The RIPE Chair Team Reports - March 2024

March for the RIPE community means time to gear up for the first RIPE Meeting of the year. The RIPE Chair Team reports on preparation for RIPE 88 and other topics and events keeping the community busy this month.

RIPE 88

This is a heading you're going to see regularly over the next few months as we are all preparing for the RIPE 88 meeting. Registrations are coming in as well as presentation proposals. The RIPE Programme Committee will soon go over the first batch of submissions and we'll see if they then decide to extend the deadline.

Working groups have started to send out their own calls for presentations too. Keep an eye out for these announcements if you are interested in submitting a presentation. And we're also looking for topics for the Community Plenary.

The RIPE Code of Conduct Team is wrapping up their work from RIPE 87 and is already preparing for the upcoming RIPE Meeting. Please note that we are always looking for new team members. You can find more information on the RIPE Code of Conduct pages.

RIPE Governance and Visibility

As RIPE Chairs it is our task to ensure that RIPE has a solid governance structure and that we have the right processes in place that allow the community to do its work. Here are some topics we are currently working on.

The RIPE Programme Committee

Together with the Programme Committee (PC), we are working on an updated version of the RIPE PC charter and guidelines as currently described in ripe-763, including references to the Code of Conduct and an update of the appointment process.

WG Chairs Selections

You might have seen that some WGs issued an open call for WG co-chair volunteers. If you are interested, have a look at these training modules for (future) RIPE WG chairs. Additional modules will come out soon.

We are also working on an updated RIPE WG Chair Selection process, initially gathering feedback from WG Chairs who have applied their selection process recently to see what works, what doesn't work, and to identify any misunderstandings or unresolved issues needing further attention.

Long-term activities

These and other governance related topics will continue to be on our plate and are long-term activities that previous RIPE Chairs began and that we also put a considerable amount of thought into and that will most likely have to be continued by future RIPE Chairs and the community.

This further includes outreach to new participants, working with the RIPE NCC on the RIPE community pages on the new website, presenting at events and talking to community members, partner organisations and other stakeholders. It is important to continue to further develop the community and the relationship between RIPE and the RIPE NCC.

Industry events

On 22 February, both, Niall and I participated in the Government Roundtable Meeting in Brussels. We had constructive discussions about challenges in Internet governance and the impact of sanctions.

I always enjoy the RIPE NCC Open Houses. It’s a great way to (virtually) meet others in the community and hear about experiences operators make specific to the country they operate in. In February, I attended two Open Houses online: one that focused on the Internet in Greece and another on the Internet in Poland. This was especially interesting as preparation for the Regional Meeting SEE 12 in Athens in April and the RIPE 88 Meeting in Krakow.

Niall O’Reilly participated in the RIPE NCC organised webinar called “LIRs and the Internet Ecosystem” to introduce the RIPE community to the participants.

Niall also participated in the INEX meeting that took place on 7 March in Dublin. This was a good opportunity to catch up with community members and to enjoy a number of interesting talks related to machine learning, IPv6, cloud technology and more topics.

Due to a train strike in Germany, I unfortunately had to cancel my trip to the Peering Days in Krakow.