With the end of the year approaching, and things slowing down as they always do in December, the RIPE Chair Team brings you one last report for 2024 covering industry events, hackathons, board meetings, and plans for next year.
After a busy travel season, the first few weeks of December were relatively quiet and allowed us to think through a number of topics and to start planning for 2025.
RIPE 90
The RIPE 90 Meeting in Lisbon, Portugal is still a few months away, but you can already register. Also, the call for presentations is open. The earlier you submit a proposal, the easier it is for the Programme Committee (PC) to plan and to put a high quality and diverse programme together.
Through the years, the RIPE NCC has implemented a number of features for the system we use to review those proposals based on requests by the RIPE PC. It is now time to replace the entire system. The RIPE NCC looked at various options and presented a draft version that the PC will test during RIPE 90 and which will then most likely be implemented for RIPE 91.
RIPE NomCom 2025
As mentioned in our previous update, the process for selecting the next RIPE Chair Team has started. The deadline for volunteering has passed and the RIPE NomCom chair announced the ten individuals who will serve on the NomCom in 2025.
The RIPE Document Store
As reported in earlier updates, we continue to work together with the RIPE NCC to clean up some inconsistencies in the RIPE Document Store. For instance, we looked at documents that have been marked as "obsoleted" without being replaced by another document. We're also working on a page that describes the main characteristics of a RIPE document.
Industry Events
GÉANT Community session
GÉANT, the collaboration of European National Research and Education Networks, organised an online session to talk about efforts to increase diversity and equity in their community. I was invited to speak about the initiatives that were introduced in the RIPE community since the start of the Diversity Task Force in 2017 such as childcare, fellowship and mentorship programmes, the Code of Conduct Team and the DEI session during meetings.
I encourage you to look at the Gender Equality Principles GÉANT publishes on their website.
Green Tech Hackathon
Since it was only a cycle-ride away, I had the chance to spend an afternoon at the Green Tech Hackathon. The energy and passion people put into the topics they worked on was impressive. Niall participated on both days over in the local hub hosted by HEAnet, and reports back that it was a pleasure to meet new people F2F at "chez HEAnet". He and two other participants at the hub worked to help document an energy-harvesting hardware proof of concept presented by a Canadian engineer. They found that remote participation in a Hackathon has quite a different dynamic from working together in person. Another remote hub, in Heraklion, also had a small number of participants who came already prepared to work on a single project; this seems a good way to organise the work in a remote hub.
Thanks to Vesna, the organising and judging teams, and also thank to the participants.
RIPE NCC Board Meeting #179
The last RIPE NCC Board meeting of the year took place in Amsterdam last week. As usual I gave an update of recent developments in the RIPE community and an outlook and plans for next year. The day after the Board meeting, I was invited to attend the RIPE NCC Christmas party which was great fun. I was especially impressed by the live band made up of about ten RIPE NCC staff.
We wish you all a relaxing and peaceful season and I hope to see many of you again in 2025.
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