Looking Back at 2024 - An External Engagement and Community Retrospective

As Programme Manager for the RIPE NCC's Community and Engagement team, part of my role is to keep track of the impact of all the work we do in external engagement and community building. There are three primary objectives that drive this work, all of which tie back to specific goals in the RIPE NCC strategy:

Supporting an open, inclusive and engaged RIPE community

Without openness and inclusivity, a community narrows its perspective, stifles its growth, and weakens its ability to cultivate new ideas. Without engagement, it ceases to be a community at all.

RIPE NCC-organised events play a key role in keeping the community connected and engaged, but we also dedicate significant time to supporting industry events, facilitating online communication, and launching initiatives that lower barriers to engagement.

RIPE NCC organised events

RIPE Meetings

RIPE Meetings are the RIPE community’s flagship events. Held twice a year across our service region, these meetings attract hundreds of participants worldwide. In 2024, our spring meeting took place in Kraków, Poland, and our autumn meeting in Prague, Czechia. The infographics below - or as we call them internally “postcards from RIPE XX” - provide a quick impression of each RIPE meeting.

Of the 700+ people that attended each meeting, whether in person or online, around a quarter were newcomers. This is an important indicator of the openness and inclusivity of our meetings, and it’s something we strive to support through newcomer sessions (organised prior to the event) and other DEI initiatives.

We also show numbers for RACI and RIPE Fellowship attendees. These are both initiatives that reduce obstacles to participation, helping groups that might otherwise be underrepresented at our events to participate by funding a full-week meeting ticket, travel and accommodation for selected candidates from the RIPE NCC service region.

Launched in 2023, the Local Hubs initiative enables local hosts across our service region to bring community members together within their city or country to socialise and follow RIPE Meetings. Last year, it connected over 80 participants across seven locations. While we see this as a valuable initiative, we will review its structure in 2025 to better balance effort and impact.

Zooming in on the budget figures, RIPE Meetings remain big items. In 2024 we slightly increased the budget from €1.3 million to €1.4 million to accommodate growing participation and higher operational costs, but were able to keep costs down to a little over €1,1 million in total, partly due to the choice of relatively cheap locations.

What’s more, 46% of the costs for RIPE 88, and 52% for RIPE 89, were covered by tickets (income) and sponsorship money. As discussed in previous articles, this follows steps we took to streamline sponsorship options, and we greatly appreciate the ongoing support from the community.

We met our sponsorship goal for events and RIPE NCC Data and Measurement services, generating 502 kEUR against our target of 500 kEUR.

Regional meetings

While RIPE Meetings only happen in two places a year, our service region is vast, and there will always be parts of the community who have to travel more distance to attend. This is why we organise regional meetings that strengthen connections between community members living and working in specific parts of our service region.

Bringing together local communities in this way brings a lot of benefits. Practically speaking, it helps overcome barriers like travel costs, visa restrictions, and language issues. And on a more general note, these meetings create an opportunity to learn more about, and so to help address, the specific needs of different parts of our community.

Before each event, we prepare presentations, regional reports, and RIPE Labs analyses to provide insights for local stakeholders. We also coordinate in-person training on vital skills like RPKI and IPv6 deployment and organise academic sessions to strengthen ties between the Internet and academic communities.

SEE 12

On 22-23 April, the South East Europe (SEE) Internet community gathered in Athens for SEE 12 for the first SEE Meeting held in Greece.

Analysis: Advancing Internet Technologies in South East Europe | Report: SEEing Growth at SEE 12

Agenda highlights:

• Developments in Internet technology across the SEE region
• European Academic and Research Network (EARN)
• IPv6 Adoption in South East Europe

CAPIF 3

On 24-25 September, the Central Asian Internet community gathered in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for the third edition of the Central Asian Peering and Interconnection Forum (CAPIF) to discuss key topics including peering, interconnectivity, Internet traffic exchange, IPv6 adoption, and challenges in digital transformation.

Analysis: Securing Internet Infrastructure in Central Asia | Report: CAPIF 3 Report: Strengthening Peering and Internet Growth in Central Asia

Agenda highlights:

• The Interconnection Environment in Central Asia
• Measuring the Internet performance in the Region
• New Developments in Peering and IXPs
• Routing Security and Technological Advancements

MENOG 24

On 4-5 December, the Middle East Network Operators' Group (MENOG) and Peering Forum held its 24th edition in Muscat, Oman. Since becoming a Peering Forum for the Middle East in 2019, the event has continued to support the region’s efforts to enhance its digital presence through improved peering, strengthened security, and more effective regulations.

Analysis: The Internet Landscape in the Middle East | Report: MENOG 24 - Meeting Report

Agenda Highlights:

• Strengthening Local Networks and Regional Interconnection
• Sharing Best Practices and Insights
• Securing Routing and DNS

If you can't measure it, you can’t improve it. The Net Promoter Scores (NPS) featured in all of the above visualisations are a useful metric to track here. We strive for excellence, aiming for scores higher than 50 out of a possible - 100 to 100. We are happy to see that we exceeded that goal for both the RIPE Meetings and regional meetings, hitting an impressive average NPS of 73 across our major events in 2024.

More targeted initiatives

RIPE Meetings and regional meetings alike cover a wide variety of topics - all of them important and worth raising at such events. That said though, there are a great many interests, issues, and challenges occupying our community that require more focused attention for progress to be made. To help the community stay connected on these matters, we continued to organise Internet Measurement Days, Roundtable Meetings, hackathons, face-to-face training sessions, and academic sessions.

Supporting wider industry events

Beyond our own meetings, all kinds of other industry events take place every year, all geared toward the same end goal of keeping the community coordinated. We support many of these, sometimes by sending experts from our staff to give presentations on useful topics, sometimes through sponsorship, and sometimes both.

Our staff attended 95 community events, giving presentations on various topics at most of them. We provided financial support to various events - including NOGs, national and youth IGFs, and academic events across the RIPE NCC's service region - to a total amount of 68 kEUR. We are proud that we can continue supporting national IGFs and NOGs in our service region to help strengthen local communities.

Leveraging platforms for online engagement

While we go to great lengths to engage with our community in person whenever possible, the sheer size of our service region makes online platforms essential for keeping the community informed and involved.

RIPE NCC Open Houses

These sessions are designed to be inclusive and easy to organise, allowing the community to convene and discuss emerging topics driven by mailing lists or specific events.

In 2024, we held four country-focused sessions on Greece, Poland, Turkey, and Iran. For the latter two, we provided simultaneous translation into each country’s native language, which proved highly effective in fostering meaningful engagement and participation.

We also hosted a total of 13 RIPE NCC Open Houses, covering a diverse range of topics, including the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme for 2025, IXPs in the Middle East, Community Projects Fund recipients (two sessions), a ‘Meet the Executive Board Candidates’ session, personal AS numbers, green tech and sustainability, the RIPE NCC’s Draft Activity Plan and Budget for 2025, and the RIPE 89 newcomers debrief.

RIPE Labs

With regular articles and a podcast series featuring guests from across the community, RIPE Labs remains a key platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing on important Internet-related topics. While around half of the published articles come from RIPE NCC staff, RIPE Labs is, above all, a platform by the community, for the community.

In 2024, we published 121 articles - 60 from external authors - and 10 podcast episodes, with RIPE Labs receiving an average of 33,000 unique views per month. From our January analysis of 10 years of Legacy policy to our coverage of the Baltic Sea cable cuts in November/December, we continued to explore ways to provide deeper insights through data analysis and visualisation. We also saw community-raised topics on RIPE Labs spark lively discussions, such as the debate on personal ASNs, which extended to a dedicated Open House and further conversations following articles by two community members.

Social media presence - the move to Mastodon

Mastodon has gained popularity in the tech community for its open-source values and federated model. At RIPE 87 in 2023, we began an open dialogue on transitioning to Mastodon, leading to the launch of our official RIPE NCC handle on mastodon.social in April 2024. Our goal was to reach 500 followers by year-end, and we’re pleased to have nearly doubled that now, with 871 followers. This move aligns with our core values of transparency, collaboration, and community engagement.

ripe.net redesign

We also launched a redesigned version of www.ripe.net, featuring a new design, CMS, and servers. The update enhances accessibility, improves mobile and tablet views, refines the search function, and boosts overall performance.

Enhancing communication and multilingual support

As a coordination hub for the RIPE community, maintaining clear communication with our members is a core responsibility. New requirements from Google and Yahoo for bulk email senders introduced last year raised challenges that made email delivery a key focus. These changes, while complex to implement, ultimately improve how our members receive information, offering greater control and a better overall experience.

Breaking down language barriers also remained a priority. We made significant strides in our translation efforts, launching the RIPE NCC Language Centre (ripe.net/languages) to replace an external wiki and better reflect our commitment to multilingual support. This section, accessible via a language icon, currently offers six languages, with plans for expansion.

To further involve the community, we introduced community-driven translations, inviting RIPE community members and RIPE NCC members to help translate content. So far, 11 volunteers across 7 languages have joined, and we are preparing to trial the community translation platform Crowdin.

Additionally, we provided simultaneous translation in Russian and Farsi at CAPIF meetings. A major milestone was the translation of our IPv6 Fundamentals course into Ukrainian and Russian, with 30 videos in each language - now our most-watched YouTube content!

With even more translations planned for 2025, keep an eye on our Language Centre for updates.

Enhancing skills and operational awareness through learning and development services

The key focus of our Learning and Development team in 2024 was to continue improving the quality and user experience of your learning experience while keeping an eye on cost efficiency.

As part of our efforts to optimise email delivery, we explored new ways to leverage our social media presence and launched an eight-week Summer School campaign. Through this initiative, we offered a RIPE NCC Certified Professionals exam voucher to anyone who completed a course before 31 August 2024, allowing them to get certified for free. The campaign was promoted primarily through social media and email outreach, leading to strong engagement - 124 exams were taken in August alone, contributing to a total of 582 exams throughout the year.

In 2024, we marked the 10th anniversary of the RIPE NCC Academy, our free e-learning platform, the RIPE NCC Academy. We also expanded our course offerings, introducing two new courses: the LIR Fundamentals and RIPE Working Group Chair Course (in cooperation with RIPE chair collective and WG chairs). Engagement remained strong, with 22.5 k e-learning module completions throughout the year.

Our focus on high-quality learning materials was reflected in learner feedback - for the second consecutive year, course modules received an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. To keep our content relevant, we conducted usability testing and needs assessments at SEE 12 and both RIPE Meetings, along with targeted surveys.

Turning again to NPS: the RIPE NCC academy scored 67 from 541 respondents; our learning and development webinars scored NPS 53 from 136 (a bit lower than in the previous year, but still an excellent score); and Certified professionals saw an increase in NPS ranking, receiving an NPS of 55 from 190 respondents. Our in-person training courses continue to receive the highest scores from year to year, and in 2024, 342 participants from 24 different locations rated them at NPS 82 - giving them the “world class” ranking.

Strengthening Internet coordination, collaboration, and governance through engagement and insight production

Delivering data insights

As part of our mission, we support the RIPE community and our members by providing valuable data and insights to foster technical growth and promote best practices in network operations and routing security.

In recent years, we’ve also seen growing interest from policymakers and governments in data-driven insights on Internet operations. As they shape regulations that could impact the Internet’s technical foundations, they increasingly seek neutral, technical information to inform their decisions.

Throughout 2024, we continued refining our approach to extracting actionable insights from our datasets, enabling us to deliver comprehensive reports on key Internet developments and timely analyses of major incidents. Alongside improving the underlying delivery mechanisms that support our reports and articles, we explored new ways to engage relevant audiences through various media and events.

Some key outcomes of these efforts include regional analyses published on RIPE Labs ahead of our regional events, as well as in-depth articles covering Internet outages - including the recent cable cuts in the Baltic Sea - and other community-relevant topics.

Additionally, two standout reports received overwhelmingly positive feedback from stakeholders across our regions, setting a high standard for this type of reporting.

How to get IP Addresses for your Network report that provides network operators and businesses with an overview of the various options available for acquiring IP addresses today was shared beyond the RIPE NCC service region. The report is also available in Russian, Turkish, and Arabic.

Unlocking Digital Growth: The Role of IXPs in the Middle East explored the unique Internet landscape in the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East and the role that Internet Exchange Points play in improving connectivity in the region. Lessons drawn from this report can be useful for communities in other regions. Needless to say, the report is also available in Arabic.

To produce these reports we leverage the RIPE NCC’s registry data, and our suite of tools - RIPE Atlas, RIPEstat, and the RIPE Routing Information Service (RIS). Producing these insights would not be possible without a broad deployment of these tools. We launched the RIPE NCC Tools Deployment Project, an ambitious initiative to enhance the efficiency and footprint of our deployment efforts. This project involved close collaboration with partners from APNIC, LACNIC, and numerous RIPE Atlas Ambassadors, strengthening global coordination and reach. We targeted 30 countries for improved deployment, achieving a significant coverage increase (15% to 58%) in 12 of them. Additionally, we added 23 new RIS peers, deployed 18 new K-root nodes, and established 11 new AuthDNS nodes, further strengthening global Internet infrastructure.

Coordination, collaboration, and governance

Governmental Roundtable Meetings are a key tool for enhancing Internet coordination, collaboration, and governance across the RIPE NCC service region. These gatherings play a vital role in bringing together public sector officials and Internet technical experts to exchange insights and experiences on governance matters relevant to the RIPE community. In 2024, we held three Governmental Roundtables:

• The Brussels Roundtable – convening EU institutions, governments, and agencies for high-level discussions.
• The SEE Roundtables – engaging regional governments and regulators, with the latest meeting alongside SEE 12 in Athens.
• The Middle East Roundtables – supporting collaboration on secure, scalable Internet infrastructure, most recently in Amman, Jordan.

As part of our commitment to strengthening Internet coordination and collaboration, we represent the technical community’s needs in consultations and policy discussions.

In total through the course of the year we made nine contributions, marking one of our busiest years in Internet governance and legislative activities. Topics ranged from Internet standards (IPv6 consultation in the Netherlands) and European cybersecurity legislation (draft NIS2 Implementing Act, draft NIS2 law in the Netherlands) to broader Internet governance processes (UN Global Digital Compact, NetMundial+10).

In conclusion

In 2024, we reinforced our commitment to an open, inclusive, and resilient Internet through stronger collaboration, more meaningful engagement, and data-driven insights. By adapting to evolving challenges and seizing new opportunities, we continue to work with the RIPE community to shape the future of Internet operations and governance.