Final Report of the RIPE Meeting Task Force

The RIPE Meeting Task Force (TF) was set up in 2010 with the purpose of looking at how RIPE Meetings were run, surveying the attendees and producing a range of suggestions on how the meetings could be improved. The first step was to work with the EOF Coordination group to introduce some new ideas directly to RIPE Meetings, while planning a survey for current and ex-RIPE Meeting attendees.

At RIPE 61 in Rome, the first steps were taken with increased Birds of a Feather (BoF) and workshop material provided for the EOF. The TF was announced to the meeting and a call was made for input. Shortly after RIPE 61, the survey was launched.

There were numerous outputs from the meeting survey but the following were considered highlights:
- In general, those surveyed were very happy with the meetings
- A call for more technical content at meetings
- More BoFs, workshops and panel sessions
- Submitting content needed to be easier
- Meeting agendas needed to be available earlier

This data was presented first to the RIPE Working Group (WG) Chairs and then to the community at RIPE 62. The largest part of the plan for the future was the creation of a formally structured RIPE Programme Committee (PC) to take over from the loose EOF Coordination collective and to organise content for the plenary section of the RIPE Meeting.

This PC was put in place for RIPE 63 and proved to be a huge success, leading to a full charter and further formalisation of the structure leading to RIPE document 531.

Other recommendations were made to the WG Chairs collective for their consideration such as whether WGs always need to meet, how many sessions each WG is allocated and justifying the number of slots. The TF also proposed there should be a formal process to periodically review each WG and, if necessary, wind it up. A procedure should be developed so that WG Chairs undergo some form of regular re-election or endorsement every 3-5 years.

Given the completion of the survey and the introduction of the Programme Committee, along with a number of smaller changes to RIPE Meetings, it was decided that the TF had completed the work as initially scoped. It was acknowledged by the WG Chairs that further work would be required to address other issues, but that a new TF should be set up to handle this as it is not purely concerned with RIPE Meetings.

The TF will formally close at RIPE 64.