Dear colleagues , Some ideas have been circulating in various emails aiming for a bigger involvement of RIPE NCC members in both the NCC Services WG and the Annual General Meeting that, in my view, deserve consideration. I support the following ones: 1) Active Participation On-line: As far as I know the last RIPE meeting in Barcelona offered a webcast facility in one meeting room for the first time. I support the continuation of this service (in all meeting rooms) and its proper visibility to invite members unable to attend in person to do it remotely. I propose in addition some means to allow contributions to the open microphone sessions from remote attendants: either by phone (multiconference), by instant messaging and/or email. Proper consideration should be given to the remote contributions as much as those made "in person" in the meeting room. 2) Decision Making Tools On-line: RIPE NCC members interested on participating in the voting of items that affect them but unable for one or other reason to attend the Annual General Meetings should be given some more facilities than voting by proxy. Nowadays it is quite difficult to find 2 companies that have the same view on everything and therefore it's unlikely that a RIPE NCC member feels attracted to give its proxy to another one. If we believe on the services that we provide to our customers over Internet we can use them as well. Many international bodies have well established methods of approval on-line quite easy to implement. I propose that RIPE NCC sets up one in 2004. 3) More than one "Member type" for RIPE NCC: Some voices are expressing doubts about the cost/benefits regarding the RIPE NCC services that are not strictly related to IP registration. When my company joined RIPE NCC (3 years ago) these kind of services where already offered and we accepted them as a "bonus" on top of the pure registration services. The extra costs associated with these services impacts in our membership fee, that's true but, as it has not reached a painful threshold yet, we don't complain. I must say that we don't use the addtional services that much, but....... here there are just in case. It seems that the impact of the cost of the additional services is already painful for other RIPE NCC members. I must clearly say that if this trend of increasing the services provided reaches in the future a level that we consider unreasonable, we will complain as well. In the light of the previous words, I think that it is worth considering the possibility to set up 2 level of membership for RIPE NCC (in parallel to the present split by size) depending on the services required: - Basic RIPE NCC member: only registration services - Full RIPE NCC member: registration services + additional services Maintaining this "double membership" approach will cost some money for administrative tasks that will require consideration and cost/benefit analysis before moving further but I think that it is worth studying it. 4) Installing a fallback decision making procedure in addition to consensus for RIPE NCC WG: Consensus is the best decision making procedure and should be the preferred one in this new WG as much as it is the only one in the other WGs of RIPE. Having said that and considering that the decisions taken in this WG will probably have direct financial implications for the members, it is very likely that consensus is never achieved as the points of view differ. I think it is necessary to set up a fallback decision making procedure when consensus is not achieved in order to make progress. Voting rules as those applicable in the AGM may be considered. I would like to get these ideas debated in the next RIPE meeting. Regrettably I would not be able to be in Amsterdam as the RIPE meeting overlaps with another one that I have to attend in ETSI, but if the chairman of the NCC Services WG and/or the chairman of the AGM are so kind to input these ideas into the debates, I would be grateful. By the way, I still have some problems identifying where to accomodate these issues, whether in the NCC Services WG (for the services) or in the AGM (for the associated impact on budget and fees) as services and budget are always linked. Finally I have a question to make. Is this email list (ncc-services-wg) only available for RIPE NCC members? I guess so but I am not sure. Please confirm. Kind regards, Azucena ___________________________________________________________________________ Este mensaje se dirige exclusivamente a su destinatario y puede contener información privilegiada o confidencial. Si no es vd. el destinatario indicado, queda notificado de que la utilización, divulgación y/o copia sin autorización está prohibida en virtud de la legislación vigente. Si ha recibido este mensaje por error, le rogamos que nos lo comunique inmediatamente por esta misma vía y proceda a su destrucción. This message is intended exclusively for its addressee and may contain information that is CONFIDENTIAL and protected by professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copy or disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited by law. 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