The RIPE Chair Team Reports - June 2022

Even though it feels like RIPE 84 just happened, preparations for RIPE 85 are already in full swing.

The RIPE NCC Meeting team went for a site visit to Belgrade to look at the venue and possible locations for social events. The dedication of the local hosts made a particularly big impression on the team.

The call for presentations will be opened next week. If you are working on an interesting project or if there's a topic that you would like to discuss, now is the time to think about submitting a talk for the plenary or one of the RIPE working groups. Registration for the meeting will open later in July.

Policy Development Process

The next version of the Policy Development Process in RIPE has been agreed and published as ripe-781. This document obsoletes ripe-710. The main changes are that it encourages sharing an idea for a policy proposal with the community before starting the official PDP. It clarifies some aspects of the appeal procedure and it explains the process to change the PDP.

RIPE Task Forces and Ongoing Activities

The Last Call for the document RIPE Task Forces: Definition and Guidelines has ended and will be published as a RIPE document shortly.

At the moment we have one active Task Force; the RIPE Code of Conduct Task Force. Having published the Draft RIPE Code of Conduct: Process and Consequences, the Task Force is now working on the third and last document on its work plan, namely the formation of the RIPE Code of Conduct Team. See the most recent update.

You can find these and other ongoing RIPE activities on the RIPE Website. We hope this will help you to get engaged with activities and discussions currently happening in the RIPE community. But do keep in mind that this list doesn't necessarily include all the RIPE Working Group activities, as those tend to be discussed on the relevant WG pages and mailing lists.

Industry Events

The meeting season has definitely started again and many events that had to be postponed or moved to online events are now taking place in real life.

IGF Serbia

I was invited to give the opening speech at the IGF Serbia meeting that took place this May. My talk was focused mainly on the history and ongoing importance of engagement - both on the part of RIPE and the RIPE NCC - in the SEE region. My talk also touched on the benefits of de-centralisation, as one can see in the network infrastructure in Ukraine.

re:publica 2022

I had a ticket from the re:publica 2020 that was still valid (because the last two events had to be canceled due to COVID-19). So, not long after RIPE 84, I decided to do another trip to Berlin! It's difficult to describe the topic or scope of this event - one of the biggest in Germany - as it deals with digitalisation, technology, the Internet, but also with pressing topics like environmental sustainability and the need for new business models. With such a diverse range of interesting talks, I decided to do a separate write up of my highlights from re:publica 22. I also brought back many ideas for the RIPE meetings, for instance on how we might reduce our carbon footprint, and how to reach out to new participants.

ICANN 74

The ICANN 74 meeting took place in The Hague and was a good opportunity to re-connect with the many community members. For instance, I met with the founder of the Youth IGF and we discussed some ideas how to collaborate and how to provide technical expertise to their community and thereby possibly spark some interest in the technical side of Internet Governance. In that context, I noticed that many communities have programmes to include the next generation: ICANN NextGen, TNC Young Talent, Youth IGF. RIPE has its fellowship programme and the RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative and we now also started to actively reach out to students.

TNC

In parallel with the ICANN meeting, TNC 22 took place, an annual conference that brings together members of GEANT, the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and other network researchers. Niall attended this year's TNC in Trieste and re-connected with many NRENs and other TNC participants.

RIPE NCC Open House: IPv6 Skills Gap

The RIPE NCC organised another interesting and well attended session for the community. One of the outcomes was and initiative to work on a BCOP document on IPv6 deployment in governments. This will likely be on the agenda of the BCOP TF for RIPE 85. The need for standardised IPv6 measurements was also mentioned. And to help more organisations with their decision to deploy IPv6, a document listing the main motivations and business cases would be useful. For instance, one driver for IPv6 transition nowadays is the increasing price of IPv4 on the transfer market, which might be an unpleasant surprise for decision makers when expanding their network.

RIPE NCC Executive Board Meeting

At the last Board meeting, I asked the RIPE NCC to do a preliminary impact analysis of all recommendations made by the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force. This will make it easier for the respective working groups to review and address these recommendations. While the RIPE NCC will need more guidance on some of the recommendations before they can perform a more detailed impact analysis, it was good to see that overall there are no big hurdles and that some of the recommendations have already been addressed or implemented in the meantime.

RIPE NCC's 30th Anniversary

After the Board meeting, I was invited to join the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the RIPE NCC. It was great to see so many current and former staff members and exchange old stories and memories.

We'll be back with the next update ahead of RIPE 85. Enjoy the summer and hopefully a good break!