RIPE 92
Edinburgh
Main hall, Newcomers Session
18 May 2026.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Hello. With welcome everyone. We still have a couple of minutes but admit meantime, for those of you who are not new, as I see a few familiar faces in the room, we are doing something slightly different this time so we're going to do more interactive. If you want to participate in a bit of a Kahoot engagement, please scan that code, or go to Kahoot and type in that code, and then you can participate and we get a bit of a better idea who you are and, for those new newcomers, you get a better idea also who you are, where you are from, where you are participating, and so I'll wait a few more ‑‑ if you are any questions later, there is a microphone here and there, I hope I can see you. And there are people coming online, I can see that.
I might as well introduce myself, I am the Chair of the RIPE community, and I'll tell you a bit more about myself in a second.
This is the newcomers tutorial, it's about an hour and we also have a bit of a quiz at the end, so pay attention and please stay till the end.
I think we can start.
.
There are still people joining.
.
This is RIPE, this is the RIPE community. This is our logo and/or motto. The RIPE community stands for Réseau IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre, European IP network and was founded in is the 1989, so it's quite old. And this is us connecting people, bringing people together and I'll tell you more about how we do that and what the topics are that they tend to discuss at niece meetings.
Welcome to your first meeting, if you are new. The first RIPE meeting in '89 took place in Amsterdam, this all started in Amsterdam for historical reasons, a lot of people who were involved in the first few years of RIPE are still around and also at this meeting. This is a good chance for to you connect to some people who have a great experience and history and an expertise with networking.
I always find this fascinating, a a bit of a blast from the past. That's a network overview from 1999 even, not even that ‑‑ not even from the very beginning, and the RIPE community, we used to have a connectivity Working Group where people would draw these maps and would update them whenever a new country was connected to the Internet, there would be a new map and they are are is it still available online and published at RIPE documents. You see a RIPE 005 stands for the fifth document in our document series, in our RIPE documents, and if you look closely you'll see that most of these nodes, you know, are actually academic networks and NRENs, national research education networks and that's really also our roots of where we came from the in the first IP networks in our region.
At some point in our, updating these maps didn't scale anymore and I can't remember when exactly when it stopped, also that connectivity Working Group stopped at the time. We have a working group now that's called Connect Working Group, but that's slightly different, that's not dealing with necessarily with that, the overall connectivity.
.
So, back to me, I am Mirjam, I am originally from Berlin, Germany, I studied computer science there at the Technical University. This is my second term as RIPE Chair. The community reappointed me again last time in October for another term. I worked for many years also at the RIPE NCC, so I ever seen this from many different angles. I also worked for the Internet Society for sometime, did work in developing countries and always kind of on the brink between technology and communications and policy and things like that.
My first RIPE meeting was RIPE 19 in Lisbon. You can look that up, when that was. And there is an e‑mail address at the end if you want to contact me, I mean if you have any questions or anything you want to know or wondering about why we are doing things the way we do, please contact me during the week. We are always happy to hear specifically from newcomers because you come here with a fresh eye and fresh view, and we'd be happy to change over time as well.
I think my next slide is for you, Anna if you want to introduce yourself. Anna Wilson is the ‑‑
ANNA WILSON: Good morning, I am Anna. I am Vice‑Chair, my background is in HEAnet, which is the Irish national research network, I have been an operator for a while. My first RIPE meeting was in this city in 1998, and it's good to be back, thank you very much.
MIRJAM KUHNE: And, this is the first question, so where do you come from? Anna is from Ireland, I am from Germany. We want to see on the map you should see a map on your Kahoot screen ‑‑ Okay, there is the map. I am doing this for the first time, this part, we haven't done this before, so this is going to be a little interactive.
It would be great to see some pins popping up there to see where you are from. I see the pins when you are done. So this is going to take a while. You see people are still working on it. This is could you think down on one side and could you think up on the other. So I think we have pretty much everyone who wanted to share this information with us has done it by now. So we should see it popping up soon.
Obviously, all over Europe, so maybe next time we need to Zoom into the map a bit more to you can see it a bit clearer where you are from. We also see a number of people from the US, from Australia, is this Iceland? Probably, yeah. Great. Excellent.
I can't zoom in here, it would be great to see, but as you can see, this is ‑‑ we have Europe in the name of RIPE, so I mean obviously there is a lot of people coming from this region.
.
Let's move on.
RIPE is open to anybody, to everybody. It's not membership. Everybody can participate. There is a meeting fee because you have to cover the costs and obviously the RIPE NCC is helping out a lot and also the sponsors, but that's t so there is no membership, anybody who is interested in IP networking and keeping the network running and from various angles is welcome and anybody can participate in the discussions here at the meetings and also on the mailing lists, I'll get to that.
There is another poll.
So, how new are you to the RIPE meeting? I already said earlier on, I see a lot of familiar faces, so let us know if this is your first meeting and, if you are not going to be experienced RIPE participant after your first meeting, so, you still kind of count as a newcomer for like the first three or four meetings, so, let us know how many meetings you participated in, and we'll have a good idea of how many of you are really, really new to this.
.
Over ten RIPE meetings, that's a very nice way of saying...
.
Okay, let's see.
Great!. So most of you are actually very new and the first timers, which is great but you also see there are a few people in here who aren't so new which is good because also you can look at your neighbours and see maybe have you already found a body that can tell you a bit more about the RIPE meeting since they have been to some meetings here before.
.
And we are coming to the next question. So, do you know actually the difference ‑‑ I mentioned the RIPE NCC, I mentioned RIPE, do you know what the difference is between those two?
Please click your answer. Do you know the difference between RIPE and the RIPE NCC? So Réseau IP Europeens and Réseau IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre Network Coordination Centre. We'll get to that why it's so multi‑lingual entity.
Let's see how many of you are aware of the difference? I'm going to tell you anyway even if you do know. But ‑‑ oh, I didn't touch it. It has opened itself. So you do actually, many of you do know the difference. Well I can speed through the next couple of slides and ‑‑ but some you don't. So I'll explain to you.
One slide here, in a nutshell, as I said the RIPE community has been formed in 1989, it's an open community, anybody can participate, and our main purpose really is IP networking in a wider sense, but it boils down to a lot of information sharing, technical coordination of certain aspects that are necessary to run IP networks and also a bit of policy development as in like, you know, IP address distribution and our registration of addresses and there is some policy element as well that will come back in some of the Working Groups, but it's a lot about coordination, collaboration, information sharing on one side.
On the other hand we have the RIPE NCC, the Network Coordination Centre which is actually a legal entity, it was formed in 1992, primarily as a secretariat for RIPE. At the beginning the RIPE community, everybody did volunteer work, somebody was hosting the mailing lists and somebody was, had a meeting room available, people could come together for the meetings. Someone said I'm going to right the database and we can register or contact information. When RIPE was going a little bigger it felt like it would be nice to have staff to do the administrative work for us and so the RIPE NCC then was created. It took a while. It was formed in '92. First as part of another organisation and then it became an independent membership association membership organisation. And it's run by staff, the RIPE NCC staff. We have a lot of them here this week, I would like to encourage you also to go and meet them, they are out in the hallways and would be happy to meet the community. And so there is a lot of interaction between RIPE and the RIPE NCC and the RIPE NCC kind of provides services to the community, but also needs the community for input and feedback on the services and so so know what we want them to do as our secretariat.
It's also one important part because the NCC is also the regional IP Internet registry, it also is the one that implements the policy that is we develop develop here in this community. You'll hear more about that. That's it in a nutshell the description of those two entities.
Here is a list of current RIPE Working Groups that we have. Also they are going to meet this week. I'll quickly go through them. You'll see them on the agenda also when their meeting slots. Address policy deals with anything related to IP address distribution allocation, who gets what, what kind of information you have to provide in order to get IP addresses.
Connect is something that came out of what used to be called the exchange point. It's like the connection and the peering and the exchange point.
Cooperation brings together, it's an interesting one, brings together the technical and the not so technical communities, if you will. The government representatives, law enforcement, regulators and then they meet together in the Cooperation Working Group with the technical community. So we are the technical community keep abreast of what's going on in the, for instance, in the regulatory world.
The RIPE database. The Database Working Group deals with anything related to RIPE database, what needs to be registered in there. How we success the information etc.
.
DNS, very active DNS Working Group here, and I am pleased to see also a lot of people who were, over the weekend here, there was a DNS OARC workshop and some people are staying on for the RIPE meeting as well.
There is a working group dedicated to IPv6 and how to promote IPv6. Maybe things that don't work yet and how to fix them. There is a measurements analysis and tools Working Group who kind of brings together researchers and operators and looks at Internet measurements and Open Source Working Group, you know, that promotes OpenSource, talks about interesting OpenSource tools development for network operations. We have an IoT Working Group, who looks at aspects of IoT and IP and how that fits in with the network.
The RIPE NCC Services Working Group is maybe the main link between the RIPE and the RIPE NCC where the NCC comes and presents their activity plan, proposed charging schemes, any other services, and then asks the community also for feedback. So there is an open Working Group. It's not only for RIPE NCC members it's for the whole community.
We have routing, routing deals with like anything to do with routing, BGP, routing security, and then last but not least, a Security Working Group, that deals with anything related to networking security.
Pick your topics. I think we have another poll here where you can tell us not necessarily what Working Group but maybe what topics you are interested in, you know, while you are here at the RIPE meeting. So, is there anything maybe you are missing or is there something you expect, any interesting topic that you would like to discuss. The main topics you are interested in. During the week.
It takes longer, people have to type.
Wow. Okay. DNS, I thought a lot of DNS OARC people would still be around. IPv6, security, excellent. Measurements. So it's mostly the topics that are actually discussed here. Geopolitics. Yeah, I guess we can't ignore that. That's also on the list there. And some people typed in two topics, great. So, yeah, I think most of those topics will probably come up in one or the other way during the week. So, that's good to hear.
.
Just a quick word about mailing lists. So every Working Group has a mailing list. I know mailing lists sounds like we're from the eighties, and we are in a way, that's where we started, but somehow mailing lists have proven itself to be the one tool that kind of provides archiving, easy access for people, multi‑platform, you can find history, how decisions were made much easier than on for instance a chat programme or something like that. Working Groups use mailing lists for various topics to share ideas, discuss certain topics, make decisions, you know, talk about governance, Working Group Chair is selections.
There is a whole list of them. You can join them on the website. It's open to anybody, just anything you need there is an e‑mail address.
And there is another poll. Are you already subscribed to a RIPE mailing list?
.
It's going to say on the next slide we have an overarching RIPE mailing lists that's not specific to a working group that also counts in this question if you are subscribed to that. Or if you subscribe to any RIPE Working Group mailing lists.
Quite a number of you are not yet. So this is your chance to say a maybe to the website after the session, see if you are interested in any of the topics and subscribe. I have to say, the traffic it's not overwhelming, can comes and goes, also around the the meetings there is or activities and some Working Groups are more active than others. You can look at the archives before you decide.
An as I said, there is a generic and overarching RIPE discussion mailing list that I would recommend you also subscribe to because it's also where we announce meetings and other events and any community member are bring up a topic. It's a moderated list so it's safe, you don't expect any nasty content there.
And it there is a link here to how to subscribe to that.
Maybe, last but not least, why would you think ‑‑ you are all here, you probably have a reason why you would like to participate. As I said earlier it's great way also to meet the experts, get expertise about a specific topic you are interested in. Meet researchers, meet network operators. Also build your career, talk to people, if you are younger or newer in your career, think about what you want to do next.
Talk to people who are in your own language, we saw earlier you come from different countries. And an overall just basically become part of this RIPE community and therefore buy shape the Internet in the future.
I think this is the last one. So what is motivating you to come to this meeting? Why are you here?
Is it the location? Is it meeting friends and colleagues? Is it to learn? Is it to participate in policy discussions?
Is it because your employer sent you? That can happen.
This is obviously not moderated so you will not expect any of this on the RIPE list. Luckily networking is the biggest topic. Very good. Would I expect a lot more like beer and food and coffee. Coffee is on there, okay. Community, meeting people, OARC, fair enough. Best practices. I am going to ignore that first one there. It's close to Iceland. That's a good reason too, yes, career choices. Great!
It's not ‑‑ whiskey comes up twice, it's not totally surprising what's on there, I guess. Fellowship. Great.
Good. Thanks for participating in this.
Right then just coming back to, you know, the meeting at hand. This is the agenda. You can see it on the back of your badge there, you can use the QR code, there is also a listening to the agenda, you will see the agenda you can click on the different sessions, the individual sessions and you see the agenda of that particular session.
There is a Programme Committee and some of them are maybe in the room, I am not sure, but they are around here during the week and they are responsible for the programme of what's labelled at Plenary. There are Plenary Sessions today tomorrow and a bit on Friday, and these are the people who are responsible for those talks, or the sessions there.
We would really like to you rate the talks because that will help us in the Programme Committee also to plan future meetings and to know what you find interesting and what kind of presentations you liked and what we can improve in the future on. You can see that when, on the agenda and on the, during the sessions, you will see links to the ratings there.
Then once something, maybe not everybody it familiar with on the agenda, it says something like BOF, it's a birds of a feather and it's a terms that comes from, it's basically bringing people with a similar interest together in one room, it's a bit more informal. It's a one‑off session. It's a not a working group. This time we have two of those. One is today, Monday, and there are a number of people from the IETF here and leadership, and they are organising a session this evening, this afternoon, basically bringing operators and the standards developers together seeing how we can bridge that, do we have enough communication channels. Do the standards developers need more input from operators, things like that.
On Thursday there is a talk, or there is a BoF, a gathering of people who are interested in practical AI, practical artificial intelligence, what does even in for network operations? Are there benefits and threats for network operators and engineers?
Then we also have every time at a meeting we have a diversity in tech and DEI session. It's open to anyone on Tuesday, it's always a different topic. I'll tell you more about it during the opening what we are going to do this time.
On Thursday, we have a Community Plenary which is kind of a bit ‑‑ it's not standalone, it's chaired by the RIPE Chair team, not by the PC, and we are talking about topics that are relevant for the entire community like governance issues, updates from other organisations, the picture there you see actually the former Vice‑Chair Niall O'Reilly who Anna kind of is replacing and the Community Plenary is also also a bit of celebratory, we are doing the celebrations in there and this is the agenda actually for this time.
.
How to participate when you go to the microphone, always state your name, affiliation, so we know who you are and who you speak for. Everything is minuted and recorded. So, no check on house rules. Maybe some side meetings can be more private, this is an open meeting and we are very open and transparent, as I said earlier it's open to everybody and that's part of that.
You can find a lot of information online, so find your way through the archives and you can see attendees list. There is also this Meetecho platform we are using online that those of you who are remote are already on it but also in the room you can use it to ask questions, to watch the videos, there is a chat and also the stenography, which you see here, you can also see that online on that platform.
And then some notes about what to expect, or where you can find help or support during the meeting, and first up is actually our Code of Conduct. I am now going to ask Sebastian Becker to come and talk to you about that.
SEBASTIAN BECKER: Hello. So, as RIPE should be an open, respectful community, be excellent to each other. That's I think the main message. But things can happen, a joke in one community might not work in another. If there are incidents, if you have something you want to talk about, even if that's not ending in a formal misbehaviour complaint, please come talk to us. You'll find us around the meeting. Some guys of us are in the room, you might raise your hands or stand up.
So, you can talk to these people. You will find pictures on posters outside to recognise us again. And ‑‑ but hopefully, nothing will happen. And you have an excellent meeting. That's very, very important. You see these are the pictures again. As I just described, you'll find them outside as well. Feel free to talk to us, but have an excellent meeting would be great. Thank you.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks. Now that's an important part of our culture and our community, obviously we have a Code of Conduct, and we have this excellent team members here who are taking care of that. So don't hesitate to to go talk to any of them even if it doesn't lead to any formal investigation.
We also have a meet‑and‑greet desk outside. You can find ‑‑ you can see, identify them by the bright red backdrop, also for the first time this time we have a mix of RIPE NCC staff and community members there so you can actually meet community members there and ask them their experience, so they are going to help us out with the Meet and Greet service this time.
And this brings me to the end, of my part. I would like to introduce you to Angela Dall'Ara, who is the Policy Officer at the RIPE NCC, and it brings me over to the second part of the presentation, more the RIPE NCC introduction so please, Angola.
ANGELA DALL'ARA: Good morning everyone, and of course welcome to the newcomers, it's nice to see the old comers of course every time.
I am the Policy Officer, I like to think about myself as the link between the community and the RIPE NCC. You heard a lot about policy discussions, Working Groups, and how the community works.
And I'm here to invite you to, especially the newcomers, but also the old comers, that we need the voice of everybody, to discuss what you want the RIPE NCC to implement related to distribution of resources, transfers, RIPE NCC Services, there are many topics that policies can go about, and policies are not written in stone, times are changing, so you are the network operators, you are the people that are dealing everyday with having to address devices, networks, offering your services, and you have to check if the policies are actually responding to your needs.
So, my encouragement is speak about what you want. If you see something that needs to be modified, if you see something that is missing from the policies, please go to the Working Group Chairs of the Working Group of your interest, ask if there is room or if they see it possible to go ahead with the policy proposal, otherwise you can contact me because you might be not sure if a certain policy proposal was already made in the past, if there were some constraints that couldn't be addressed or any kind of information that you need about an idea that you have that you would like to bring to the community that you would like to discuss. As Sebastian was saying, discussion must be polite, must be respectful, but be also very clear in what is wrong, what is needed for your business and for keeping Internet working in a very good way.
So, I am here for you during this meeting. If you have any questions, please come to me, grab me in the corridor or you can also send always an e‑mail to pdo@ripe.net, and Thursday morning, if you are interested in policies regarding IPv6 and ASN numbers and legacy, there are multiple topics in the Address Policy Working Group that might need your feedback. Will
.
So please participate and say what you think and don't be shy, especially the newcomers, everybody started somewhere, so welcome to the community.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you Angela, that was a great introduction. Moving on I would like you to introduce you to Hans Petter Holen who is the Managing Director of the RIPE NCC and will talk to you about the right‑hand side of the slide that I showed you earlier, the RIPE NCC, here as an organisation.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: She took away my slides.
Anyone on the tech desk can flip the slide?
.
So, my name is Hans Petter Holen, managing director of the RIPE NCC, have been so for six years, and just to confuse you in the difference between the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community, I used to be Chair of the RIPE community before Mirjam for the last five years. I joined the community back in the middle 90s because I was starting up an ISP in Norway, and needed IP resources and I have stayed on ever since, contributing as Working Group Chair and then later as RIPE Chair and now took on the job as Managing Director six years ago.
So, RIPE NCC was set up by the community for the community. It's a membership organisation, so, anybody that has interest in supporting the RIPE NCC can become a member. Usually it's the ISPs or something providing services on the Internet that would do that.
It's run by staff, we're almost 200 staff, and over seen by an Executive Board elected by the members.
We provide services and we're the secretariat to the RIPE community.
And we implement the policies that Angela just talked about.
So, our vision is really that we want to shape the future of the Internet together with you, right. So, the community, thinking in spirit, kind of enshrines the whole strategy of the RIPE NCC.
We have five strategic objectives in the current strategy: To support and open inclusive and engaged community. We're here as the secretariat for the community.
Then some years later, the community decided we need a registry. To contact the registry at the time in the US, different time zone and so on, so the community decided that the RIPE NCC should operate a trusted, efficient, accurate and resilient registry. But then when the RIPE NCC was set up as a project and later a membership organisation, it was very clear that we also should do more than simply be a registry, we should enable our members and community to operate one secure, stable and resilient global Internet.
We don't run the Internet at the RIPE NCC. You do. And we will help you do that through projects that's initiated by the community and over seen by the community, you are kind of the stakeholder group that directs us in what direction you want the services to develop.
In order to do all this, we need a stable organisation with robust governance structure and none of this is possible without engagement, competent and diverse staff. The RIPE NCC has 45 different nationalities working in the organisation. That's pretty amazing thinking about being a truly, you know, multi‑cultural, multi‑language international organisation.
Our service region, the name says Europe but it includes Middle East and central Asia. For those of you who remember history, the former Soviet Union, so to speak, and of course this has been various degrees of simple to serve all of these service region through times. Last number of years, the geopolitical situation is making this more and more difficult. You may if you have been here some years before, you may have heard us talk about sanctions against Iran and so on, and we almost thought we had a solution for that, and then there is another war breaking out. So this is ‑‑ the world is not making our life easier.
The registry: We register Internet number resources. So that's numbers that nobody really sees except the network engineers that are necessary for the Internet to operate. So, anybody connecting to the Internet needs unique IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, and each network connecting in the unique autonomous number system number because you want to set your routing policy that directs where traffic flows in the Internet.
So we maintain that registry. We allocate and manage Internet number resources, and you can keep your information updated through the LIR portal, and then of course this is a registry, the Internet was based on trust, unfortunately we cannot trust everyone anymore so sometimes we see hijacks or policy violations, so we also investigate those and take the necessary actions.
We support facilities like the policy development process that Angela just talked about.
And then one thing that's become very necessary over the last number of years is securing the Internet routing system, BGP is a very simple and open protocol. You say to your neighbours, hey, these are my addresses, please send the traffic to me and then the neighbours tell that to everybody else and so on. RPKI is security protocol on top of this where we can sign, where you can sign a digital signature on a statement where you want or who can announce your address space.
And then there are more modern or development on this also where you can say who your neighbours are, so which AS paths you will accept and so on and if you are interested in that go to the Routing Working Group.
I said we were also doing other services, this is to enable you to run the Internet. RIPE Atlas is a measurement network of more than 1,000 measurement probes so you can run your measurements on those probes so if you wonder how your network in the nerds is reachable from Kazakhstan or how your network in Yemen is reachable from Norway or Iceland, that's possible for you to do those measurements in RIPE Atlas.
There is also a lot of pre‑defined measurements there and a lot of raw data available. So if you want to do research, that's entirely possible.
We also have RIS, which is collecting BGP routes from a number of route collectors around the world so you can actually go back and look at how, what did your routing, or did the routing of your address space look like last Friday or three years ago.
And to make it easy to look into this and other information, we have RIPEstat which is kind of like a LookingGlass into all of these data sources and databases so you can type in your IP addresses or your prefix and you can see the data in the RIPE database, how it looks in RIS and so on and so on.
And we also run a service which really isn't a measurement service, but we are one of the twelve route server operators operating one of the 13 route servers. So if you are more interested in that, come to the DNS Working Group and talk to some of my colleagues doing work there.
So while I normally say we are only doing numbers not names, that's not quite true we also operate a route name server.
Then with IP addresses, also comes the reverse zone mapping. In DNS you can type in your IP address and you can get the domain name back now that requires you as our members to operate a mapping from IP addresses to domain names and we delegate the zones that is necessary for that to you.
RIPE database. So that's not only the registry of what we have allocated to you, it's also where you can publish what assignments you have done to your customers from those allocations. And you can describe your routing policies because it's also a routing registry, and you can find contact information for other network operators there, like their e‑mail address, their contacts and so on.
Then the RDNS configuration, also happens through the reverse DNS configuration also happens through the RIPE database and we also have ENUM which is mapping from telephony numbers to what system can ‑‑ where you can reach that over the Internet. So that's a DNS to phone number mapping that we also run, delegated by the Internet architecture Board and we run it in collaboration with the ITU who has the authoritative list for who has the number services.
We do also research into network operations and topology. We have a rather small research team but we work with researchers in other organisations, universities, we do have some masters students or Ph.D. students working with us from time to time on different projects, then we publish reports on this research.
I mentioned the LIR portal. That's kind of where you can, as a member, log in and manage your registry data. So if you get new e‑mail addresses or new phone numbers and so on, or if you need to open a ticket with us, you can do there, you can view billing and membership information, and since there is a vote on a new charging scheme, we also have a function in there where you can see the different costs and the different charging scheme alternatives that you can vote on in the General Meeting on Wednesday.
You can also access other RIPE NCC Services there with data, significant user interface, user experience, research into how our services are experienced last year and we have launched a more common look and feel and tying them closer together.
Community and engagement. So we need your support in order to do what we do. And we enable you to run the Internet. So we offer you RIPE meetings, regional meetings, other events where we bring you to together to network to better improve the operations of the Internet because while you may be competitors in your local market, you are really dependent on each other to exchange traffic and make sure the Internet works. So the community and bringing network engineers together to make sure the Internet works is a really important part of what we are doing.
We offer training courses, e‑learning courses or in person courses, and also you can take an exam and get the professional certificate so that you can prove to your monitors that you are even more valuable to them and can negotiate your salary better the next time, right.
We contribute to public policy and Internet governance discussions. There is a lot going on in governments in EU, in UN, in the Internet Governance Forum and so on where it's really difficult for all of you, 20,000 members, to follow that and participate so we try to do that and be a voice from the point of view of the RIR but also as a community. We have a collaboration Working Group where we solicit input from the community and bring those points into this public policy consultations.
We publish articles on RIPE Labs, that's kind of a blog or, in the good old days it would have been a glossy magazine, today it's a web publication but this is also a place where you can publish your information. So if you have ideas of research or development or things you want to share with the community, get in touch with our editor and see if that can be worth publishing.
We also have a RIPE fellowship, RACI, and other mentoring programmes in order to bring new blood into the, and new talent into the community.
I remember when I came to my first RIPE meeting, that was in the mid‑nineties, I was one the young ones, some of the older ones are still around in the room, but now I'm really getting into that category myself, and it's really important that there is a new generation here to succeed those of us who have been here for a long time.
The RIPE NCC is managed by an Executive Team. I have a Chief Registry Officer, Gabor, chief information security officer, chief community officer, Hisham, Chief Legal Officer, Athina, chief HR officers, Caroline, Chief Financial Officer, or chief frugal officer as he likes to be called because he makes, or wants us to spend less money and do more, Simon, and then Daniella our executive assistant that makes sure that we all do what we're supposed to do when we are supposed to do it.
You may think that we are missing a Chief Technology Officer from this org chart and you are quite right, there is a job opening out for that now and we are still soliciting applications for that. Although we have more than 180 applications now I think. So, it's really interesting to see how many are interested to come and work for the RIPE NCC. We also have other positions, so, you know, if CTO is a bit too high for you at this moment, you could see if there are other openings there for you as well. That's the recruitment pitch.
So, to make sure that I deliver on what the members would like me to deliver object, there is an Executive Board elected by the members. The Chair, Ondrej Philipe, the secretary, all the names are here. The treasurer and the others here, Are on the Board. They meet like six times a year‑ish, and then from time to time, we have meetings in between.
There is an election at the General Meeting on Wednesday, so, if you are a member and if you are eligible to vote, please have a look at the resumes of the candidates, I believe we have five candidates for three positions on the Board, so it's really important that you look at their profiles and see who you would want to represent you on the Board for the next three years.
So, I mentioned the General Meeting. It's open to members, so you register for that through the LIR portal. All members can vote, so it's also streamed online so you don't have to physically be here and the voting is open from the GM on Wednesday until Friday morning, so no matter which time zone you are in, you should be able to cast your vote electronically while you are awake.
And staff will be at the GM section at the registration desk to answer queries, or you can send in an e‑mail at this address if you have questions.
We have a support desk. We are always available to help. RIPE NCC staff are there, and feel free to stop by to ask questions about anything related to your RIPE NCC membership. We are also doing user testing, so the research that we started into the user experience and see how we can make our services better is led by Fallon who has is charge of the development team of this, the lead on the user experience is Antonella and Adonis is the product owner and Pedro is the US designer working on the training side. So we have a strong team here that has prototypes that we want to test on you in real life so, we don't only implement what you say you want but what we see that you do when you test out the interface, which is kind of an interesting perspective on how to develop services.
I already mentioned certifications, so there are exam slots available from Monday to Wednesday so. You can take the exam here for the RIPE database, for BGP security, for local Internet registry, IPv6 fundamentals, IPv6 security or IPv6 advanced. So, if you have studied these courses but not figured out how to do the exam yet, you can do that here at the meeting.
And that was all I had. Are there any questions for me? There must be.
MIRJAM KUHNE: So are there any questions at this point? If not we actually have some questions for you. If you go to the next ‑‑ first of all, I'd like to formulate, after the session there is the lunch, you know, you will see it on the agenda, but we have some tables especially labelled for you that there are for newcomers if you want to hang out together and chat with each other. So that you know that there is a space for you. Of course you can also join other tables. Then on Friday, we also, during the Friday lunch, if you are still here, we have a room reserved for you where we would like to hear why you feedback. So during the week keep some mental notes and at the end of the week we would love to sit together and hear some feedback from you maybe then.
And then, finally, another click of the button, there is actually another Kahoot, a different one, so you see also a code, if Gerardo is online, you will see him joining as one of the RIPE NCC staff, he is going to ask you some questions and there are actually some prizes to win, so if you want to participate in it.
Gerardo, can you take it away.
Kahoot quiz
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. That was fun. I hope you enjoyed that and I hope you'll have fun during the week. For those of you who want a T‑shirt, you can pick them up at the meet‑and‑greet desk down here in the hallway. And now it's lunch break. As I said, you are welcome to join one of those tables that are labelled newcomers, and I hope to see you do you recollect the week, come talk to us and have fun.
(Applause)
Lunch break.