RIPE community service Plenary
RIPE 89
31 October 2024
4 p.m.
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MIRJAM KUHNE: Hello. We have a packed agenda, so I'd like to start. I didn't hear the bell yet, so I hope more people are going to come in.
Before I forget, I wanted to say it's not only Halloween today, it's also Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. My colleagues are walking around in pretty clothing. It's obviously good to celebrate light.
And apart from that, this is the agenda today. I am Mirjam Kuhne, your RIPE Chair, we have a packed agenda.
So, I'll get started and I hope all the speakers are somewhere here in the neighbourhood. I see most of you there. So, I'll just have a quick update of ‑‑
The one thing I wanted to mention is the RIPE document, a draft document, I have posted to the RIPE list just before the RIPE meeting. We have been working on this for a while. It's a way to describe the relationship between RIPE and the RIPE NCC. We have been talking about this on and off in the recent RIPE meetings, but also there was a recommendation by the Accountability Task Force, also the NomCom came up with some suggestions, and so we sat together. And basically the idea is to describe where we are today and how the relationship evolved over time. So it has a short section on what is RIPE, what's the RIPE NCC, and then also relatively short section on what we think the relationship looks like at the moment, how it's evolved over time, and how it works.
Then it has a longer appendices about some of the history, some of the specific aspects of the particular relationship. And we already had a bit of a discussion on the mailing list, more specific about one specific detail in the document. So I would really like to urge you to read it and to comment on it and also tell us if you like it, if you have no comments, if you think this is how you see the relationship right now.
And there is a deadline currently on 25 November. So you'll see by then how far we are with this document.
What else have we been doing since the last RIPE meeting? We have worked a lot with the RIPE NCC on improving the meeting planning, and I think this is looking good now. We have most of the upcoming meetings, like the next two years already, signed and they are also published on the meeting calendar, the on the RIPE.net website and also the NFRC calendar, so you can see where and when we are going to have these RIPE meetings so you can plan ahead a bit more and it really paid off that we changed the whole planning process a bit more and we are looking at the map basically, where do we want to go and then make a decision and find the best venues ahead of time. So we don't have to grab the last one, so I'm really pleased for that. We also made some improvements to the website, the RIPE NCC's team is really working hard to continue to improve the whole meeting programmes.
If you are looking at the RIPE document store, there was also kind of a leftover recommendation from the Accountability Task Force, I have been looking at the obsoleted documents. There was one recommendation at the time like why are the documents that say they are obsoleted but they are not updated by a newer version or something? So why are they not just there in public or historic? I am looking into that kind of cleaning up the meta data, again together with the RIPE NCC staff. It's not a straightforward as I'm just going in there and making changes, so it's a bit of a longer process.
We have also re‑established, started again our engagement with the law enforcement agencies in Europol and you have seen also more representative of stakeholder groups here at the RIPE meeting. We are working together with some of the RIPE Working Group Chairs to reach out to law enforcement, make sure we can have a good communications going on. Also working with the RIPE NCC who has established some training sessions for law enforcement and to explain what's in a database, what's the database, how can you assess it. What other tool sets are there. So that's starting to pay off and I hope we are going to have a continued engagement and communication there.
And then the general just a lot of support for, so, RIPE governance activities, like the NRO NC elections, PC elections, RIPE Working Group Chairs, continuously talking about how to improve that, streamline that, make it easier also for new participants to understand the processes and make sure we are coordinated there. And all these activities, we couldn't do without the help of the RIPE NCC, so I would really like a big shout out here to the RIPE NCC staff from the various departments for a continuous support that they are giving us as the Chair team, and also you as the Rye community.
(Applause)
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Talking about the RIPE community. There is lots of things going on, of course, in the community that we are just kind of watching, you know, facilitating, and that's ‑‑ for instance, today, later today, there is a BoF, a continuation of the task force that's been closed but they decided to go on and talk a bit about the implementations of the recommendations that they agreed to publish. So that should be interesting. Well, you have probably heard by the anti‑abuse is now the Security Working Group; there's a new Charter. We are still in the process of updating the mailing list and the website and everything. But that's happened over the last few months. The Programme Committee has a new Charter, updated the Charter. And there was a session earlier this week in the best current practices task force to look at the consensus building in this community and do we need to document that, is it different from our communities? So that's an ongoing discussion. If you are interested in that, join that particular mailing list and we will continue the discussion there.
And then of course you might have heard you have kick‑started the NomCom process for the next RIPE Chair team that will then start in October 2025, but the Chair of the NomCom will give you more information about that later on in the agenda.
And then there is always, I always have this slide here because I think it's really important to make sure we are visible and we are there and people recognise us and we stay relevant. And I am pleased to see that we are actually not only the RIPE Chair team but also people in the community, we are invited to speak at other events, consulted, questions come from governments or, you know, all events like the IGF or other kind of Internet governance sessions, the other RIRs. There is great interest to hear about how we do things and what our opinions are for the technical community.
And it's not just, as I said, not just us, as the RIPE Chair team, but I think what's really powerful also, for instance, the RIPE NCC sometimes, you know, sends staff to other events and then they could team up with a community member in that ‑‑ for that event, for instance. I don't know if you have seen this, I think I pointed to that in one of the labs articles, there was a great gig by Fergal from the RIPE NCC and Brian Nisbet from HEAnet they talked at an INEX meeting a few weeks ago. They did this double act with them. This is the RIPE NCC, this is RIPE. And I think it's really powerful when the RIPE community members themselves also go out and talk about the RIPE community, and we are working actually to provide some kind of a template, a slide that you can just grab and maybe speak at a NOG or an extension point meeting or other events where you think you want to promote other to participate in in community.
I am getting the time there. I know, we have a packed agenda. I am almost through. We continue to have online sessions also for students and they are starting to have more feedback sessions for newcomers because I want to know of newcomers what they appreciate here, how they like it, if they are planning to come back, if not. So, if you are new you might hear from me after the meeting and I want to talk to you more about that.
That's about it from our side. If you are interested in more details, we usually publish an article on RIPE Labs with with some monthly updates and you can follow us and you can find us also there if you have some questions or suggestions.
And that's all from me. I think we have maybe a couple of minutes of questions, comments, specifically maybe if you have any thoughts on that document I mentioned, the relationship document, the relationship between the RIPE and the RIPE NCC. If you want to, if you have any questions or comments about that, or anything else I said? Otherwise, we'll move on.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Brad. This is my very first RIPE. And I kind of came in with this big view of what I was expecting it to be. And I think one of the things that, as an organisation fell short, is with newcomers. It's my very first meeting, I had no mentorship, I had no introductions, to find the newcomer table in that big room was very difficult to do. I felt like that was a little bit of a shortness that could be fixed. I'd say for next time work on the newcomers aspect and lining them up with existing members, people who have been around the community for a while, it would be really helpful for us newcomers coming to the stage.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Did you see, there was a question, when you registered, do you want to have a mentor this meeting? Did you ask for a mentor? Did you participate in the newcomers session on Monday morning? That was not good enough.
Okay, but thanks for the feedback, we'll definitely look into how we make that ‑‑ that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for, excellent.
All right. Moving on to, I think Fergal is next talking about some cool stuff with translation, the RIPE NCC has been doing.
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: Hello everyone. I am head of Membership Engagement at the RIPE NCC. Mirjam just kindly mentioned that I was the person who worked with Brian on that presentation at INEX. I really encourage you all to have a look at that and this is kind of tangentially related to that, because ‑‑ I will get on to that.
Before I get onto the community aspect of this, I want to mention that the NCC last week, we just brought all our translating material into.ripe.net. We have created a new language centre. We translate into six languages. We do Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Farsi. We made it very accessible anywhere on the website you can assess that, if you go to the icon on the top right. Rather than trying to translate everything, we're trying to write really good english summaries of things, topics, and then we translate them, because that makes it a little bit easier for it.
I just want to say translations have proven to be very, very difficult. I presume a lot of you have translated content on your websites and for the companies you work for. It's expensive, and it's hard, and with the RIPE and RIPE NCC content, the main problem is the English. Any professional translators we have used, don't understand what we're talking about.
STENOGRAPHER: Welcome to my world!
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: It is difficult to really understand. If you understand the English, you are not going to do a good translation. That's where we're at and this is the kick‑off for where I'm going with this.
Some of the things we talk about are more technical than others. The translators have no chance and basically we have a very international staff at the NCC. We have ‑‑ I think we might have about 40 nationalities in the NCC. We have relied very heavily on our staff. They have been fantastic people doing Russian, Turkish etc., and they have taken a lot of their own time to do this.
One thing to note is often the translations, there are terms that Internet operators in various countries, they retain the English, you know, words like end user, assignment, allocation, people in Spain will use those words, because that's what the Internet community says. A professional translator will translate them into something like gift or donation, and things stop making sense very quickly. So Internet operators are much more likely to understand all the nuances around the language we use in this community.
And I have been doing the RIPE NCC survey now for about 16 years, and we have translated the last two iterations of that, and every time we do it, we get a lot of thanks, a lot of appreciation and a lot of people who say, Fergal, if you are going to do more, I want to help.
So, that's what we're going to do. We're going to open up our translations to the community. If you go to the language centre I talked about, there is a section at the bottom that allows you to volunteer to help us with translations.
So we already ‑‑ we posted a Labs article on this last week, we already have volunteers for French, German, Spanish, Farsi, Danish, Swedish, we got a Norwegian volunteer during the GM yesterday when Hans Petter complained there was no Norwegian. That was very quick. We even have Chinese and we have translations on all the content you see here, it's mainly RIPE NCC focus, but we're going to add more stuff, we're going to ‑‑ I was talking to Ed this week, he has good summaries of the RIPE database, for instance, and he wants to add that stuff. We are going to add our information services, and anyone is welcome to become a volunteer. We want to work with anyone who wants to do this work, including the languages we already have. We're going to update content, we'll need people.
And we're going to focus our efforts on languages in the service region. So, even though China has over a billion people, we'll put Danish ahead of Chinese. And our comms team, I want to say thanks to Karla and Ulka who are here, they have put a lot of work into this as well and they'll be helping me with thisnd hopefully we will get a few translators per language so it's not so difficult for any one person.
In summary, we want to do more with this. We want more content. We want more languages. We love working with people in the community, we think that's a really good way to build community, to have these interactions. And we think the relationships we build with people through doing work and solving problems, that's how you build really strong relationships.
Mirjam mentioned ambassadors earlier. If people are translating content about the RIPE community, about the RIPE NCC, about technical tier, I am hoping these people will be able to bring that information, that knowledge to their local NOGs, their local IXPs, their local communities. We want our staff to have a resource that can help our members and help them be more active participants. And we really, you know, people here I understand hopefully even though I speak with a strong Irish accent, I hope you understand me. It's not true for a the low of people in our service region. We cover a huge region and the further we get away from our headquarters in Amsterdam the more difficult it can be for people to understand our conversations. So I'm really hoping we can recognise that everyone is welcome in this community no matter what language they speak.
And it wouldn't be a translation presentation if I didn't get an Irish word up there. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear them. Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi. Hello, I was actually the one who helped with the Polish translations. It's only about ‑‑ you said that someone needs to understand English. I think it's also about the context. Not only about the knowledge, about what we are doing but also the context. I still recall one of the statements from last, and the question was, or rather one the answers to the question and the answer was precisely "I do not want finance people making money from IPv4 scarcity" and I checked that with Google translate, chat GPT and all failed because they understood that we don't want the finance people, the businessmen, making money from IPv4 scarcity, whereas the context was a bit different in that particular round. The finance people was slightly differently understood. So it's about the context. So, I encourage everyone to do that exercise, like at least once in your lifetime, really thinking in a different way, at least going back and forth, and it's not like using chat GPT. Thanks for doing that.
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: I want to say that the survey company that we use offered Piotr a job because he was such a detailed translator. So, I said he is very busy on our Board, we don't want to distract him too much, but they were very full of praise for your translations.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: More a suggestion, wouldn't it make sense to start with a glossary of technological terms in different languages instead of the actual translations first?
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: Yes, but like Piotr said, it's about context as well, we will build a glossary, but we're looking to expand the languages. So at the moment we're doing six, I'm not sure how many languages are in our service region. It's a big glossary, theres a lot of technical terms, but we'll get there. What I'm hoping is that the translators we work with will tell us how to do this, because we don't want to impose processes, we don't want to impose systems that don't suit the translators, we want to work together and figure this out. We are just kicking this off, a glossary is a great idea, I am sure we'll get there.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Lars Liman. I was actually on this exact same track, but I called it a dictionary. I suggested that you build it up over time as people work with it, so that it doesn't become a special task that has to be performed, but that people run into special technical terms that they make a note of it and build on something that is stored by the RIPE NCC. So that other people who work in the same language can rely on the same terms, and we get consistent language in the translations eventually.
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: Some of the volunteers, at least one the volunteers does a lot of work with translating Wikipedia content, there are other communities we're looking at as well who are using software to do this that's very friendly for the translators. So, yeah, I am sure we'll develop in that direction.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Mark from AFNIC. The hardest part of any translation is not only translating the content itself but also making sure that it stays in sync with its source content. So, being a translator is kind of a long‑term commitment, whether you like it or not. How do you make sure that the translations stay up to date?
FERGAL CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, I think ‑‑ it's a really good question and something we're pondering at the moment. We're going to talk some of these ‑‑ the initial batch of volunteers to see what works for them. We don't plan to do this every week, check our content maybe once a quarter and do a translation, an update on the English and then push that out for translators. There is some great software out there that does this very cleanly and automatically, so that you will just adjust the English and we only pay attention to that and the translators get pushed notifications on what they need to look at. So, we'll definitely look at all this sort of stuff.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks, Fergal, and thanks for all the great suggestions.
The next up is Pedro talking about a milestone they have achieved with another service.
PEDRO VAZ: Thank you. I am with the Learning and Development Team in the RIPE NCC, the team that runs the training and certification services. And the reason I'm here is that the RIPE NCC Academy is going through a special time, it's turning ten years of its existence. We thought it was time to look back into the last ten years and how the academy grew, where it stands today, and even why do we need an academy in the first place.
Basically, a long time ago, the only thing we could do is basically send all these trainers to far away locations, And basically deliver face‑to‑face courses. We still do that by the way, but as we all know the RIPE NCC Services region is a bit large, and we cannot be everywhere all the time. And the demand for training is still large. So, we are an Internet organisation, so it makes sense you have to do training content in on online platform where everybody can access it 24/7 from anywhere in the world.
So, the thing is that we didn't want to have a bunch of PDFs online. We wanted to recreate the experience as much as possible of a face‑to‑face training course with an online format in terms of that people get engaged with activities, they can apply what they learn as they go, track their progress, and also from our side, to have a way that content creators, the subject matter experts, could create content without having to be super skilled in front‑end development. Something that we could host ourselves, so not being depending on a third‑party company, that will also raise our costs. And we needed something flexible where our content is sometimes very unusually, like RIPE Database, that could fit in our system to be able to implement SSO integration for example.
So, basically we put all these together, mixed it up a bit and this came out. Ten years ago, the RIPE NCC Academy was born. And this is how it looked like at the time.
Looking behind the scenes. By the way, for the ones who never heard of the RIPE NCC Academy or never used it, it's not just for members, it is for, it's available to everyone, so it's free service. The only thing you need is a RIPE NCC access account and you can take any of the courses available.
If you like behind the scenes it's a Moodle LMS, perhaps some of you already use Moodle before either as a student or teacher or conference developer. It is an open source tool. Maybe one the most known LMSs out there. It's highly customisable. So that really fit our needs. Plug in driven development. Customisable themes. It has an active community behind it and we could host it ourselves. So we're not depending ‑‑ it's not running somewhere else. It's on our own infrastructure. It's also very flexible. It's still today we are using it.
It's evolved throughout the years, different phases. Perhaps some of you are old enough that you have seen this nice first iterations. But not just the phases, also the content evolved. So, when we started it was the first three years were about creating the classic training, RIPE NCC training package, RIPE Database course, introduction to IPv6 and the LIR course.
Then it looked like we had a period of silence, but actually we're busy with two big things: One of them was to increase the user experience of the academy, make it more interactive and pleasant to use. And we were also busy developing our certification platform, the RIPE NCC certified professionals, and at one point in 2020, that's what we did, the two things were rolled out. We did revamp the academy with a new version and redesigned RIPE Database course and released the certified professionals, which brought the academy to a nice position, because at this point, the academy became the main resource to prepare for an exam. So you want to sit an exam. Where do you need to prepare? What are you going to study? Going to the academy, everything you need is there. Also the badges that students obtain would be visible in the academy, the vouchers could be claimed in the academy. Also the way we developed content had to change a little bit because if you have questions in the exam, they need to match what's in the resource content in the academy. The development of the courses needed to be synchronised between the subject matter experts and the team of learning designers. And it's like this until today.
Also, one interesting development we had, when we introduced the IPv6 security course, we had already some demand for virtual labs which we were using it on the face‑to‑face courses, but one thing is to have labs that can be turned on and off in the end of the day, whereas something that needs to be available all the time for everyone in the Internet was a bit more challenging. But since the security course, we made available some virtual machines with ‑‑ that come with a pre‑configured environment where students can install their own laptop and fill the tasks to perform an activity.
So, where are we today? This is how it looks like, more or less. And if you look like the last few years, we have a kind of a steady trend of more people enrolling in courses, they are not just enrolling, but they are completing the courses in modules. If you breakdown from 2023, the most popular course has been IPv6 fundamentals, RIPE Database, BGP security. No surprises there. And if we look at where people come from to use the academy, the main top ten in the RIPE service region, it's not surprising, the countries that have the most amount of LIRs kind of matches the amount of users that we have in the academy. What's interesting to see is that it's not only users from the RIPE region, it's also from outside, and the one that stands out is the US, which comes into the top ten right in second place.
So what we have available right now. These are all courses that are self‑based, they are about their ‑‑ the whole organised modules and everybody can take them. And if you want to go eight hours to ten hours if you put them all together, we currently have IPv6 fundamentals, IPv6 security, BGP security, RIPE Database and the Internet governance and LIR fundamentals. The last one basically the LIR course, it's been redesigned recently. It was released in September. And it's very useful for ‑‑ especially for you out there are newcomers, need to get to know how these things work, policies, everything is there.
Also quite relevant in this context is our RIPE Working Group Chair training course, that we developed in close collaboration with the RIPE community, namely RIPE Chair and several Working Group Chairs. So this also explains what needs to be ‑‑ what you need to know if you are a RIPE Working Group Chair or intend to become one.
Plans for the future. Upcoming courses in 2005, a new Internet measurements course. The IPv6 advanced course, so also with plenty of practical exercises and such. And we want to also have our content organised into proper learning paths, currently the courses are a bit loose from each other and we want to have it in a way that people can easily choose a topic and go to the next topic and eventually know what to get certified in.
That's it. If you haven't tried yet, go to the website. Looking forward for the next ten years. And if you want to commemorate the occasion we have bottles that we have been handing out there. If you haven't got one, grab yours.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Are there ‑‑
NIALL O'REILLY: Before you sit down, there is a question on, from a remote participant who, Dirk Myer, he says: "He has been told in a ticket that Firefox is not supported in the online platform and wonders whether there are plans to support it in the future ?" You look puzzled.
PEDRO VAZ: It is supporting the Firefox browser.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. Any other questions online or in the room? Well, thank you again for this update.
And next we'll have Herve Clement and I don't know possibly Constanze burger will both be up to give some more detail on ‑‑ or some more maybe specific highlights on the ASO AC and also the work related to the ICP‑2 document.
HERVE CLEMENT: Good afternoon everyone, we are the two RIPE NCC service region and RIPE community representatives for the NRO NC: Constanze Burger Herve Clement, myself. Our presentation will be divided into two parts, the current ASO AC activity. Perhaps some of you know by heart, so we will go through it quickly, and then I will deal with the famous now ICP‑2, explaining the context and we will try to be short as possible, to leave you the time to ask questions, if any.
CONSTANZE: First of all, thank you for the election of myself. I was elected the last year and I am really happy to be a member of the Council. Let's start.
We are the Number Resource Organisation Council, and our body established to serve and to advise the ICANN and also the RIRs. How we are organised: We are 15 members usually, and so we are two members elected by the community and one member is appointed by the RIR body.
How long does our member ‑‑ how long does a member serve? This depends from the region. Sometimes two years, sometimes three years.
And what do we do? What's our task? So we advise the ICANN Board. We oversee the global policy development process. We appoint two members of the ICANN Board. And we appoint one member to the ICANN Nominating Committee.
We meet usually monthly, but at the moment we have so many things to do that we meet more frequently.
This is in the moment our member chart. You can see here we just have two members in the RIPE NCC. Thank you Sander for your work with us. You switched to the ICANN Board and you hadn't been allowed to serve in the ASO AC once more.
The NRO NC transparency. We have an annual face‑to‑face meeting. We have mailing lists and we have monthly teleconferences, and all are open for observers.
The global policy development. We support this also. The current appointment to ICANN Board is Alan Barrett and Christian Kaufmann. And now the ICANN Board seat 10 election process is open. I invite you to apply for this. And now I'll hand over to Herve.
HERVE CLEMENT: Thank you to have been quick, but it was a request from the Chair of the Working Group there.
What is ICP 2? The document we are all hearing about. It's an Internet coordination policy. First, I'm not talking about a policy. In 2001, there have been three RIRs existing, the RIPE NCC, first created, then the APNIC one year later, and ARIN in 1997. The Internet coordination policy was established in 2000. So after, for establishing criteria, so it was a list of criteria, for recognising new regional Internet registries. And here this ICP‑2, two additional Internet registries have been created, the LACNIC in 2002, and the AFRINIC in 2005.
And just in the middle of the slide you have a short history of the question of the ICANN before in 1998, the ICP‑2 creation and acceptance by the ICANN, and the establishment of the two additional RIRs.
It was 22, 23 years now ago that the Internet Coordination Policy has been established. The world has evolved, the technology has evolved. The economic systems, social system, inter‑regional, a lot of things are different. It was a necessity to update this document and the way it is used.
That's the reason why the NRO AC, is the second part of the ASO. That's an ICANN one part is NRO AC comprised of the four current CEOs of the region and the other part is the ASO AC performed as the NRO NC, which is a little complicated.
On October 2023, the NRO AC asked us to help with two specific tasks. The first one, to implement ‑‑ the implementation procedures, the idea that this criteria had been used only for the creation of regional Internet registries and we work on a document with the help of the legal of the NRO AC as well to create a document to be sure that, and ‑‑ so let this criteria with the help for, I will say see and evaluate if regional Internet registries are performing their own duties in the course. And in the extreme case, but it was not ‑‑ Internet registry. That was the first part.
The second one is to update the specific criteria. And that this document we are today asking us, asking you, sorry, to review and to collect your comments and mainly you support strongly etc., about that.
Just to have an idea on how we work on that.
There is a timeline. In January, the NRO EC first provided us, so we didn't work from scratch from anything and we didn't create anything from new. The NRO EC provided us the first draft of the implementation procedure. So to use this criteria for the running of an regional Internet registry, we met in the LACNIC premises to work on it and then after this meeting we provided the NRO AC with a written feedback of what we talked to the about the implementation procedure. And that's the reason why it was for the like that.
We met in March after during the ICANN 79 to begin to work on the revised ICP‑2, the update of the criteria.
We are now in October, we work till early October on this document with a lot of meetings to draft a document to set this update of criteria, which is called the principles document. And on the 8th October, finally, and because some people of the community, and I heard some questions here in Krakow for that. So finally you have, you have this document and so you can read it finally. And so far now, there is NRO questionnaire, you can access that, you can make comment on that. And in parallel, because we want to have the report from all the communities, there is also an ICANN public comment, the comment from the ICANN that you can be part of the ICANN community as well, can answer too, and now it's open until 19th November. And the document and criteria were presented during the last regional meeting as well.
The idea after is to take the answer to a current your comments and to create another document. There will be another turn on the consultation. And to be sure to have something the community support in terms of criteria. That is a QR code, so you can access the questionnaire there, and there is a link also on the, I am sure there is an official communication made here, e‑mail etc., you received it. To have an idea of the proposed document. But if you go to the link you will have a very clear document, you will see what are the criteria and you will see it's nothing completely new but something updated. There is something about the governance, for example, which body has the authority to decide something about the document. There is something about the regional Internet registry ecosystem in terms of coverage, in terms of service region definition, about regional Internet registry lifecycle as well. About recognition, about operation, which is independent, not‑for‑profit criteria, at any time of service. There are a lot of things finally which are obvious but you can have different views of how it is written.
That's the end of my presentation. And if you have any questions, I will be very happy to answer them. Thank you.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks Herve and thanks for giving a bit of a sneak preview of what people can expect and I hope it attracts you to go to the document and give some feedback because that's essential for the entire process. Are there any any questions? There is one.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: The question is after the questionnaire, will we get a summary of the community feedback on what people are going to say and there was options and have maybe a round of discussion in
HERVE CLEMENT: Of course, we'll take into account ‑‑ so we don't, because we have not it yet, we will take into account all the commentaries, and we will use them to create another more completed document to do that. So there will be another round.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: With you you but then there will be people, feedback, and would that be possible, I don't know, possible mailing list discussions with the wider community, if the view of the questionnaire have a diverse outcome, you know, if we ‑‑ I'm pretty sure that people will have different opinions, but if the opinions is sufficiently diverse enough would that be necessary to have a mailing list to have a wider community to participate?
HERVE CLEMENT: I completely understand your question and we have a discussion about that. So there is a balance. We want to be transparent. So that's the thing. So, there will be the possibility to see the opinions. So regarding the mailing list, the problem with that it could lead to a very high level load of work etc. We are only currently 11 so within the Council and to have a mailing list to manage will create too much workload. It's not that we don't want to have that. So the reason for, there is a possibility to add comment in the questionnaire. So feel free to do that. And after, so regarding the different outputs, we will have regarding this first part, we can, after that, manage and take it to a discussion, so the question you just ask can be taken into account as well.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I do want to make a statement here that I do wish that because a very, very important document to proceed for the and it's touched a very heart of the our system with stability. So, if time management issue I think it should be approach a wider community, I am pretty sure there will be volunteers in all the communities. So I do suggest that we have a wider community discussion on the subject before we proceed with the first draft.
MIRJAM KUHNE: I want to cut the microphone at this point. And Peter I think we have someone online as well.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you. Peter Koch. What you and your team are doing is an a thankless task, let me say that and thank you for addressing it nuns. There is one question I have. What is the process that the team is following changing this document?
HERVE CLEMENT: So, there was a request from the NRO AC to change this document. So there was a discussion with the Council. And then, so after we will have ‑‑ so the different outputs. We will recreate a document and go back to the NRO AC for then advice etc. So it will be a forward and back with it etc. And at the end, and it was a case like the, the first version of ICP‑2, with an approval from the ICANN at the end.
PETER KOCH: Can I ask a follow‑up? Because I might not have understood. But it sound to me that this is either a boot‑strapping exercise or an ad hoc approach to the exercise rather than a defined process. So we know for like, we have a PDP for RIPE policies, which can not lie here because it's like global and so on and so forth. But this is especially tailored approach for that particular document.
HERVE CLEMENT: Exactly. So the question we had because this document is not a global policy, so we cannot follow the global policy process to adopt it. So, we try to have something closer to that, and that's the reason why. So that's ‑‑ it's like with a NRO discussion and then in the ICANN. Hans Petter, I think you want to complete the answer I just gave.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: So, tomorrow I am Chair of the NRO EC that requested you to do this. What you have done and what I would encourage everybody to look at it publish a timeline that describes the process on the ASO AC website that outlines the step. There was a long discussion on whether this is a global policy or not. It is not because the definition of global policy is regarding resources being delegated from IANA to RIRs. So, therefore, this is, in nature, the same thing we are making proposals, it's being discussed and then there will be, you know, call for consensus and endorsed by the ICANN Board in the end. Just the same way as the original ICP‑2 was developed. But there was no process description then. Now there is a timeline that describes the process, to please have a look at that in case you are in doubt how the process works.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for that.
NIALL O'REILLY: We have one question from a remote participant, Randy Bush, and he is asking‑ and there is a missing pronoun binding here, So, I paraphrase "why is the document that's being worked on, why is it called ICP‑2? Shouldn't ‑‑ will the new document become ICP 3?"
HERVE CLEMENT: ICP still exists for ‑‑
NIALL O'REILLY: I think the point I am guessing from what I know from, Randy, I think the point here is that the document that has been ICP‑2, should probably be archived and marked obsoleted by but retained with its current identifier and the new identifier carved for the new document.
HERVE CLEMENT: We are not at the stage of the naming of the new document, but it's a question, so we talk about.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: The history here was that ICANN in the early days created a document series called Internet consensus policies, ICP. And there are three or four documents there. This series is no longer maintained. There are a couple of documents in that series. This is one that is still not obsoleted and it is a valid question what should the numbering of the document be after this. And there may be a proposal to create an NRO document series so that this would be, and then knowledge the global policies that we have in that series. That could be one way out of this to create clarity and have it in a document series that the maintained. But yeah, for the moment I agree this is a bit confusing. We have referred to it as ICP‑2 because that's what it's currently called. So E why.
HERVE CLEMENT: We talked about ICP v2, but that's not the best solution.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for the clarification and thanks for the outline Herve and good luck with the continuation of this important work.
Talking of ICANN, the next presenter here will be Kim Davies of IANA. Giving us a quick update of what's going on there and what's relevant to our community.
KIM DAVIES: Thanks. I am Kim Davies from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, and I am going to give you, as mentioned, a brief update.
For those not familiar with the work that we do, we manage about three and a half thousand identifier types on the Internet, of which just three comprise what we call Internet number resources: IPv4, IPv6, and autonomous system numbers. We work very closely with the RIPE NCC and the other regional Internet registries on the administration of these resources. So I want to give you a brief update on number resources but also on a few other things that I think will be of interest.
Just in terms of the status of our IP address allocation. For IPv6, it's a really simple story. We currently essentially have no IPv4 addresses to share. We gave the last of our /8s that we had in our repository in 2011 to the five regional Internet registries. Subsequent to that we had some small stocks of IP addresses, part its it were small allocations that were returned to IANA and there was a consensus policy that was developed on how those should be assigned. And we ran that consensus policy for about three years, and essentially all of those IP address stocks have now been depleted.
In terms of IPv4 addresses, very simple story: For IANA there is no activity there at all at the moment.
IPv6 is a very different story. We have a very large supply of IPv6 addresses. Under the current policy we allocate /12s to the RIR. In terms of the space that is allocated by the IETF for Unicast, currently there is 512 of those /12s available for assignment and only eight have been used so far. So, currently, plenty of space for future allocation needs.
In terms of the work that we do, accountability is really important to us. Rather than show you slides of graphs and metrics, I encourage you if you are interested to go to our website. Iana.org/performance. There you can find all sorts of information about how we're adhering to the service level agreements we have with the community. Feedback that we get from customers in terms of customer surveys. More broader, detailed feedback that we get through annual surveysnd other kinds of reviews and oversight.
So, one update that I wanted to share with you now shifting to the DNS space where we operate the DNS route zone. DNSSEC involves us administering a cryptographic key that place an essential role in how DNSSEC trust works. The so‑called root zone key signing key or KSK acts as the root of trust for all DNS validation. And because of the central importance that this key plays in administration of DNSSEC, it's important that we administer it in a way that is considered trustworthy by the community, so the community feels safe in relying upon it for DNSSEC validation.
The way we do this is much the same as we do many things in this community, which is in a very open and transparent way. Unlike other operators of cryptographic keys who typically do their operations in secret in shadowed rooms, we do it in a very transparent way. We stream our events online. We invite participation by the community. We have security experts in the community to come and participate in the ceremonies in person. And the model is really designed to have as much scrutiny as possible on the way we conduct our operations. So that, you know, should we make a mistake, should something be done in error, should there be feedback on doing it better, we have experts at hand to guide us in those operations.
Now, we're doing something that has only happened once before, which is we're doing a key rollover, which is replacing the key used for signing the root zone. Now, we have done it once more. Just a little bit of history. 2010 is when DNSSEC was first implemented in the root zone. We operated with that very first key for eight years. 2018 is when we did the first ever key rollover; that process involved years of outreach prior to make sure operators were aware to monitor for any adverse impacts. But the big day came on 11 October 2018, the rollover happened and essentially it went really well. There wasn't really any adverse impact. It went relatively smoothly. Essentially we're going to do that again. We want to repeat what worked. From that point on we decided we should aim for a three‑year cadence. Unfortunately, three years after 2018 was the Covid pandemic. After that reason it didn't seem practical to do a rollover then. Other things have intervened in the meantime. Now in 2024 we have restarted the key rollover process again. You can see the timeline on the slide here. But in essence, we generated the new key earlier this year this will be put into production in late 2026.
What does this mean for network operators and implementers. If you are a software implementer if you manually configure your DNSSEC configurations there is an XML file available on the IANA website that has all the new key information and you can integrate that in your software. If you just rely on pre‑packaged DNS resolution software to do DNSSEC, just stay up to date to with those updates. Software vendor are going to roll out these updates in subsequent package releases, and you have two years. So long as you update your software frequently, you should be in good shape.
One thing that will happen soon is that there is another mechanism to learn about the key rollover which is not using the XML file, but instead it would be pre‑published in the DNS protocol itself. That pre‑publication will start on 11 January 2025, and from that point onwards, software implementations that use that mechanism for learning about new keys will start to adopt the key into their configurations.
You can find more information about the key status, the XML file I mentioned etc., all at iana.org/DNSSEC/files.
Next topic .internal. Now there was a presentation early this week on .internal, so I'm not going to repeat it. If you have suffice to say for those not there, it's easy. .internal is set aside for use in private networks. Like RFC 1918 address space, it's really for the network administrator to use. It's a shared resource. It's not exclusive for you to use. But it will never be delegated in the DNS root zone, there will never be a conflict with a real delegated global domain if you use .internal within your networks.
One thing that wasn't mentioned during the presentation, is we are developing an Internet draft, draft‑Davies‑internal‑TLD. Review and feedback and text is very welcome on that.
Lastly I wanted to conclude with some work we're doing within IANA. We heard about what the RIPE NCC is doing throughout this week on their strategic planning. Much like them, IANA is currently looking forward as to what we need to accomplish in the next five years, we're just at the final year of our first ever five year strategic plan and we're now developing that next strategic plan that have cover from mid‑2025 through to mid‑2030. We will be publishing a draft of our strategic plan very soon for public consultation. For those that have an interest in IANA, for those who have feedback on areas that IANA should focus on over the next five years, your feedback would be very welcome. So we can tailor our services to what the community wants.
Now, this is the third QR controlled pointing to a survey that I have seen this afternoon. So I'm not holding my breath anyone is going to fill this out. But I think I can promise you that I think mine is shorter than the other two. But, as opposed to our strategic plan, which is forward thinking, five‑year timeline, we try and get quick surveys, two minutes long, from the engagements that we do just to help tailor the future meetings that we do. We have space there if you want me or one of my colleagues to talk about a particular topic at a future RIPE meeting, this is a great place to let us know about it.
And with that, thank you very much.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: We have very little time. So, be quick. I don't want to cut it off completely.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Shane Kerr from IBM. As far as I know we have never actually done a root key roll on schedule, and the next one is, as you indicated, supposed to be an algorithm roll. It feels like we're getting very close to the post quantum crypto world then if we're ‑‑ if we can stick to a three‑year cadence then we're probably fine. If it slips by an extra three years or something, then it feels like we're getting into a danger zone. My question is: Are you freaking out about this like I am or what's the plan?
KIM DAVIES: Freaking out, no, but, I mean, the short answer is that we had a community design team convened last year that came up with a set of recommendations on how to do algorithm changes in the root zone and we're taking that feedback and those recommendations to heart. We have actually just commenced our internal project team to start developing that 2029 rollover, that will include assessment of algorithms and what we should be doing on that front. It's early days. And if circumstances mean that those time lines need to adapt, then we will adapt. But that's an idealised timeline. The next rollover will keep the algorithm the same, so 2026 will be the same algorithm used. 2029, if all goes to plan, will be the first opportunity to change the algorithm.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That was basically my question, when do you plan to have post quantum cryptography, but you answered the question, when you first can see that. Thanks.
KIM DAVIES: Just to add. I mean, whether it's post quantum cryptography or not, I think is completely an open question. I think the dynamics of how signatures and lifetimes are used in the root zone and DNS more generally need to be studied obviously, as you heard earlier this week, packet size has become an issue with certain kinds of post quantum cryptography. Theres really a lot more to learn and study on that front. So our algorithm change process doesn't commit to a particular algorithm. All it commits that we do an assessment every three years of what the landscape looks like, work out the trade‑offs, consult with the community, and then make a decision.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Sorry, short addition perhaps. Do you do you think this will influence the HSM as well and whether the key ceremonies will have to be redesigned or not?
KIM DAVIES: HSMs definitely. Our HSMs have to support the algorithm that we decide. So for sure, whether there is broader impacts on the ceremonies, time will tell.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. Thanks again for your update.
(Applause)
Now, maybe coming back to a little closer to our own community, Franziska, one the members of the RIPE Code of Conduct team will give us an update of the experiences so far.
FRANZISKA LICHTBLAU: Let me start with a little bit of a pre‑phase, what this is what we're doing here. So this is not a transparency report where we tell you what we dealt with in a broad fashion, but this is, rather, we have been doing this for a while at this point, and I think many people in this room remember that it was actually not easy to come to the point where we are now. The whole development process of the Code of Conduct was a long discussion, it was not simple. I mean, out of having a little bit of operational experience I think we ended up in something really useful and that's working very well. But there is one thing we need, and that was always expressed from the beginning. And that is trust in the work we do, because there was a lot of concern how all of these things could go wrong and the only way at least I know of and we discussed about this, how to establish trust and to keep a trusted relationship with the community is transparency.
Yet, due to the very special nature of the work we do, we cannot be transparent about the things we work on because this is private information, confidential all the things. But we can be transparent about the things how we do them and what we know, what we don't know, where we might need guidance, input, and this is what this is about. So, we are really looking for input from you for some things that we didn't figure out, some things where we have ideas, microphones are an amazing way to do this. I promise no QR codes. We don't have survey. You need to come talk to us, use the microphone, find us. We try to attend all the socials in as high numbers as possible to be really present for you. And for example, if you have ideas, suggestions, all of this, or if you say guys you are actually doing a pretty good job, just go on, make decisions, this is basically what we're looking for.
So, what have we actually done so far?
So, basically we did this work since RIPE 86, and most of you already saw the transparency report during the last meeting. I'm not sure if it made it on the agenda yet, but it will be there tomorrow. And we wrote an article basically for RIPE Labs where we reviewed more of the procedural things, bumps, what we learned, and when we had figured out that one we could take a step back and talk about broader things.
One of the super practical things, we are almost finished doing at this point, that we needed a process to get actually contact information from the RIPE NCC, because we received a report about someone, it contains a name, how do I reach a person, what is the reliable source of information for me to send an e‑mail to? So this is why we need to talk to the NCC and especially to the legal team to make sure the terms and conditions for the RIPE meeting will be updated in such a way that there is an option for us to get a reliable contact. And of course we are extending the existing team, Mirjam presented that already in the Opening Plenary, which also means sharing, experience, getting new trainings and things like that.
But a larger thing that we did is we actually clarified already during the last meeting the relationship with the Working Group Chairs, because there were a lot of questions around we now have the Code of Conduct team, where are you responsible? Who does what when? And we actually had a very, very nice discussion at the Working Group Chair lunch in the last meeting, and what we agreed upon for now, and we will see again how it works in practice, if anyone has opinions and input about it, come find us. Fundamentally, Working Group Chairs are responsible to hold up the Code of Conduct in their sessions and their mailing lists. They have the same measures available as the Code of Conduct team. Obviously, only those who apply to the respective medium mailing lists and so forth.
Working Group Chairs should, they are really strongly encouraged to contact us and use us as a resource and let us help them. Many people have already experienced situations like this. So, this is what we are there for.
And the important thing for us, if the COC is invoked, we at least need to flag that that happened, because people talk to us, people expect us to know what's going on. We don't need details. This can be figured out.
So, this is maybe of only very limited interest to the wider community, but as it will at some point result in a document change, most likely we figured it may be worth presenting it here. So, we have a little bit of a procedural issue. We have a document, RIPE 792, that basically defines our processes and consequences, and it makes a bunch of assumptions. And it clearly states that the member of the Code of Conduct team who receives a report is responsible to create an assessment group. An assessment group is basically a sub‑team within the Code of Conduct team. And the reasoning RIPE 792 gives for us is to make sure the report is not seen by more eyes within the team than necessary. We have a problem with that, because most of the reports we get come in via the report form. Like 99%. And they are seen by the whole team to begin with. So, the existence of the report will be known to all of us. We can be contacted individually but it is rarely ever done so. And we are ‑‑ we seem like a large team, but we are still limited, we all do other things, we are scattered across time zones, not everyone is always available. We work through different times and we need, for some cases, really as vast experience and particular ‑‑ in particular different perspectives as possible. And it's just also impractical from an organisational perspective. You have a meeting, then you need to send sub‑groups in and out. It's just not really helpful. And especially if the original intent was to limit visibility within the team, which is not often invoked.
So, what we propose is a change and it will be formally done so, but this is basically a pre‑warning, just form the assessment groups on demand. Change the default. Say by default the whole team will be, prior to a case, so we can use multiple practices, do load sharing, we don't wait until everyone of ten people has answered something, but just we have the option. And we do continue to form separate assessment groups if needed. If we get a report against a Code of Conduct member for example, if a Code of Conduct member has a conflict of interest, of course we will do that, or if the reporter explicitly requests it. In the end all the options are on the table, we would just very much like to align the document with the practical way we are actually working. But we will raise this discussion officially. But we are interested in feedback about that.
And the next point is something that came up during the last couple of meetings, which is a discussion on a media policy that got started.
No, I didn't change the NCC legal, so this is still Code of Conduct related. Why is it though? The thing is that we have encountered media and press‑related issues in the past, whether via official reports or just people reading, we see that issues are arising. So people feel uncomfortable in interview situations, they may not even realise that they are being interviewed, and we are a pretty laid back community, and people talk very openly, so, they need to be aware what's actually going on.
So, but for us on the other hand, it's really hard because for us it's always better if we have a policy to refer to, and also based on suggestions from the community, we started discussing about a media policy. And right now, so this is really early work in progress, but shortly before this meeting, the RIPE NCC published such a policy. So, we now have the possibility for media related organs to obtain media accreditation and it defines a bunch of criteria, conditions and revocations. It doesn't have any ties to the Code of Conduct as of right now. It mentions the yellow lanyards but this still needs further refinement and until now. We also haven't been actively involved in the development, but we already started discussing and we will be involved in the future collecting requirements and seeing what we need to actually be able to work on that.
And I don't have any nice question slide, but this concludes my presentation. And yes, questions? Comments? All of them.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Yes, thanks, I was hoping so, the Code of Conduct Task Force members would come up and clarify things.
LEO VEGODA: I chaired the task force that developed the current Code of Conduct. We expected in the development of the current Code of Conduct that you would come up with suggestions like you did. I can't speak for the rest of the task force, but it seems like a very sensible suggestion, and I mean, you know, thumbs up!
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: First of all, thanks to you and the whole team. What you are doing, the work is seen as a role model and very helpful, especially for the NOG communities in how to proceed and work on that. So that is very helpful for us and saves us a lot of time.
Following on the press and media part that you had at the end, it correlates so I'll pose it as a question here. I think we are a very proud community of everyone pays their tickets and everyone who is involved, even people who carry heavy load, pay their ticket. We introduced a policy here which ‑‑ or a statement which allows for free tickets without discussion, as far as I am aware, we should share a bit of content of why we did that and how we did that. I'm not saying it's wrong but we want to discuss that maybe.
FRANZISKA LICHTBLAU: This is most definitely not in the scope of our team, but yes, this is exactly the sort of discussion that most likely will happen but this is all still very much in development. Thank you.
MIRJAM KUHNE: I'd like to cut the queue at this point.
ULKA ATHALE: I have been involved in drafting the first very early draft that we have of this media policy. So all feedback on this is most welcome to us, so we can improve it for the next RIPE meeting. I would just like to flag, that's why I have my laptop with me, is that one of the conditions for accreditation for any media representative is to agree to abide by the Code of Conduct. So hopefully that should not change the applicability of the Code of Conduct. If you are at a RIPE meeting you follow the Code of Conduct regardless of why you are here.
FRANZISKA LICHTBLAU: That should be without question in any case.
ULKA ATHALE: We have put that, in any case, I like that to be done. I can also revoke media accreditation if somebody breaks the Code of Conduct.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have concerns about the media policy. About ten years ago at a different meeting, I had a situation where accredited press person was at a meeting and was not credentialed as that and they tried to quote me out of context and incorrectly. We have a very open community and we could say things to each other that we can't say in writing. We need to keep it that way. So the press policy, instead of "may" should be a "must". If they are here they must register and they must be super visible, visible lanyard, visible everything and if they are not doing that they can't be here because it can sabotage you.
(Applause)
SANDER STEFFANN: I just want to thank the whole Code of Conduct team. This is a voluntary very
Responsible job you are taking on your shoulders. So thank you very much for doing that.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Indeed, yeah, many thanks and thanks for bringing up your experiences, I think that's great for us, and it's a big responsibility for us as a community to continue to evolve obviously.
Last but certainly not least, Jan Zorz.
JAN ZORZ: Thank you, I have ten minutes, we can go slow. I am the Chair of the RIPE NomCom. And first of all, I would like to ask you to apply for the NomCom as a volunteer, we need as diverse and as big a number of the volunteers so we can choose from.
So first of all, we will have to choose the next RIPE Chair and the Vice‑Chair for the next five years. Mirjam and Niall's term expires at RIPE 91, I think. So, we need a nominating committee, the voting members that will select the new RIPE Chair and Vice‑Chair.
What is a NomCom and how it works is described in RIPE 788. Basically, this is a copy‑paste from the IETF NomCom. We changed a couple of things but in principle, it is very similar to the IETF NomCom.
Very shortly, the NomCom consists of a Chair, that's me, I was appointed by the Chair of the Board, thank you for this honour. There is ten voting volunteers, two liases and an advisor, so an advisor is the previous NomCom Chair, that is Daniel Karrenberg, thank you for all the help and then we have one LIR zone from the Board, that's Sander, he is waving there, and another liaison is Kevin Meynell from the Programme Committee, he is there. We are still waiting for the name of the liaison from the Working Group Chairs Collective.
MIRJAM KUHNE: I have news on that, it's going to be Jan Zorz.
JAN ZORZ: Thank you very much. So, if anyone needs any information about the NomCom, talk to me or to any of these people that just waved there.
My responsibility and so to ensure that the NomCom process is executed throughout the end in a neutral, transparent and timely way basically.
So, the voting volunteers, this is the ten people that is actually the voting member, because all those names that you heard, we are not voting members, we are not affecting the election process.
The voting volunteers, they need to also do their jobs in a timely manner. Of course, each one is expected to participate in the process in an equal manner, also the liaison and the advisor are part of the deliberation, and the qualifications for the volunteers for the NomCom, the members of the RIPE community that end at thatted at least three out of five last RIPE meetings. Now, this is a little bit ambiguous, our first understanding was that this needs to be in person, because that's how you check in and that's how we know you have been here. But then we discovered that if you are online, you also check in, so, now we are treating also online participation as participation. I wanted to make that clear.
After the deadline for the nomination of the NomCom, I will run the random selection mechanism that is based on lotto results. I will probably pick German, Austrian and Slovenian lottery ‑‑ Of course I am from Slovenia ‑‑ on a particular date and we will fill this three times six numbers in the IETF randomiser that will randomise the list of the volunteers and the top ten are selected into the NomCom.
The majority of the work is done during the consultation meeting. This will be a Lisbon meeting where we will have the interviews with the nominees and the office hours for the community to come in and talk to the NomCom and express the opinions or wishes or whatever you may have. This is a draft timeline. We set the draft timeline because the NomCom needs to approve it first, but there is no NomCom yet, so, right...
.
It started on 13 January, 2025. Then, the committee organisation will hold the first meeting during the week 3 of 2025 and organise its operations by end of January. The committee will issue the call for nominations by 10 member. So this is where those people, those community members who are thinking of nominating themselves or somebody else for the RIPE Chair and Vice‑Chair can do it.
We will collect nominations until end of March. The committee members will actively work on nominations, we will talk to the community and ask people to come forward.
Before and immediately after the RIPE meeting in Lisbon we will solicit the feedback, and we will have open office hours and speak to nominees after RIPE 90, we will go into the deliberation mode and we will try to make a selection. I will try as a Chair to actually steer the discussion towards the consensus if we can elect a new RIPE Chair team by the consensus, this will be a win. Otherwise we still have the voting way, so we ask people and elect by voting. We will have to send the names to the RIPE NCC Board for the confirmation of the selected candidates. And the meeting may have to review the selection in case the RIPE NCC Board is not happy with us, but I hope that things will go smoothly. And the transition period will be at the RIPE 91, wherever this might be. And the term finishes after the NomCom completes the report and formally presents its report during RIPE 91.
And then at RIPE 91, I will probably come in front of you and propose a name with the NomCom standing behind me, and you, as a community, will have to decide if you are happy or not.
So here are the links. Please volunteer for the NomCom if you have attended the last three of the RIPE meetings. We need as diverse and as big number of volunteers to pick from. And you can volunteer at the RIPENomCom.org, there is a form where you fill out, and that's it from me. Are there any questions?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: One question: If RIPE wants to be independent from RIPE NCC, I'm struggling a little bit why the Executive Board must confirm the candidates for the RIPE candidates.
JAN ZORZ: This is a great question and I am glad you asked. This is in the process. And I am not, currently I'm not willing to fix the aircraft during the flight. But, there will be an opportunity for the feedback after the process is done, and this may be one of the feedbacks for the future NomComs.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Daniel Karrenberg, I am adviser to the current NomCom and Chair of the last NomCom and also of the course of the process. The role of the RIPE NCC Executive Board is not to say whether they like or don't like the candidates, but it is to confirm that the NomCom has done its work according to the procedure as specified. So, they have no way of saying we don't like X or Y. They could only say, you didn't do what you promised to do and what the community agreed was the process. That's the only role there. So just to clarify that.
And obviously, if we want to change that, we can change that. But I'm not going to be the one who drives that process.
FRANZISKA LICHTBLAU: So, when I started considering whether I want to get involved in this whole NomCom endeavour, I figured let's go back to what is the RIPE Chair actually doing. So having a look at RIPE 714 ‑‑ and I know you said the thing about the aeroplane not changing inflight, but maybe there is something want to consider. It very explicitly said ‑‑ and I want to remind you what Mirjam said ‑‑ all the things where they get invited, asked for input, feedback and we have a very explicit note in this document: RIPE is not formally represented in other organisations, therefore the RIPE Chair does not formally represent RIPE anywhere.
And while I realise where this comes from, this has strong local significance to our community and how we work, it may really not perceive like that in outside communities and other organisations. So we might actually want to go back to that document.
JAN ZORZ: Okay. Yes, I also noticed that, but you be thank you for bringing this up. This is actually the thing for discussion in the community, how do we want ‑‑ if we want to redefine basically the job description of the RIPE Chair, and I don't think we can change this now, but for the next NomCom process, maybe. I think this is also something that we will have to discuss during the next five years.
LEO VEGODA: You mentioned your volunteers for the NomCom and that you have attended three of the last RIPE meetings. I assume that means that if you have attended over Meetecho instead of in person, you are still eligible. Can you confirm that?
JAN ZORZ: At the beginning we thought not. But then we ‑‑ we figured out that there is a check in ‑‑ you need to check in, so if you attended over the Meetecho and you checked in, then yes.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I would like to ask for a small clarification, you said one of the deadlines is end of March and you said it's March 30th 23:59, and it is actually one day before end of March. So, what is the deadline? I think it is for applying for the Chair of ‑‑
JAN ZORZ: It says draft.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: I think Franziska brought up a very good point here, that reviewing the RIPE Chair job description may actually be the one thing you want to do before this election process to see if there are any minor amendments that you want to do that. I don't propose to change this totally but it may actually be wise to have a look at that to see whether there are some lessons learned that should be clarified so it's clear for the new candidates what the job is. Because that job description was written at the time when we had experience with two volunteer Chairs, Rob Blokzijl for a lifetime and me for five or six years, so it may actually be worth to have Mirjam give tomorrow input on what her job actually was and then a quick review by the community, the committee to see maybe we should adjust some of this.
JAN ZORZ: Yeah, we need to match the policy with the reality basically.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: An observation from my side when I was on the Board and we went through the last NomCom process. My understanding is if it hasn't changed that NomCom is exactly there to select a new one and then they dissolve. If we as a community have an opinion about a new job description or any change, the NomCom will not do that for us. Then we have to find a vehicle to talk about these things and change them, because the NomCom is exactly there to get a new candidate for the main position and then they disappear till the next four years. So just saying, let's not wait for the next five years if you want to change it. Thank you.
ANNA WILSON: I was involved in a lot of discussions that set‑up this process, and I was one of the non‑voting members of the last NomCom. Based on that experience, I do want to say I appreciate that this is an opportunity for people to look at some of these other documents and to really think about how this all fits into RIPE today and how we want this community to be run and how it can impact this process. But, I really like your instincts Jan of not fixing the plane while it's flying. This is a big job, with an important outcome. I am very grateful to you Jan for taking the role you are, and I will be delighted to see people volunteering to serve on the NomCom. But a thing I would like to backup what you are saying but really asking the community in general, and I don't talk about this process a lot any more, is, the scope of this thing is pretty well defined. Stick to what you have. If you try to change it mid‑stream, it gets very scary. And it doesn't need to be scary. Thank you.
JAN ZORZ: While I can and I could fix the aircraft during the flight, I'm not willing to, because I think the process is good enough, we need to execute it and then give the feedback, and ask the community if they want to change the process if our feedback is good enough. Thank you.
TOBIAS FIEBIG: I am not experienced with any of the committees but having been...for quite some time over the past couple of months, my gut feeling would be that now indeed would be the process to start this, to have it done for the committee advised by Jan.
DANIEL KARRENBERG: First and current employee of the RIPE NCC, author of many the documents that govern this process. I'd like to repeat what Anna said. Yes, you now have again woken up to what processes we have agreed on, but it would be very, very bad to change the processes while they are under way. Don't do that. You will not find people who want to be on a committee that has to operate under changing rules. So, I advise very strongly against that.
What I wanted to say is the description of the RIPE Chair, RIPE 714, if you want to rework that, it is not the job like Christian Kaufmann said, it's not the job of the NomCom to do that, the NomCom has a very, very narrow mandate. So the people who clapped when they said that needs to be changed, one of them will have to come forward to drive that process, and it's a separate process.
JAN ZORZ: Yeah, thank you very much. I am free to go?
MIRJAM KUHNE: Unless there is anything online? You are free to go. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: And thanks to all the speakers and all the participation here today. We had a packed agenda and we were almost on time. Don't forget there are still two BoFs after the coffee break, and the dinner tonight. So hope to see you all there and I hope you enjoy the night.
LIVE CAPTIONING BY
MARY McKEON, RMR, CRR, CBC
DUBLIN, IRELAND.
