with this but Franziska said this is something the PC should be able to do.

Jan asked about the status of RIPE 83. Martina said that the plan was to have it as hybrid meeting with the in-person part in Amsterdam. The decision will be made by the end of August.

Franziska and the PC thanked Jelte for his work on the PC and closed the call.