[ripe-list] RIPE Chairs Selected

Dear colleagues,

The RIPE 2020 NomCom has selected Mirjam Kühne as RIPE Chair and Niall 
O'Reilly as RIPE Vice Chair. After interviewing all nominees, hearing 
substantial input from the community and a thorough discussion during 
three selection meetings all voting members voted to select Mirjam as 
Chair and eight out of ten voting members voted to select Niall as Vice 
Chair. The selection was subsequently supported unanimously by all 
members of the committee. We closely followed the process spelled out in 
ripe-727 and ripe-728. We regularly paused to confirm that the whole 
committee was comfortable with the process and its progress.

We were able to choose from a set of nominees who are all very capable 
and well respected in the community. We expect that the community would 
support any of them as their Chair. Our selection is in no way a 
negative statement about the nominees we did not select.

We selected Mirjam because the input from the community clearly favoured 
her. She is very widely regarded as someone who listens carefully to 
everyone and who helps the community to find consensus and move forward. 
We selected Niall because of the positive input we received about his 
track record with the community. Mirjam and Niall convinced us that they 
would work well as a team and complement each other.

The RIPE NCC board has confirmed the candidates in accordance with the 
process set out in ripe-727. The original time line called for a 
transition from Hans Petter to Mirjam and Niall during RIPE 81 in 
October. Hans Petter has since resigned as RIPE Chair because he 
accepted to be the new managing director of the RIPE NCC; he is 
currently also serving as RIPE Chair ad-interim. In this situation it 
makes little sense to stick to the original time line. Therefore we 
suggest that the outgoing and incoming Chairs arrange the transition 
among themselves as soon as practicable.

We plan to publish the NomCom report about this first run of the 
selection process in September before our term ends at RIPE 81. We 
expect to make suggestions for improving the process and look forward to 
the community discussing and deciding the process for the next 
iteration.

We thank everyone who supported the NomCom, especially all nominees and 
the many members of the community who made time to give us their input.

Finally we call on the whole community to welcome and support Mirjam and 
Niall in their new roles!

Daniel Karrenberg - Chair - RIPE 2020 Nomcom