Draft RIPE 93 Working Group Chair Meeting Summary
29 October 2027
Grand Hotel Millennium Sofia
WG Chairs: Sebastian Becker, Massimo Candela, Ben Cartwright-Cox, Marco d'Itri, Rob Evans, Bastiaan Goslings, Will van Gulik, Peter Koch, Stavros Konstantaras, Desiree Miloshevic, Brian Nisbet, Leslie Nobile (online), Yevheniya Nosyk, Mick O’Donovan, Sasha Romijn (online), Christian Seitz, Stephen Strowes, David Tatlisu, Wolfgang Tremmel, Marc van der Wal, Stefan Wahl, Ulrich Wisser
RIPE NCC Staff: Ulka Athale, Antony Gollan, Hisham Ibrahim, Marita Phelan
RIPE Chair Team: Mirjam Kühne, Anna Wilson
1. Welcoming incoming WG chairs
New WG chairs were welcomed: Bastiaan Goslings and Peter Koch (Cooperation WG) and Mick O’Donovan (Routing WG).
There were also a number of reselected WG chairs: Christian Seitz (IPv6), Janosz Zako (RIPE NCC Services WG), Sasha Romijn (Open Source WG).
Outgoing WG chairs were thanked: Achilleas Kemos (Cooperation WG) and Ignas Bagdonas (Routing WG).
2. Policy freeze before each RIPE Meeting
The group discussed whether to freeze the RIPE Policy Development Process (PDP) ten days ahead of each RIPE Meeting. This would spare RIPE NCC staff from having to publish policy documents at the last minute.
Some felt this could be problematic, as many people only started paying attention to the PDP in the weeks before the meeting. However, if the issue was on the publication side, maybe they could find a middle ground with a moratorium on the RIPE NCC formally publishing new policy proposals a week or so before the meeting. Though this might not be ideal if it meant that WGs would be discussing outdated proposals. The group agreed to continue discussing this after the meeting.
3. Use of AI on mailing lists
The group discussed the use of AI agents on mailing lists, what the impact might be on building consensus, and how they could tell if something was sent by a human. Mirjam said they needed to be prepared for this as a community.
One person thought low quality AI responses could be seen as a form of brigading by a non-participant that could be ignored. There had also been an issue in another community’s mailing list where people using AI had published walls of text which hadn’t helped the discussion, though banning this could be difficult since people with low levels of English might benefit from using AI to help them participate.
It was reiterated that WG chairs were responsible for their mailing lists and they could put them into moderation if needed. There were guidelines published for chairs about this. The Code of Conduct Team was also available to provide feedback or thoughts if needed.
4. Feedback on meeting plan
The group discussed the distribution of WG sessions on the meeting plan and whether some sort of rotation should be applied. Any proposal needed to be mindful of certain constraints, e.g. the RIPE NCC Services WG needed to be ahead of the General Meeting. In terms of parallel sessions, the current grouping seemed to work without any conflicts.
One suggestion was for the programme to simply rotate. For example, a WG with a 09:00 slot at one meeting would get an 11:00 slot at the next meeting, a 14:00 slot at the one after that, etc. This approach was generally supported. Marco d’Itri offered to send a proposal to the WG chairs list.
5. RIPE 93 feedback
There was a suggestion to consider facilitating a different kind of social event at RIPE Meetings: assigning people to different restaurants in ad hoc groups, with the people in these groups then taking care of the rest themselves.
Chairs were asked to let the stenographers know in advance if they were aware of any speakers with a strong accent or speech impediment so they could prepare. It might also be helpful for chairs to have a card they could hold up when someone was speaking too fast.
Someone proposed training for speakers. It was noted that the week before the RIPE Meeting, they had emailed all speakers with a link to an online training module that had been setup in the RIPE NCC Academy. There was other information for speakers on the RIPE Meeting website as well, and they would be working to make this more visible. The RIPE NCC also provided webinars on presentation skills ahead of the meeting, though the takeup hadn’t been great.
Suggestions from the chairs included having a pre-AV test for remote speakers, making sure chairs were copied into any emails that went out to speakers, publishing information about what to do when speakers got stuck uploading slides to pretalx, and better standardised text for the emails sent via pretalx. One speaker also hadn’t known that they needed to register and pay to attend the RIPE Meeting. This should be made clearer in the information for speakers.
There was a lot of information for speakers in emails and on the website that could be reviewed and consolidated. Mirjam said Anna would take the lead on this project and would coordinate with the PC, WG chairs and RIPE NCC staff.
Other suggestions for the meeting rooms included: making sure water in was available for chairs and speakers, providing water at the back of the room so people didn’t have to run outside during sessions, adding more rows with tables (very much dependant on the venue and number of seats needed), making sure there were enough power outlets available. It was also important to for the AV team to remember to switch off the microphones once sessions were over and so this would be added to the checklist for the RIPE NCC’s Tech Team.
6. WG Chairs/PC Liaison
It was noted that the PC’s current approach was to decide on the 30 minute talks several weeks before the meeting, while lightning talks were decided about a week or so in advance. Friday slots were decided on during the meeting week. Having more flexibility in the agenda was good as it allowed time at the meeting to discuss any topics that came up during the week.