Wilfried Woeber Receives 2018 Rob Blokzijl Award

Yesterday at RIPE 76 in Marseille, the Rob Blokzijl Foundation presented the first Rob Blokzijl award to Wilfried Woeber "For more than thirty years of contributions to the development of the Internet: building and interconnecting networks, sharing knowledge, connecting people, building consensus and helping others to contribute and succeed."

(From left to right) Lynn Blokzijl with Wilfried Woeber and Mirjam Kühne

The Rob Blokzijl Award honours the memory of Rob Blokzijl, the first Chairman of RIPE. The award recognises individuals who have made substantial and sustained technical and operational contributions to the development of the Internet in the RIPE NCC service region and supported or enabled others. The awardee receives EUR 10,000 from the Foundation.

Speaking for the 2018 Award Committee, Daniel Karrenberg said: "We received a total of ten excellent nominations from the community. It speaks for our community that all of them had considerable merit and the final choice was not an easy one."

On behalf of the Foundation, he thanked the members of the Award Committee for their work in soliciting and evaluating nominations. He also thanked the RIPE NCC and specifically Mirjam Kühne for the excellent support in making this first award a success.

In a short ceremony, Lynn Blokzijl presented the award to Wilfried, who was visibly moved at receiving this honour. Wilfried, who is officially retired from Vienna University, has built networks in the RIPE region for more than 30 years. More importantly, he has shared his knowledge and experience with many others within RIPE, the NREN community and notably the emerging efforts in Eastern Europe when the iron curtain started to be penetrated by networking efforts. Later, Wilfried contributed significantly to some of the first deployments of IPv6.

Besides his technical work, Wilfried also served in various governance functions; notably he was a long-time chair of the Database Working Group, a RIPE NCC Arbiter, and a member of the NRO Number Council. Last but not least, Wilfried has supported quite a number of young students who have gone on to become successful members of the RIPE community, making their own contributions to our shared success.