Dear task force members,
Here are the notes from last week’s call. Let me know if there are any corrections.
Cheers
Antony
RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes
6 June 2017
Attendees:
Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Francesca Merletti Carsten Schiefner, William Sylvester
1) Welcome, finalise agenda, adopt minutes
2) Review of action items
3) Next steps / preparation for face-to-face meeting
(Please complete poll)
4) Work task assignments
5) Any Other Business (AOB)
1) Welcome, finalise agenda, adopt minutes
There were no changes to the agenda.
2) Review of action items
Carsten suggested they think about a new co-Chair for the TF now that Filiz had left. He asked if any new candidates had put themselves forward. He wasn't sure they needed to discuss this on the call but asked if they should create this as an action item.
William said Filiz stepping down had surprised everyone, but that was why they had co-Chairs. At this point they were focused on moving the group forward – they had a short timeline ahead of the next RIPE Meeting and were looking at getting everything done. As they hadn't had a ton of participation on the mailing list, it was worth focusing on the existing action items ahead of their face-to-face meeting. When they had first started, there hadn’t been many volunteers and he and Filiz were the only ones who had put their hands up. He was thinking that they should carry on as they had been.
Carsten said he would make a note and send something to the list. He thought having two co-Chairs still made sense - he was concerned about single points of failure.
William said he was committed to the TF and wouldn't resign. He wasn't keen to discuss this for another three months when they could be getting work done. He asked if they needed this kind of continuity for a task force that wasn't meant to last more than another six months.
Antony ran through the remaining action items.
20170509-1: TF Chairs to put together work plan after the meeting.
This was a task that Filiz had given herself at the face-to-face meeting during RIPE 74. William said he would take this.
20170509-2: RIPE NCC to look at arranging another (longer) face-to-face meeting for the task force.
[Discussed in next section].
20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input.
20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document.
Antony said these two action items were just placeholders – they were waiting to hear feedback from task force members before the RIPE NCC developed the mapping document further.
3) Next steps / preparation for face-to-face meeting
Antony said they had been looking at arranging the face-to-face meeting in Amsterdam. Seven task force members had responded to the poll they had sent around, and 1-3 August seemed to be the best dates where everybody could attend. The RIPE NCC would pay the travel and accommodation of task force members to attend the meeting. They would start arranging this with their Travel Department once they had an agreed date with TF members.
William noted that only about half of the TF members had replied to the poll. He said it would be helpful if the remaining members could fill this in so they could start their planning. He said they had been thinking about having a two day meeting and asked what the group thought.
Carsten said he had missed the face-to-face meeting in Budapest but thought that two days might be excessive. He preferred a one-day meeting.
William said this had come out of their face-to-face meeting in Budapest. At the time, they had discussed that having a two-day meeting gave them the opportunity to discuss things on one day and create more concrete outputs on the second day. Given how difficult it was to get the group together, having one two-day meeting was the best opportunity to get everything done ahead of RIPE 75 – as this was when they were looking to present something to the community.
Carsten wondered if the people filling in the poll had given consideration to whether this would be one day or two days.
William said the RIPE NCC had noted that they were aiming for two days when they sent out the poll.
Malcolm said he appreciated that two days was a big time commitment, but they had a lot of work to do with the timeline they had given themselves. He was concerned that they would be unable to create something of value for the community if they weren't prepared to put the time in. He wasn't absolutely certain that they needed two days, but he thought the more time they were willing to put in, the more likely they were to have a good outcome.
William said they would then move forward with arranging the face-to-face meeting. He asked what kind of deadline they should give the remaining people to fill in the poll.
Carsten said the RIPE NCC could look at when they would need to have everything arranged by and work backwards from there.
Athina said they would look at this.
William said they would send out further details regarding where the poll was leaning and more information about what they wanted to do ahead of the meeting, action items, etc.
4) Work task assignments
William said that after low participation from the group, they had been considering giving people tasks, such as pieces from the mapping document to relieve the individual burden and encourage feedback. He wanted to throw this out to the group in case anyone wanted to volunteer or if they thought they should just assign tasks to people. They had set a review of the mapping document as a task going into their last face-to-face meeting and hadn't received anything from the group. Rather than assign people the entire document, maybe they could break this up into parts and give these to people.
Carsten said he felt guilty for not really doing any work, but on the other hand, he wasn't sure that the length of the document would really provide for splitting it up into several parts. He was afraid that the coherence of the document would suffer if different people worked on different parts.
Alexander suggested the document needed to be organised according to the chronological order in which the documents were created.
William said that if the group didn’t believe this was the right path forward, he wanted to know any better alternatives to get the work done in a timely fashion so they could prepare for the face-to-face meeting.
Malcolm said what he thought was holding them back was a lack of a shared understanding of about what they wanted to produce. He wasn't sure they needed to spend so much time on what was essentially a background document for the group, as it wasn’t an output. They should leave this up to individual task force members – if people didn't want to invest time into the document, that should be okay. He had some ideas about what he wanted to discuss at the face-to-face meeting – he didn't necessarily think the mapping document would get them there.
William asked if Malcolm could share some of his thoughts with the group on the mailing list.
***Action: Malcolm to send some thoughts on what the group should discuss during the face-to-face meeting to the mailing list.
Alexander said the document should be structured chronologically according to when the various component documents were created. He said he would make some related notes and send them to the list.
***Action: Alexander to send thoughts regarding the mapping document on the list.
5) Any Other Business (AOB)
Alexander asked if they should take some action to get Filiz and Nurani back into the TF.
Carsten said they didn't have any information about Nurani's current status in the TF, as she hadn’t announced anywhere that she would be leaving. He doubted Filiz would like to join the TF again after she had decided that she needed to leave.
William said he would take the action to reach out to Nurani, as he hadn't heard anything from her. He agreed that Filiz likely wouldn't want to join the TF but he could contact her again if the group thought he should.
Carsten suggested maybe William could ask if Filiz wanted to rejoin the TF as a regular member.
***Action: William to ask Nurani and Filiz if they are still interested in contributing to the TF.
William said if anyone had any further thoughts to please send them to the list.
Action Items
20170606-1: Malcolm to send some thoughts on what the group should discuss during the face-to-face meeting to the mailing list.
20170606-2: Alexander to send thoughts regarding the mapping document on the list.
20170606-3: William to ask Nurani and Filiz if they are still interested in contributing to the TF.
20170509-1: TF Chairs to put together work plan after the meeting.
20170509-2: RIPE NCC to look at arranging another (longer) face-to-face meeting for the task force.
20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input.
20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document.