RIPE 92
Main room
4 p.m.
RIPE Community Plenary session
21 May 2026
MIRJAM KUHNE: Welcome to the RIPE 92 Community Plenary. It's a lot emptier than on Monday during the opening but I am sure everybody is still around, I heard it is a very well attended meeting, and of course, there are a lot of hallway discussions as well. By the way the screen on the lectern has gone black again so if somebody could come and set that up again, that would be great. Thank you.
We have quite a packed agenda. My name is Mirjam Kuhne and I am the RIPE Chair and I ever I have Anna Wilson as the RIPE Chair and actually join me for discussions. Reminder, PC elections are still on until five o'clock, so please all vote if you want to be able to contribute to filling the two seats on the PC that are available.
This is our agenda for today. It's usually the RIPE Chair team who give you a quick update of what we have been up to but also what the community has been doing in the meantime. Then we'll have an update have Herve, Andrei about the latest news on the RIR governance document, also known as ICP‑2. Then Athina Fragkouli from the RIPE NCC will talk about EU competition law. Then we have a short presentation by Robert on personal continuity or digital legacy that some of us, that you might find interesting and we also have an ask for the community there, possibly documenting some of the best current practices. Then in the end, there is a talk about Remco van Mook on the server results about the Secret Working Group that came up last time.
Then hopefully we have sometime for Open Mic.
There is now something on the screen here but it looks very weird. I like it, it's green, but...
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Let's dive into the update from us from the RIPE Chair team.
Just to give a quick idea what we, we are travelling around, you talk about RIPE and promoting RIPE to other communities. I have been at the RIPE NCC government round table meeting in Brussels. I attend the RIPE NCC Executive Board meetings. There is also joint meeting there at the APRICOT APNIC meeting that I attended. I have talked on them about Internet outages that the panel in Brussels that was organised by ICANN, it was interesting, it was a great way to promote this opportunity community and how we share information and learn from each other. I was at the SEE meeting and presented the RIPE activities there. And you can find all this also in our monthly RIPE Labs updates where we keep you in the loop of what's relevant to you all.
Just a few slides on what we are supporting the community and kind of community for the community activities, I mentioned this in the opening. There is a new initiative about the RIPE research exchange and to bring researchers into the community to make sure researchers and operators can find each other and exchange ideas and for the first time now, we had this like white boards outside where operators could put up ideas, anybody, could put up an idea for research or researchers also have ideas finding out if this would be useful for networking, and just now in the coffee break before, there was a kind of a matching session for those people who put on ideas, I saw there were like flip over pages that had actually a long list of ideas. So this seems to have worked. I am curious to find out what's coming out of this. I also had feedback about poster sessions we had last time, we had asked the RACI fellows to bring a poster, and this was kind of optional, so this time most RACI fellows were presenting in the sessions but I heard this still might be useful to include them a bit more, make them more visible in the hallway, we'll bring that back next time and to make sure you can find them also in the hallways and can talk to them.
Also something new we have done and I talked about this before, this is not the first time we have implemented this. We really revamped the whole RIPE fellowship programme, where the RIPE NCC actually contributes financially to people coming to the meeting here and instead of just paying people come to the meeting and then we don't know in they find it useful. They have this whole programme where they have to do their homework before the meeting so they come here prepared. And in order to facilitate this, we also had coaches, which is a bit more than mentors, so that they were well engaged before and I would really like to thank the coaches that helped out during the first pilot phase of the new fellowship programme, you see their pictures there on the screen. A big thank you to those who participated in that.
(Applause)
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I think it's a great group of coaches. If you are interested in the future, maybe for the next application for next year, I think it's a really good way to get the new generation into the community and team them up immediately with some experts in their field so the matching works quite well. Also you see the long list of names there, we had another group of community members who helped us with the actual selection process of the fellows this time.
And we also I think have a slide for the mentors. We also have have another opportunity for community members to help out and to help out the other community members is to Meet and Greet. We had community members join the RIPE NCC meet‑and‑greet team, you might have seen them outside at the meet‑and‑greet desk where he, you know, where they answer questions and kind of greeted new participants. Also, I'd like to thank the traditional mentorship who offer to be mentors for newcomers at the meeting, they don't go through the fellowship, they are just newcomers here, we have a lot of them and we also look for mentors to mentor them through the week so that they don't feel lost, and we had good matching and a number of pairs of mentors/mentees, and I think that's a great way for the community to help each other out.
Thank you all.
(Applause)
There are a number of, we call it this time keeping RIPE running well, instead of RIPE governance, which sounds so seriousness, you know, just a number of updates on kind of our, how we operate and how we keep things running as a community.
You have heard this before I think the Code of Conduct team put out a survey last time to find out, you know, how the community feels about it, feels about the Code of Conduct, the team, are they approachable? By and large the respondents felt very safe, and here at the RIPE meeting as well and you will always get a final report from the Code of Conduct during the Closing Plenary, that will be tomorrow, but in that survey, there was one issue, not one issue but one comment was sometimes people feel hesitant to report or approach the team because they felt maybe it's not worthwhile or seriousness enough, but please don't think that, they are very approachable, not every report or not every conversation with them has to lead to an investigation or serious report. They are also also to listen. And even if you were not sure please approach them. You can find a detailed report about this survey on RIPE Labs there.
Another thing I want to mention here as a heads‑up is we are talking to the team also about reviewing the process. I mean, we have started this whole Code of Conduct, when I started, maybe five years ago, then there is a document that describes the appointment and the responsibilities of the team members, and we kind of reviewing if that needs an update in light of the experiences that we have gained in those years. So you'll hear more about that soon.
Another thing that's in the planning, and you might have heard about this in the Address Policy Working Group is we are looking at the PDP, again I think this is a process in a document that we as a community should be reviewing from time to time to make sure it still matches reality and maybe possibly needs an update. So, the RIPE NCC Policy Officer and the RIPE Chair team, we have kind of looked at it and as a next step we'll work with the Address Policy Working Group Chairs, and then ultimately this will lead to a new draft document on the RIPE list, where we will ask for consensus, but this is still in the early steps there.
That's just closing a loop on another document that we have agreement on. We have updated the RIPE Programme Committee job description, or process, primarily also to add a space there for a representative from the central Asia community there that is quite mature now and they would like to participate also in the programme for the RIPE community and so we have now a new person on the PC for the next, not this time but starting next time, Mikhail, who is our representative for the central Asia appearing from there, similar to the representative we have from SEE region and the MENOG region as well. So you'll hear ‑‑ you'll see him there on the website next time, I don't know if he will be here in person.
Another document that we have put out and that has been reviewed by the community over the last few months is an updated version of the RIPE Working Group Chairs job description, and there was a last call yesterday, 20th, and so it's basically finalised now. We will ask the RIPE NCC to publish it as a RIPE document. And in addition to just some textual changes we made, the two main changes are the two main updates or clarification of the roles and responsibilities of a working group Chair in their group, you know, what kind of authority do they have, what responsibilities they have. And then also in addition to that, it has a section on Working Group Chairs selection process, and, you know, this keeps coming up and we put some kind of principles of best current practices in the document that every Working Group should follow and so that's now in that document, So you can read it and I put them here also on the slide kind of the principles that we have agreed I think over the years, felt it that this works best to get new candidates and new Working Group Chairs in. And so one is for instance what works well is asking for candidate applications, kind of offline behind the scenes, not on the list because that kind of discourages the second person if one puts out their name then everybody else goes, I don't dare to put my name on anymore. That seems to work well.
Also, most Working Groups have terms of two or three years, some Working Groups also have term limits, so that's something groups should consider. And then also a selection process that allows for remote participation. So not you know just at the meeting or if it's at the meeting, then it needs to also allow for participation from remote attendees.
So these are the principles that are now currently in there. And based on that actually we would like maybe to have a bit of a discussion and feedback here, because we as a Chair team, we get a lot of feedback over the years, and some of you know this, kind of have been hammering on this, should we harmonise it more? Is it okay to have the individual processs? Can we do this better? Some people suggested that maybe it should be similar to how we vote for ASO AC members or for the PC members. Or the other option would be, pretty much the other side of the spectrum, every Working Group is responsible for their own process as long as they follow those principles that I just mentioned, maybe plus an additional checkpoint in there that the RIPE Chair team has the authority and the responsibility to ensure that the processes are followed properly. You know, we have that also for other processes, like for instance in the appeals, you know, the RIPE Chair makes sure the process is being followed, consensus has been reached. And of course there's a whole spectrum in between.
We have some time now if you want to give us a quick feedback on that, if you have any opinions on that, you saw also there was a discussion started on the RIPE list, and also I think on the DNS Working Group list and the Working Group Chairs discussed this amongst themselves. So if you have any immediate feedback now, please don't be shy. Otherwise we'll also take this onto the list, and Anna will keep time here so we don't run over. I think you were first.
BENEDIKT STOCKEBRAND: Benedikt Stockebrand. I think we have had this discussion before some time ago, so, this might not be particularly new, but we had very different kinds of Working Groups, some of them are policy centric, like Address Policy, others are technical like IPv6, and I think that applying the same processes that are necessary for policy making Working Group might be pretty much overkill for them for more technical stuff, which is ‑‑ as soon as policy ‑‑ there is money involved there is legal whatever discussions involved, you don't have that technical thing so you can take things a little bit easier.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you.
FRANZISKA LICHTBLAU: Speaking as a community member here. One thing I would like us also to consider, because we care a lot about the selection process. But as you already said, not all Working Groups have strict term limits. And for the record, I am not a fan of strict term limits, but in order to make sure that we have not ‑‑ that we also have a way out, we also need to reason about removal procedures. I'm not sure, I didn't check it, if every Working Group has something like that, but we should at least carry the notion because now with my Working Group Chair hat, my Working Group should be able to remove me.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. I would like to close the line now because we, we have only a few more minutes left.
LEO VEGODA: Former Working Group co‑Chair, and I also worked at the RIPE NCC for a while and supported some Working Group Chairs. And one of the things I noticed occasionally is that you have a working group whose Chair doesn't necessarily do the best job, and that's a failure mode, and it's one that's easy to recover from. Then there is another kind of failure mode, which I don't think we have really seen in a horrible way yet, which is when someone who is a working group Chair or co‑Chair, and they intend to disrupt the Working Group, or they intend to disrupt RIPE, or they intend to disrupt RIPE and the RIPE NCC, and I think we need a selection process that supports the ability to protect against that failure mode.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. There is an online comment
RUDIGER VOLK: Hi Mirjam.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Just to make sure we really have very little time so can you please be quick
RUDIGER VOLK: Kind of just short remark. I am a fan of truth in labelling, and I am somewhat surprised to start discussion of selection process under the label of Working Group Chair job description. Kind of the selection thing is a fairly difficult and has difficult history, and I would not have, and I have not expected that to show up under the job description. Thanks.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for your comment. I believe this was already in there in the old version, which was very old, and we cleaned it up and added a bit more context. But yes, okay, fair point. I don't know, we have to see where else it would go, but thanks.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Speaking for myself and as a former Working Group Chair. I would like to feedback on Benedikt and his comment, it's very different restrictions on policy versus technical Working Groups. I would like to push back on that a little bit. The only time we have so far got into, Leo already alluded to that, was definitely not a policy Working Group Chair who was getting us in trouble. So, I do think that these are more equal than you would like them to be. At the same time ‑‑ and secondly, you mentioned the remote chairing as an option. I admire the inclusivity, but from the times that we have tried that, it was not a happy place. So, I would actually actively ‑‑ I mean I like the inclusivity of it, but practically, not feasible.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Sorry, you said remote sharing, I meant a process that allows remote participation in the actual selection of the candidate in the end.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Then I stand corrected, because if we have chairs that are remote only ‑‑
MIRJAM KUHNE: That's not what I meant, sorry,
REMCO VAN MOOK: It's not feasible.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Sorry, if there was confusion. That's not what I meant.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Sascha. We should not run elections, we should run selections. We sometimes confuse the word and we say them. I might agree that we may not be able to do one process, but I am sceptical of the need for all eleven after having read them carefully, also my own Working Group isn't great currently. But a new point compared to what I said on the list that I liked is that we should also be careful not to over‑engineer. We are fundamentally here based on consensus, we can deviate from the process, it's not great, it's not is a great look but this doesn't have to always be fool proof for everything, but currently our processes are all over the place with this, excessively little documentation or incredibly complicated processes for three layers down of this agreement and the precise voting process. So, we must look for balance in all these things, the right path is probably in the middle.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you.
DANIEL KARRENBERG: Ancient community member. What Sascha said, number one. Number two, I think we have to grow up a little. We have to grow up in the sense that we need transparent processes that even for people who come for the first time are explainable and understandable. The more opaque we look and the more of a closed shop we look, like old friends doing old friendly stuff, the worse it gets for RIPE. That was one remark.
Remark two, that the RIPE Chair team actually looks at whether these things work well is already in their job description. I think we should formalise it a little bit more and giving guidance to the Working Groups on a good process that works well and maybe ratifying the result, and I think that's not the property of the other extreme that should be a property of anything we agree on. Thank you.
JIM REID: Another old fart who has survived many rounds of Working Group selection discussions and actually is possibly for writing one or two of these descriptions in the past. I agree with what Sascha said before, we are going to run the temptation of over engineering things, And that was one the problems we have had in the past we have many times tried to get these selection processes put in place, so I think we should be careful not to do that. I am rather surprised that we're spending discussion about trying to get a common process. In my opinion, the Working Groups have decided for themselves how they select their co‑chairs, they should be left to get on with it.
However, I think the bigger problem is we're discussing this when the more pressing problem is finding candidates to come forward and stand and rather than talk about how we choose candidates or having a common process or not for that, is how do we get more people to come and take on these roles. I think that's something we should spend more time on than anything else.
To my mind talking about this selection thing is a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
MIRJAM KUHNE: I believe they are connected. That having accessible selection processes with terms and so forth actually encourages new people to come in. But yeah, we can continue that discussion. Thanks for this initial feedback, we have one more item to talk about that IANA will actually take on. It's about RIPE meetings in general and then also another kind of discussion point at the end. And I was pressing all the Working Group Chairs and the session chairs today that I heard that are really good at time keeping these days, this time not so much. Sorry.
ANNA WILSON: That discussion has to be had. Thank you Mirjam. Hi, I am Anna Wilson, Let's talk about RIPE meetings. There is some upcoming RIPE meetings. We already know Sofia and Vilnius are in place. We have meetings planned up to 100. We have dates for them published, not ready yet to announce where they are going to be, but you can at least map those out so they are already announced. There is one other thing that's really important that we want to talk about, and again we want to get feedback from the community, We do have to be fair to the other speakers in this session and it is a tight session so I am going to limit this to five minutes.
I want to talk about meeting fees. This is something that's come up and myself and Mirjam have been talking about and we realised this isn't something, this is something we really want to hear from the community. I think most of us know the RIPE meeting is largely funded by the RIPE NCC. Some of it is meeting fees, some of it is sponsorship, that varies but it's also a part of the costs, and then the RIPE NCC funds a large chunk of the meeting.
Meeting fees themselves have not kept up with costs over the past number of years. The last time the meeting fee increase was 2023. And that did not increase in line with the underlying cost of running the meeting.
So, we do want to ask what, what should this look like in the future? The NCC is obviously accountable to its members when it comes to the budget. The members have always agreed that it's important to fund more than just the membership services and I have always understood the importance of the community and indeed there is a large overlap between the NCC membership and us here at the RIPE meeting at large. But as a community, I don't think that's something we can take for granted. So, where we're trying to find a balance between, you know, the openness of the RIPE community aunt the meetings on one side and then the NCC's accountability to its members, we wonder what's the right balance there.
To be clear, the funding of RIPE meetings used to be roughly a 50:50 split. Meetings are getting more expensive. And if we went back to a 50:50 split, the meeting fee would be roughly €900 today, Which is a steep increase, we can't just drop that.
But, we'd like to get a clear idea over the next few minutes, would that be acceptable? Is that something that sounds reasonable? Does it sound unreasonable? Would you be affected by this? And in particular, how much does this affect smaller organisations and those coming from lower income countries?
There are things we can talk about, we can talk about differential pricing again, and we do have things in there like free tickets for first time members, and the fellowship and student tickets and the like. And there are other changes we could make, maybe to try and reduce costs. But very strictly, five minutes no more than that, we'd love to hear your take on it. Please again come to the mic or flag us on Meetecho.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Thank you, Anna, for preparing this. This is very relevant. At the same time, two comments.
Raising it to €900 is going to be extremely problematic for individual contributors. A lot of us are here not because our bosses pay for our tickets. So, there is ‑‑ I think there is going to be quite a dramatic impact in how many people you would actually get to attend, because actually quite a few people are here on their own time.
Second, a more Meta comment. I think despite how much the RIPE NCC is paying into this, I think they are getting exceedingly good value from these RIPE meetings. So, I think they can suck it up.
ANNA WILSON: To be clear, five people at the mics.
SASCHA ROMAIN: Sascha Romain. If you raise the meeting fee to €900 you will never see me here again, I am a paying my own a, please don't become the IETF, also a place I never go to. If you really want to raise more meeting fees we should do differentiation pricing and not just students, there should be people who pay independently versus corporate tickets, a well explored subject by many communities. I think the cost of raising the meeting fee so high would be tremendous to this community and also the longevity of it and bringing in new people to the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Stefan. A hundred percent what Remco said and would I like to add that 900 plus accommodation plus flight, travel costs would mean that less people from the companies will come here. Especially younger ones will not be sent.
ANNA WILSON: I am happy to things if there is things we can change to make things more affordable. We do have to cut the mics immediately so we have to keep this short. Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: What I see is if you still have those two free tickets, then that doesn't really work out financially because I could basically open up a LIR every two years and close it and then up at the same price.
ANNA WILSON: Fair point. Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: It would be interesting to see a more detailed breakdown for the cost of a meeting because I think there are things where we can save some money. That said, the €900 is probably a bit up the ladder. Thanks.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Plus one, plus one what Sascha said, €900, I won't be able to survive that and the rest of the time...
ANNA WILSON: Is there anyone online? No, okay. Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Question, and it may have been me not catching it fast enough, but the 900 is that including sponsorships. It would still cost that much more per person?
ANNA WILSON: The sponsorship varies heavily meeting to meeting. €900 would be roughly half of the underlying cost of the meeting today per person.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Because that's kind of why we sponsor, right, because these meetings are so valuable, and we get such a great attendance without raising the meeting prices and having free attendees and stuff like that. My organisation doesn't get anything, except our name on the banner for sponsorship, and that's quite a bit of money to help keep affordable for people, and I am pro doing that. That said some of our organisations would notice obviously but that is not true for so many of the attendees I know here. So I really wouldn't want to raise fees. I'd like to see more creative funding for the meetings if that's necessary.
That said, I served a lot of time on the NANOG Board in the US and they are struggling with this and I have a tonne of empathy for meeting planners trying to get hotel room rates to appropriate level, meeting fees and then still host the event that you are expecting. It's a very hard thing to balance. And we have to find a way to do it. Unfortunately, I think we will lose a lot of value in the community if we just raised prices arbitrarily to that fee. I'd love to see more sponsors come in or something to help the organisation.
ANNA WILSON: Thank you very much.
RANDY BUSH: You are deciding between who pays for the attendees or the members?
ANNA WILSON: That was clear and useful feedback, very grateful. Back to Mirjam.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for managing that part.
And, you know, in retrospect maybe we shouldn't have mentioned the 900, that was a bit of the upper limit but we might have to do a bit of inflation adjustment in over time to ‑‑ well, to continue, you know, to be able to run these meetings.
But okay, more on that.
I wanted to clarify one thing. The RIPE NCC has changed the model that you don't get ‑‑ not every LIR gets two tickets anymore for RIPE meetings, it's per member, not per LIR anymore, so that has actually changed a few years ago.
Anyway, we are over time, sorry about this, next speaker, Andrei I think, you are up. Or Herve, one of you, or both. This has already been presented in the Address Policy Working Group earlier today, but I think it's important to focus on the open issues that we still have. So if you could focus on that it would be great.
HERVE CLEMENT: Thank you Mirjam. 15 minutes to present where we are about ICP‑2 is really challenging.
First, I will present some slides but I will try to be brief because the slides presented by Andrei are much more interesting than mine.
Just a word or so, we are missing Constanze for the group, from the RIPE region, she, it was not possible for her to attend this meeting.
Where we are about ICP‑2, we see the title, we are approaching the finish line. We don't say that we have completed the work, we just say that time passing, and we hope that in one more month we'll be approaching the end of this work.
It's not the ASO AC, it's not us who decided to have a workload about ICP‑2, but it was because in October 2023, we were requested by the NRO AC, so the group of the COs of the region to work on the ICP‑2 with, so each time I present that we first short‑term work, so it was completed in two months, I think. And then, so we have a longer one, it's two years are and a half, we are working on that which is really to strength the ICP‑2, strengthen the ICP‑2 is to update the criteria for the recognition of Regional Internet Registry, but it's also to complete the document to be sure that all the cycle of the original Internet registry is dedicated, it explained.
That was his work and that was the reason why when we wrote something that was consultations so the community had a great role regarding that.
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You are the people comprising the NRO AC fulfilling the function the ASO AC and the important thing is that since 2026, we have finally somebody from the AFRINIC comprising the ASO AC which is an excellent thing and we can say now that the AFRINIC is part of the drafting of the ICP‑2.
One more time, I won't describe entirely this review timeline because it was presented during the last RIPE meeting also. But just to say, and by definition, it's not a surprise, that in May it was our last action and with the help of the communication team of the regions also, we published a status report called May 2026. And to explain, what are the works to be done regarding the ICP‑2 draft. But Andrei will explain that afterwards.
This status report, May 2026, so it is presented like that with a different topics we are still working on, you will see there are a different sets of topics, there are drafting topics, there are other topics depending on if we have changed something regarding them or not, and you have the link to this document.
And if we go to a specific topic, for instance, the ad hoc audit, which we decided to rename compliance review because ad hoc could be defined in a different way regarding the region, so you have the background of this specific subject, you have then the feedback from the community, then the response we tried to find regarding the inputs from the community, and the status of the specific point is, in this case, drafting, so, it says that we still need to do something about that. We are still supporting documents, you can read. The last document published is the Version 2 of the it, which is the name of the ICP‑2 update. There was a status report as the one from May 2026, which is called the Q1, 2026 on community engagement, it's a document we say in which occasions as a community can speak with the NRO NC.
And the difference ‑‑ we have different issues still in work. They are issues in progress and an issue under drafting, so it's definitely an issue. We have not found a definitive solution about that. For instance, Regional Internet Registry that has moved away from unanimity. Whether there is a need of a third party in the recognition process, the process on review continued in the case of Regional Internet Registry is unable to fulfil its function for a different reason. The audits, and the rehabilitation which is part of the de‑recognition process.
And highlights from the status.
ANDREI ROBACHEVSKY: Thank you. So, I'll walk you through the highlight of this status report, and just to clarify how we worked in this phase, well hopefully, the final phase of our work is that after three consultations, we hope that we nail down all the issues and those status reports it provided inventory of those issues and they the status, how we are resolving them. It's very important, your feedback is very important to understand where we are on track or whether you are think we are on track and provide feedback on the document.
So, recognition threshold. Current version and Version 2 that have been under consultation. We are losing the unanimity requirement to minus 1 so under special conditions there is a possibility for undissenting RIR, but I think the community feedback was very clear that this is still not enough and we need to accommodate for different conditions such as RIR is unable to voice its opinion or recommendation or there is a conflict of interest. At the same time, we need to balance the whole process so it can be abused and hijacked. The decision we made as a council is that we'll go for two thirds of the, or super majority in the decision and we need to consider how conflicts of interest is being incorporated.
Current thinking is that if an RIR is affected, if RIR's territory it affected by the recognition of a new or candidate area, that RIR can still submit a recommendation that will be considered by ICANN but it will not count towards the super majority.
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So, emergency contingencies was introduced in Version 2, this accounts for RIR for various reasons, natural disaster or governance issues or whatever, can function, can provide the services. So there is a notion of emergency operator that can stand by, it can take the functions of some of the services of this RIR.
Again, in Version 2 it was a decision by the RIRs and ICANN to trigger emergency contingency procedure. We got feedback that in an emergency unanimous, looking for unanimous decision would take time which is not, we cannot afford and therefore we need to lose that requirement. At the same time, we saw a concern that again, this emergency contingency should be done with due diligence, with good process, and that's what we tried to incorporate.
So, no more unanimity, again this is a super majority that we are thinking about. The area itself who is suffering can initiate emergency contingency. There is no limit for renewals. There was feedback that maybe 90 days is not enough but renewals should follow the same process as the initiation, so there shouldn't be a sort of the ongoing, uncontrolled series of renewals.
Also there was discussion on staged approach. What kind of services? What is the scope of emergency operations? I think that depends on the level of emergency and how long that emergency lasts.
Audits: The
Primarily in the ad hoc audit, the requirement was that it can be initiated by any RIR, group of RIRs, or the membership with certain thresholds in ICANN. There were different comments that we received from lowering the threshold to implementing some mechanisms that this audit can be weaponised or used against the RIR. So you see a bit of a conflicting stuff.
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What has been decided that the frequency of regular audits would be five years, ad hoc audits we renamed them, they are indeed compliance reviews and there will be named compliance review in the new version of the document.
And those definitions will be there obviously.
On the ad hoc audit and specifically on the threshold we are still discussing the threshold, maybe lower the threshold but there will be a provision that before members can trigger or can request a compliance review, they should at the moment straight at least they tried to resolve the issue through relevant existing RIR procedures.
Derecognition. That's a very, it's a final step, right when all other means, we exhausted all other possibilities, and rehabilitation was a status more of a sort of spirit, as a general principle, but now we are trying to make it clear that this part of derecognition, so derecognition it cannot happen, it cannot proceed before sufficient effort had been made to rehabilitate, to rectify the issues.
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There was a suggestion that audits should be part derecognition but we concluded that that might be counterproductive. If you look at the situation, the RIR is obviously failing to perform their remediation efforts have been made, so audit might not be really necessary and if we formalise and require this, it might just be counter productive around slow the whole process down. Taking into account that the relevant audit and maybe ad hoc or compliance reviews is is in place, so the need of this requirement might not be in place, so we're not changing that.
And last but not least, I hope it's last, but not least, I see this two minutes left, is that we got feedback that a document is difficult to read. For instance, if you look at the process recognition process you have to jump between different sections of the document which doesn't add to the clarity. We we are simplifying this, we are trying to make the flow more logical and more readable.
I'll leave the floor to Herve to look ahead.
HERVE CLEMENT: I totally forgot I have to ‑‑ so it's what I presented during the Policy Working Group this morning. So, the timeline is a global one. This time for 2026, and the next step, we are on the quarter 2 of 2026, with the status report, I have already mentioned. And we will meet in Seville ICANN 86 with different Working Groups to continue working, and also take into topics Ondrej has mentioned. After Q3, Q4, 2026, there will be a final version of the document that will be delivered to the NRO AC. It's normal to give the work then to the NRO EC. There will be final version presented, at the regional meeting on the second part of the year. And there will be a start of discussions, so from Q4, both in NRO and ICANN about the approval and adoption process.
Questions?
MIRJAM KUHNE: No. I am afraid we don't have time for questions. Thank you very much. I am afraid we don't have time for questions at this point.
HERVE CLEMENT: We have one minute left.
MIRJAM KUHNE: If you say so.
PAUL RENDEK: I hope I can do this in one minute. I am Paul Rendek. Firstly, I just wanted to thank you. I I know how difficult this process has been in getting the draft to the state that it's in. I do like the document. I have reviewed it with a fine tooth comb. I like it. Although I have some final comments on where we are now.
Yes, it was difficult to jump up and down, I am happy you are going to look at that space but my comments are a little different than that. Article 4.1 A and B are so crucial to this document and I was happy to see them put in there. It was the financial independence and the operational independence. It's very clear and I like in the times that we're slipping in with geopolitics and the regulations of it moving that that's very clearly identified. Good for the RIR system.
But, when I read this document, I actually felt that I saw the word "ICANN" come up quite a bit in the document. It was very prominent. And that kind of, I am wondering where, you know, where that came in I think I have one specific point where I can lead to this.
And that's article 2.3 B 1 C, where we talk about the derecognition of an RIR. Now there are three ways you can do this. One, by the RIR, two, by the community and/or by the membership and a certain percentage of the membership, and number three is ICANN. And I'd like to know why ICANN was positioned with this. Because their constituency in all the years I had worked through RIPE NCC and in the ICANN circle, their constituency really doesn't overlap so heavily with ours in the things that we do here specifically. So, to have them point it out in something like this and in other prominent areas of the document puts a lot of responsibility in their camp but also changes I think a little bit of dynamics between the RIRs and ICANN.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Can I suggest you actually take this to on board and discuss this with the rest of the AC because I don't think we don't have time.
ANDREI ROBACHEVSKY: Just one response, well first of all, Paul, thank you very much for this feedback. That's what we are expecting. Just to respond how that got in the document. That was coming from the community feedback, Not specifically ICANN, but the community felt that in a situation where there might be a deadlock, we don't know, it's really difficult situation, RIRs is in dire straits, all efforts have been made to rectify the situation and someone needs to trigger the process, we are not going about derecognition, we're talking about triggering the process some people felt that a third party or party outside the RIR system should be also able to trigger that. But I take your point of ICANN present in many places in this document. I will bring this back to the group and discuss this.
PAUL RENDEK: Thank you very much because I think there was a lot of work done in this space to make it a bit more accountable but I think there was just a bit too much on the ICANN level.
HERVE CLEMENT: It's not for us to decide what to put in the document but definitely, so we report on the comments from the communities and...
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks. Thank you both again for presenting this, I think it's really useful to keep us in the loop about the progress and also open issues. Can I ask next speaker up.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Hello everyone. My name is a Athina Fragkouli, I am the Chief Legal Officer of the RIPE NCC. I am here to give a presentation on the EU competition aspects of the RIPE NCC as an RIR.
Why I am doing this is because during the ICP‑2 review there have been concerns about, you know, competition law restrictions. And in particular, when we were discussing about the territorial exclusivity of each RIR and when we were discussing the process of recognising a candidate RIR and how the other RIRs play into this process.
So, the question: Is this in line with competition law restrictions?
So, we asked for external advice. I believe it was at the last RIPE meeting that this question was brought up and we promised to come back with input from this advice. So, we asked an external expert on competition law is actually a person that we have ‑‑ we received their advice also in the past when we were discussing the last /8 policy proposals and possible competition law restrictions from that. So it's actually the person that understands how we function and is a professor at the University of Brussels of EU competition law. So we asked them to review the RIPE NCC Registration Services and review all those concerns that came up from this discussion up in competition law restrictions.
Now, a warning here, and an apology beforehand. This presentation has many technical legal terms and concepts, and I'll try to present them as clearly as I can. Please bear with me.
When we talk about this particular competition law concerns, we're looking into article 101 of the Treaty of the European Union which reads as follows:
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"Undertakings are prohibited from concluding anti‑competitive agreements, either directly or in the form of decisions of associations of undertakings."
That's a mouthful. But what it really says is that ‑‑ well undertakings actually, that's why I bolded it, it's a very central concept in the European competition law. Undertakings are kind of of an entity. So what it says, what this provision says is that entities that are undertakings are prohibited from concluding anti‑competitive agreements. They are prohibited to do so whether they do it themselves directly or whether they are acting as an association of such entities.
Now the question, the first question in this analysis, is whether the RIPE NCC is such an undertaking or an association undertaking with regard to Registration Services?
Let's start with the first question. Is there the RIPE NCC an undertaking?
What is an undertaking?
That's the question that follows from that.
An entity is an undertaking when it performs an economic activity.
Now, what's important is that if an entity performance many activities, and only one of them is an economic activity, it's considered to be an undertaking under competition law only with regards to this activity. So this doesn't extend to everything this entity does.
And what is an economic activity? It's an activity consisting in offering goods and services in a given market.
Now another important thing with a competition law is that it relies a lot on the Court of Justice of the European Union on their interpretation of this law. So there is a lot of jurisprudence, and we learned a lot actually on how to interpret this legislation. So the Court of Justice of the European Union has given some interpretation help on what is not an economic activity. So an activity which, by its nature, aim and the rules, if it does not belong to the sphere of economic activity is not an economic activity.
Or if it's connected to the exercise of the powers of a public authority it is not an economic activity.
The Court of Justice also looked at the role of the remuneration, and said that just because there is a remuneration for an activity, it doesn't mean that it is an economic activity.
Now let's look how this applies to the RIPE NCC Registration Services.
And let's see first, the first bit, the nature of the activity.
When we talk about the Registration Services, our expert looked at the hierarchy of this registration service. So it looked at the IANA Registration Services. These Registration Services were of course of public interest, activities in the public interest, and initially, they were performed under the mandate of the NTIA. Of course that has changed in 2016, we had the IANA transition, so it's not anymore under the mandate of NTIA it's under the mandate of our community. However, the nature of these activities hasn't changed.
Our expert found similarities of the Registration Services with allocation of phone numbers, or licence plate numbers, which are of non‑economic nature. They also found similarities to the air traffic control services, because Registration Services are there to avoid the miscommunication between devices. All in all, they came to the conclusion that Registration Services are technical coordination services with a view to the stable and efficient operation of the Internet, and they are of non‑economic nature.
Now, looking also at the form of the remuneration.
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The essential characteristic of the remuneration lies in the fact that it constitutes consideration for the service in question. That's what the court says. Our external experts believe that this is not the case with the registration of IP addresses. The RIPE NCC fees are aimed at cost recovery for the function. And whether a member receives such services or not, they must pay a fee. So, they are not in consideration for the service in question.
Our expert also believes that this will continue to be the case under the new proposed category model of the charging fee. We actually submitted the charging scheme task force report, we submitted the new proposal for the category model, and he believed that actually the, even the application of fixed fees per category, this does not still reflect the economic value of allocated IP addresses.
So, yes, in that sense, the remuneration is not in consideration for the services.
Going back to article 101, and whether the RIPE NCC is an undertaking. The conclusion that, is that it's not an undertaking because it does not perform economic activities.
Now let's look at the second bit, whether the RIPE NCC is an association of undertakings.
So, if the members are this, undertakings that make the RIPE NCC an association of undertakings.
The legislator wanted to cover situations where undertakings evade this rule of competition because they coordinate their contact via a common body. And again, we have a lot of jurisprudence to help us with interpretation of what is the association of undertakings. There are two criteria. For the assessment of that:
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- There should be a commonality of interest between the association of a homogenous groups of undertakings and, the decision making powers must be in the hand of this homogenous group. Let's see where this applies with the RIPE NCC.
Now the RIPE NCC has more than 20,000 members that have various backgrounds and interests. It's very difficult to argue that these members are a homogenous group. But more importantly the decision making powers are not within the RIPE NCC. The decision making regarding the registration of IP addresses are based on open, bottom up, consensus based processes that happen in Working Groups, and they also include non‑members, they include anyone.
So, in conclusion, the RIPE NCC is not an an association of undertakings in the sense of the EU competition law.
Going back to our basis, one‑on‑one, the conclusion again is that the RIPE NCC is not an undertaking and it's not an association of undertakings.
That leads us to the actual questions that came through the ICP‑2 discussion about the territorial exclusivity.
First, the concern was that yeah, each RIR has territorial exclusivity in the sense that each RIR is responsible for a service region. Of course RIRs may also provide services in other regions, but they are not responsible for those others regions, they are only responsible for one service region. The conclusion as we said before is that the RIPE NCC is not an undertaking or an association of undertakings and the same conclusion our expert believes should apply also to the other RIRs if they're organised in a similar way and they carry out similar activities. Well, all RIRs adhere to the same criteria according to ICP‑2, so, the conclusion is that the sole designation of the RIPE NCC for the service area falls outside the scope of the EU competition law.
Similarly, with the recognition and the derecognition process, and whether there are competition law concerns, The outcome is similar, as you can imagine, if you follow the language, the recognition and the derecognition of the RIRs are not subject to EU competition law. That's a summary of the conclusion.
The RIPE NCC is not an undertaking, it's not an association of undertakings, territorial exclusivity falls outside the scope of the competition law, and recognition and derecognition is not subject to the EU competition law with regards again to the Registration Services only.
Now, our intention is to publish this advice after the RIPE meeting, and hopefully this will help the ICP‑2 discussions. Thank you.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you very much. That was actually really interesting and you did a great job in explaining this legal, the legal terminology in an easy way. You actually saved us some time. We have two minutes left for questions, if there are any. I am sure there are lots of questions but Athina also said she had going to share this after the meeting.
NIALL O'REILLY: I am not sure which hat I am wearing, but it occurs to me that there is an interesting coupling ‑‑ sorry, first of all, thanks Athina, this was really useful and really well presented.
There is an interesting coupling between this topic and the one which Anna presented on a little while ago, and Remco's comment comes to mind. If the access to the meetings became priced at such a level that it was essentially a barrier except to undertakings, the NCC's position vis‑a‑vis competition might be transformed. I just make that comment.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you very much, that was not within the scope of this advice, but thank you very much, we'll definitely look into this.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Anything online? No, thanks again Athina.
(Applause)
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Next talk, we have Robert Kisteleki from the RIPE NCC talking about digital legacy.
ROBERT KISTELECKI: I also start with a blue screen.
Hello everyone. Disclaimer, I am employed by the RIPE NCC, but right now I am on stage as a community member, so that association is slightly different.
I would like to talk to, a way less legal topic, but it might be a little bit more depressing, but I'll try my best not to do it that way.
Thinking about our digital legacy, what do we mean by that?
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The RIPE community is you, me, some others who are really listening to this presentation online, basically all of us who define ourselves to work for the European Internet. It's a little bit of rephrasing, but it's more or less true. This is a really nice bunch. We do like to help each other. I was amazed the first time I joined the RIPE meetings how much of support and help is here. And one would think that this was even more true back in the day when the Internet was smaller and the best way to go forward was to actually help each other personally even, but I do note that it is also true for all the generations that are members of the RIPE community.
Now, unfortunately, we are not always around. There are cases where we disappear from the air either temporarily or permanently and we have to think what happens with the services, with the help that we used to provide to each other.
Think of these cases, domain registration and maintenance. I am personally the Admin C and Tech C for some of the domains that are registered out there. If I am unavailable out there for whatever reason what happens to those? Some of them are not mine. What will happen to the people who are actually hosting content on there?
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Think about e‑mail hosting. You might be hosting the e‑mail or just an MX for someone else. And then if you cannot provide that service anymore, not because you don't want to because you are unable, to what happens to their e‑mail? That's kind of important nowadays,
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Similar things represents, some of us are giving VM access, maybe host ago physical hardware in a data centre for someone else, providing secondary DNS and so on and so forth. This is changing a bit even social services, some people are running instances and giving accounts to friends and family.
Now, what can possibly go wrong? This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but just to make you think of what are the things that we can think of.
Domains expire. If you happen to be not around in the wrong time of the year and your domain expires and you fail to renew it, that domain is gone. Someone else will snatch it immediately, try to reset all the passwords that are associated with all the accounts in that domain, that's a problem.
Hosted nodes can disappear because of non‑payment for example.
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There are maintenance needs. This user forgot their password. Or the two factor device was just lost, please help me recover my account, if you are not there you can't help or do it. Security holes not patched. Nowadays there are scary things happening because of AI, and so on. These will happen more often, certificates expire faster and faster, right. I don't think everyone automated their Letsencrypt certificate renewals. I didn't.
So, to be clear, I am not presenting anything that has not been thought of by others before. So this is not novel work. I will not claim that.
And unfortunately, we can all recite examples of community members who passed away in the recent past and that made us, well many, many, many, many of us really, really sad. But one consequence is exactly this.
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Teun Vink gave a presentation at NL log in 2024, I strongly recommend you listen to it, it's 15 minutes of your life, it's totally worth it and talk about more genetic fields if you are in that field, we came to this conclusion basically independent of each other. I didn't know about his talk before. I wanted to think about it as well.
Also in the area of prior work, there are big providers who have procedures in place. So, this talk is more about us and not the Googles or Metas of the world who have whatever procedures they have that they can use.
So, what I want to do mere is basically kind of a call for action. What would ‑‑ wouldn't it be a great idea if we could give guidance to ourselves to each other basically, what are the things that you should consider in this space? What are the use cases, what are the just the small list that I gave is probably in reality a way longer list. But it would be useful to make people think about what is in scope so to speak. And also probably give some practical guidelines on what can you do? What are ‑‑ well let's call them best current practices, what are the ways you can ensure the survival of your damage legacy and the help that you give to others formally or informally.
An interesting corner case of this was raised in the presentation when someone said you should also think about how to remove that kind of access from people who you used to trust but no longer do. You can't give access to everyone because that's not a great idea.
So call for action.
I am not fully organised on this one, but I want to be so if you would like to join this effort of thinking and perhaps producing a RIPE document, then please let me know. Contact me via my e‑mail. I will organise the group, whoever that might be. GitLab, GitHub, mailing list, we will figure it out. And then see where this goes. We want to probably want to make a table of contents and then fill the document and so on and so forth. We already have some volunteers, I did not twist their arms, I asked them are they interested and they said yes voluntarily. And obviously Tim is on that list, Daniel, you know him, he is helpful, and myself. I am hoping there will be more people. That's it that's my message.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you Robert. We actually have sometime for feedback and comments and I am wondering maybe something like this already exists. I remember the presentation, there was some great suggestions in the Q&A afterwards, but I don't know if all this has been documented, so I think this is a great initiative so if you would like to help ought to help Robert if you have any immediate comments.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Will, who lost someone recently with that kind of case and we had to resource his password to get into his accounts. That was not a nice moment. We really ‑‑ so I'm not aware that we have any documentation already existing on that. I think we need to find something, whereas many use case in different situations, let's feed some documentation, I'll be on with you.
LARS LIMAN: Lars Liman: If you want the assistance from us old beards, maybe we should not go for a Git repo but a CBS repo.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: We can argue about the fine details. I also have some grey in my hair so I still remember those days, but we'll figure it out.
JAN ZORZ: With my best operational practice task force hat on. I think the task force would be a good place to work on the document.
ROBERT KISTELECKI: Sure, sounds good. I don't know, but I'll take your guidance on that.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks. Let's talk, this might be a good activity to place under the BCOP.
JAN ZORZ: That would be a good place to start.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks again. Thanks for bringing this up.
(Applause)
And next up is Remco talking about a secret survey he held last time. What came out of it.
REMCO VAN MOOK: So for those of you who are excited to get a presentation from the Secret Working Group right now, I have bad news. This is not that. It might come later in the week but you never know. I have a blue screen in front of me but that's fine because I have a screen over there.
Last RIPE meeting at the end, we launched a survey in the Secret Working Group we had a good number of participants and I would like to share the results of that because I think that's relevant for this community.
Also, for Brian, I am trying not to use my funny voice, because apparently I have a funny voice.
So, well, how do we get here? A little bit of background on where we got this thing from.
If you go back to the origins of this, one of the founders of the RIPE community, our former former Chair, Rob, had roughly paraphrased used to say most communities fall apart because they start to take themselves a little bit too seriously.
Which I can only take to heart. I have seen this happen over and however.
Then, the Secret Working Group came into existence when that exactly happened is not entirely clear to me at least. I mean there is more people in the room have a bit of history on that. Somewhere in the nineties, we have a lot of hand waving. And there's been various people trying to shepherd this thing along. And at some point, at RIPE 61, Olaf, a very tall Dutch gentleman who used to frequent RIPE meetings and now sadly no longer does that, wasn't available for the first time to present the Secret Working Group and Nigel, he of the sonnet, didn't want to carry the session on his own, and I said, you know, what, I'll help you out.
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RIPE 61 is 2010, many, many, many, many moons later. The rest as we say is history. Jan, joined the team a little bit later, Franziska the last years, Nigel is here today and he is here this week, that's great. But retired a few years ago, was active behind the scenes for a while, poor Paul Thornton got thrown on stage in Rome because I went down with Covid and he had to host as he calls it the replacement bus service. His words, not mine.
And at RIPE 85, we first discussed the role of the Secret Working Group for the first time in calling the relevance and the risks and the call to participate went out.
With that context in mind we had a survey because RIPE 85 is already also a while ago.
So the survey results. The numbers don't tell the story but the comments really do.
I'll share the numbers with you and I'll tell you why these don't really tell anything.
These are the numbers. The average for delivery, content and relevance is somewhere between a 9.6 and 9.7 out of ten. The median is an even 10 out of 10 all over. The range is between a 3 and a 4 to 10. 62 respondents, 27 with comments. Those who participated, thank you very much.
But that ‑‑ if Hisham was standing here and he was presenting a survey, he would be the happiest person in this room because these are NPS scores and the best thing ever. But that's not really what this is about. Because the comments really tell the story.
This is my favourite one. Exactly as cringe as it should be. I don't think there is a more accurate description for what I am shooting for at the Secret Working Group. It needs to be cringe because otherwise it wouldn't work.
Then we also have comments like levity is essential to RIPE culture. I think that reflects well on what Rob used to say.
And the one respondent who rated us with a 3, a 3 and a 4, provided no comments. If you are here, I'd still like to hear ‑‑ I honestly really do.
Then in general, there were lots of nice things. Are you that gentleman by any chance?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have one question, why is the range not 6 to 7?
REMCO VAN MOOK: Lets park that for Friday, shall we? But in general, I have five minutes left, I am keenly aware, I wasn't counting on interruptions.
Lots of nice things and honestly thank you, it was very heart warming to read.
But also, much better than the five previous sessions, barely there was a bit of a lull in quality and delivery. Some more diversity in attendees presenting would be nice.
So, where from here?
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Going on with the comments. It takes years to understand the jokes that I am cracking here on stage, and we're taking our history a little bit too seriously, and the exact problem that we were meant to address has been created.
If anything, according to my analysis, we need the safety value of that the credit Working Group provides. The world is more complicated, the stakes are higher. But it's time for me to let go. Slowly. Because we want to keep it sustainable, we need to get new talent in and we need, apparently, someone who can deliver a sonnet. I can't.
So, acknowledgement.
Thank you to the chairs for letting me do this wild and wonderful thing, Rob, Hans Petter and Mirjam. The ones who helped the smoke‑filled room, Olaf, Nigel, Jan,Franziska, Paul, Rob, Rob, I hope you're doing better.
The meeting team, for strictly no questions asked support, and I can't tell you the lengths they have gone through, they have moved balloon arches around just because I asked them to. They came up with props, they have changed the meeting room into a rave because I felt like playing hard core house music, they they have let me do absolute atrocities with keynote, which take a bit of doing on a presentation system, let me tell you. So applause for all of you.
(Applause)
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And of course, the ones who shall not be named because obviously you know who you are.
So, proposed process for RIPE 93‑97. I am not going to open the smoke filled back room, obviously. But we'll tell you where it is and when. If you'd like to join, please do. If you are just there for spoilers, please don't. And I am going to be moving my role slowly from writer/editor/host, everything else, to mentor, and from 98 on, I am going to be joining you guys over on that side hoping for exactly as cringe as it should be.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks so much Remco. We have a comment or question.
NIALL O'REILLY: Thank you very much, Remco. The I think you have offered an excellent and above all not too serious example of one element of the digital legacy that Robert was talking about.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for taking this on for so long and not quite stepping down quite yet, so I am relieved to hear that, and I understand how much effort and work this is, you put in there and your fellow secret working groupers, if there are any ‑‑
REMCO VAN MOOK: Any volunteers who would like to throw in their hats, and say, you know, what I'll come and help out. Let me know. If you think this is a completely silly way of doing this, let me know. I am literally just making this shit up, like I do with the rest of it. It's cryptographic etc.
MIRJAM KUHNE: No questions, I hope there will be volunteers coming to you in the background. Oh, there is a comment.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: If that wasn't that obvious, yeah, I'd be interested, but that's kind of a known thing for sometime I guess. If the smoke filled back room will let me enter, maybe I will.
REMCO VAN MOOK: We'll figure out a system to make that work.
JEN LINKOVA: I hope it is not going to apply to standard Chair selection precedence.
REMCO VAN MOOK: Jen, I couldn't agree more. Because if there is one complicated selection process, it's this one. And I don't think I'll be actually able to write it all down. I am also not allowed to, that's the thing. Mirjam, I don't have anything more. Am I excused?
MIRJAM KUHNE: Well thank you all, thanks to all the speakers and thanks for all the contributions. Before I let you go, we actually have a few more minutes but before, a reminder of something to contribute but I want to not forget to say please rate the talks that you heard today. For the dinner tonight the buses will leave from the entrance of the Moxy Hotel at 7:40, 7:45 and 7:50, they will return every 45 minutes between 22:30 and 1:15. And there is still meeting tomorrow morning. Remember to bring your ticket and the badge to the dinner. For those going to the dinner if you have dietary requirements or allergies please report to the dietary desk at the dinner venue next to the cloakroom. This is a strict requirement also in the UK, so they take this very seriously.
But before dinner, there is actually still a BoF, there is a BoF on practical AI today at six o'clock here in the main room. So there is a half an hour break in between but we still have a few minutes.
SHANE KERR: I work for IBM. And I see on each of these microphones is a little card which tells you to announce your name and your organisation. Now, there are a lot of Internet societies that don't have these rules. If you attend the IETF for example, everyone attends as an individual, they are not there for an organisation. But at the RIPE meeting historically it has been that way. And I notice this way some of the chairs and presenters have tried to encourage community members to tell who they work for and why they are here. And I think that's important because even though I am certainly, I promise you, not speaking for IBM right now, I think it's important that you know that someone is paying my way here and it influences my decisions and my opinions. So I would encourage, especially the long time members of the RIPE community, who seem to think that it's not important that anyone knows who they are or where they come from, maybe because they think that we already know, it doesn't matter. I think it does matter and that's basically all I have to say.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you Shane. Just as a point of reference, this came up today in the Working Group Chairs lunch and it was also then brought up at the end of the Address Policy Working Group by the chairs of the Working Group because they also wanted to know how seriously they should take this, I think there was a kind of an agreement in the end that yes it is important, it should be strongly encouraged, it's hard to enforce but exactly what you said well some of the arguments that were also mentioned there. Apparently there is a lot of interest in this topic, maybe other topics, yeah.
RANDY BUSH: I think it's good manners.
NIALL O'REILLY: Franziska brought this up. I am ‑‑ I have had some leadership roles in RIPE over the years, and it's from that background this this comment comes. Franziska brought this up at the end of the Address Policy Working Group because she wanted guidance from the Working Group about executing her responsibilities. I encourage everybody, if they weren't there, to look at the transcript when it's available, because there was a valuable discussion there, and there is no point repeating it here, but just a small element from it was that every RIPE meeting, and I think Mirjam mentioned there were 174 of them on site this time, there are new people, they don't know who the heck Niall O'Reilly is or what baggage he is carrying, and what Randy said, what Shane said.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am Lukasz from Dusseldorf University and I am one of 174 first timers at RIPE this time. And I wanted to add that it is indeed very helpful to know like who everyone is, at least a bit who they are from, because I know nearly no one here and of course that doesn't mean that I am expecting them to speak on behalf of that company, because I am also not speaking on behalf of my university, because they wouldn't have authorised me to do so, I don't even think they could. So thank you for saying your names when speaking up it helps people. Thank you;
LEE HOWARD: Lee Howard, new topic. Unorganised, I have no organisation, I am happily retired although I suppose I should disclose I am on the ARIN Board now the Programme Committee. You have all of my context. In case ‑‑ I just wanted to say something that I noticed this week in case other people hadn't noticed a recurring theme of the week is I am sorry we're running out of time. I don't know who, but we need to do to make sure that we're not squashing the important conversations in doing things that we need to do. I thought I'd make sure that I said that out loud.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: One more thing about the etiquette and stating your affiliation. We have this night name tags, many of us are wearing them, and most other people are also wearing them in the direction that everyone can read it. Some of them are wearing it the opposite way. I am wondering if this is intentional or by accident. Some of them aren't wearing them at all. We're discussing about etiquette. This might also be a thing. I mean in the microphone it's one thing because you state your name but wandering around. I know a lot of people, I have more problems remembering names than faces. So, this is always a kind of oh yeah, that was a name to that face but since they are also 174 new people around, I welcome you and I hope everyone can have a look at their name badge tomorrow or at the next event and see if it's facing the right direction.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. It's definitely actually a requirement to wear your badge while you are at the meeting.
And I heard actual the opposite this time, timing was invest well done. It's is it hard to judge what interests people to come to the microphone I am sorry if we didn't leave enough time to let you provide your comment.
GERT DORING: If we do have time to comment, I was about to say that, Gert Döring, speaking from the experience of having been a working group Chair for a while. This can be challenging, so you do planning, you do the best of your abilities of planning, you have talks, you have time for discussion, then something explodes. Like you plan for five minutes of discussion for something and then all of a sudden hell breaks loose and everybody really goes into an excited discussion and this is valuable time having people in the room actually make use of the time they have together in the room. Why, as a working group Chair, should I cut them sort? Of course this means the next talk doesn't get the time I have planned for it. So sometimes it just goes wrong with all the best intentions.
And sometimes we have finished ten minutes early because people just refuse to discuss things. It's not always really planable. We try the best.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks and maybe one last comment, because now five minutes into your break.
NIALL O'REILLY: It's a balancing act. If we had too much slack in the time slots, we'd be wondering why we weren't using the time so well. So, it's...
MIRJAM KUHNE: All right. Thank you very much. And I hope to see you in the AI BoF here in 25 minutes.
(Coffee break)
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