[ripe-list] RIPE Working Group Chair Financial Support call for consensus by 15 June 2020

Just adding to the data set. In the past Rob offered me funding. I declined.

To be clear this was not when I was working for the Commission. They have a more than adequate budget! And anyway the conflict of interest there woukd have been uncomfortable.

But where do people see this going? Anyone who has a particular role - WG chairs, PC, speakers - will be eligible for funding? Will people still volunteer if others are getting funding? I presume that people will always need to get funding from elsewhere initially. And then?

In recent times I have been self-funding. The meeting fees have not influenced my participation. The choice of venue has.

I appreciated virtual Berlin. But I did miss the coffee!

Gordon

> On 15 Jun 2020, at 12:06, Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> While the offer looks generous and quite anybody could advertise sponsorship,
>> I do think that the neutrality that was expressed as being expected from NCC staff
>> in recent discussions would also extend to the NCC's Board. To that extent I
>> think the Board maybe overreached a bit - nobody had asked for this well to be drilled.
> 
> As a former WG chair I strongly disagree. The NCC is not overreaching at all here, they are responding to requests from the community. I have asked Hans Petter for support in the past, and as the result of that the NCC gave me a refund of the meeting fee. That at least made it a little bit easier to attend the meeting. I am very happy to see better support for WG chairs that need it, on request.
> 
>> But then, why focus on WG chairs?
>> What about the program committee and what about the contributors and presenters?
> 
> More can be done in the future, but one step at a time.
> 
> I am happy with the current step!
> 
> Cheers,
> Sander
>