Candidate Biographies
Julius Cicenas
Background
I have a Bachelor of Informatics Engineering, a Master’s degree in Electronics Engineering and I have worked in IT and telecommunications for 14 years. In 2008 I started my job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania in the Information Technology and Security Department as Senior Officer. In 2011, I joined the Western Union company and worked on major IT incidents globally. In 2015, I moved to the Telecom Delivery team as a Provisioning Engineer, responsible for global network and delivery processes inside and outside the organisation, on projects finance internal audits. In 2020, I joined the Oxylabs company where I currently work as IT Supply Team Lead, responsible for global network delivery.
Motivation
I have applied for this position with enthusiasm and want to share ideas which I would be honoured to bring to the RIPE NCC:
1. At the moment we are going through hard times, when a lot of countries and companies should review their positions and agreements due to ongoing war. I think every legal entity should work based on ethical and moral values and make sure that the outcome does not help the aggressor. In my opinion, the RIPE NCC should be technically neutral to provide Internet resources for all countries, and at the same time, review policies regarding economic resources.
2. RIPE NCC has a good set of tools and this can be expanded to other RIRs. The cooperation between other RIRs would allow other regions to grow their expertise.
3. RIPE NCC as a training lab hub for the Internet and Networks. RIPE NCC can cooperate with other companies and be an aggregator for the network world - sharing experiences and involving young talents in problem-solving.
Ondřej Filip
Background
Ondřej has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and the Internet. He studied Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University and Executive MBA at University of Pittsburgh - Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. During his studies at Charles University he founded an important open source project – routing daemon BIRD - and started working for the company IPEX, a nation-wide ISP in the Czech Republic. He later became Technical director and a member of the board at IPEX.
Since December 2004, Ondřej has been CEO of the CZ.NIC association. CZ.NIC currently covers many activities for the local and global community, e.g. developing open source software and hardware like BIRD, Knot DNS and Turris. It runs the national cyber security team of the Czech Republic (CSIRT.CZ). Over the course of Ondřej’s career, he has served on the boards of many Internet related bodies and additionally supported many activities. He is the Chair of the board of NIX.CZ, and a member of the boards of Euro-IX and IX-F. He is also a committee member of SSAC and on the programme committee for CSNOG. He has regularly attended RIPE meetings since 2003.
Ondřej's hobbies include basketball, travelling and programming open source software. He speaks Czech and Slovak, is fluent in English and partly understands German and Russian.
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ondrejfilip/
Motivation
During my career, I have been involved in almost all aspects of the current Internet ecosystem, this includes working for ISP, IXP, domain name registry, government regulator, academic NREN, ICANN and also RIPE working groups. This helps me to understand various aspects of the community and members, their needs, strategies and also how they interact with each other. I am also used to working in a culturally diverse environment.
I was elected three years ago, and like many others, I did not expect such an exhaustive three years. I had very little time for an onboarding process, but I managed to get the picture quickly with my experience of being CEO of a registry for more than 18 years. A process of a Managing Director transition started a few weeks after my election. I was involved since the beginning and I hope you can confirm, that this task has been completed smoothly. The new Managing Director just started work when the global pandemic hit. As for may others, this was a real challenge for a community driven organisation. My fellow board members appointed me to a role of RIPE NCC Treasurer to help the organisation in this very challenging period. I fulfil my promise to keep the membership fees low and I started to work on a new Charging Scheme, which I presented to the membership. The quickly changing environment also needs a review of Treasury Statutes, which is currently one of my main tasks in this role.
Unfortunately, the new horrible global conditions are even more challenging for an organisation with an international and very diverse membership. Also the current Chairman indicated that he will not run again after his election term. So I have decided to volunteer again because I believe RIPE NCC requires a person with management and board experience, as well as a person with a detailed knowledge of our organisation, to ensure stability, business continuity and smooth leadership transition.
For the next three years, I would like to concentrate mainly on organisation stability, keeping the member fees low and to maintain the global and open Internet.
Remco van Mook
Background
Remco van Mook is the CEO of Asteroid International BV. He was previously director of interconnection at Equinix, where he looked after the company's global interconnection strategy as well as the company's Internet Exchanges. As part of that position, he got involved with all sides of the company - from datacenter engineering and network architecture to marketing and corporate development.
He was CTO of NDIX, responsible for architecture and technical strategy, from 2000 until 2009. NDIX was the first Internet Exchange spanning across an international border, with the intention to promote regional development. NDIX has evolved into an exchange platform connecting a diverse range of companies across a multitude of cities in the Netherlands and the states of Nordrhein/Westfalen and Niedersachsen in Germany.
During that same time, he was founder and manager of Virtu, a Dutch datacenter company that got accolades for being one of the fastest growing technology companies in the Netherlands for three consecutive years. After he sold Virtu to Equinix in 2008, he was country manager for Equinix in the Netherlands for the remainder of that year.
Previously an active contributor to EURO-IX, he involves himself mostly with network design challenges, the European datacenter market and regulatory affairs. He is co-author of a few RFCs, including RFC 5452, to upgrade the security of current DNS (non-DNSSEC) implementations against Kaminsky-style attacks and the widely used RFC 2322.
He is a regular speaker at conferences and RIPE Meetings and advisor to various government organisations on Internet-related affairs. He also currently serves as the co-chair of the Connect Working Group within the RIPE community and is a member of the RIPE NCC Executive Board.
When Remco is not sitting on a plane, attending conferences or taking over the world, he lives near Deventer, the Netherlands with his wife and two daughters.
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/remcovm/