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The RIPE Chair Selection Process
Hans Petter Holen Mirjam Kuehne Daniel Karrenberg Anna Wilson
ripe-yyy
Version 0.4
March 2019
Scope
This document describes the selection of the RIPE Chair and the RIPE Vice Chair. The role of RIPE Chair is described in ripe-714. The selection committee is described in ripe-xxx.
Background
The first Chair of RIPE, Rob Blokzijl, was selected informally. The community did not establish a formal mechanism to select a person for this role before the present time. When Rob asked Hans Petter Holen to assume the role of RIPE Chair he also suggested that RIPE should establish a more formal selection procedure. This document describes that procedure. For details see Appendix G.
Principles
The following broad principles emerged from an extensive community discussion:
A selection committee drawn from the community selects persons for the role of RIPE Chair for a period of five years with a two term limit. The selection committee is selected randomly from the community volunteers and modelled roughly after the IETF NomCom. There role of the RIPE Vice Chair should be re-established.
Text: The role of the RIPE Vice Chair should be re-established. The RIPE Chair and the RIPE Vice Chair are selected as a team and their terms are linked.
The persons selected for the roles of RIPE Chair and RIPE Vice Chair must both be suitable for the role and have the support of the RIPE Community. For details about the community discussions see Appendix G.
RIPE Meeting
A RIPE Meeting is an event where Internet Service Providers (ISPs), network operators and other interested parties gather to discuss issues of interest to the Internet community. This document assumes that there are two RIPE meetings each year.
Text: This document assumes that there are at least two RIPE meetings each year.
The RIPE Chair
The role of RIPE Chair is described in ripe-714. This document describes the selection of a person for that role. We also describe the tasks of the current RIPE Chair in the process.
The RIPE Vice Chair
This document re-introduces the role of RIPE Vice Chair. The purpose of that role is to provide continuity in case the RIPE Chair resigns or is not able to perform their role. The RIPE Chair may also delegate some of their duties to the RIPE Vice Chair as described in ripe-714.
The RIPE Selection Committee
The RIPE Selection Committee (SelCom) selects persons for the RIPE Chair and RIPE Vice Chair roles. The selection committee consists of randomly selected community volunteers. The RIPE Selection Committee is described in ripe-xxx.
The Working Group Chairs Collective
In exceptional circumstances this document calls on the RIPE working group chairs collective whenever timely action or consultation is needed.
General Time-Line
The whole process takes roughly one year and two RIPE meetings. First a call for nominations is issued and the selection committee established. Then the list of nominees willing to be selected is published and the selection committee collects community input; this phase should include one RIPE meeting in order to provide the opportunity for personal interactions with the selection committee. We call this meeting the "consultation RIPE meeting". After the consultation meeting the selection committee publishes their selection. Finally, the newly selected persons take on their role; this happens at a RIPE meeting, so that the community can confirm their support for the selected persons.
Eligibility and Term Limit
Any natural person is eligible for selection unless they have already been selected twice for their current role.
Q: So someone can be vice chair twice and chair twice. It explicitly mentions "selected twice for their current role", so a vice-chair who becomes chair at some point is still only selected to be vice-chair once, and can therefore still be selected two times as chair. If that's not what we want then we need to change this a bit.
It does not matter whether or not the terms are consecutive.
Term
The RIPE Chair and RIPE Vice Chair serve until the RIPE meeting closest to the fifth anniversary of taking on their role.
Nominations
Around the fourth anniversary of taking on their role the RIPE Chair starts the new selection procedure by initiating the establishment of the selection committee, making a call for nominations and setting a deadline for nominations about eight weeks prior to the subsequent RIPE meeting, the consultation RIPE meeting.
The SelCom checks the eligibility of the nominated persons, confirms whether the nominated persons wish to serve and publishes the list of nominees willing to serve no later than 2 weeks prior to the consultation RIPE meeting.
Community Consultation
The SelCom actively solicits input from the entire community. It does so as much as possible in an open and transparent manner while adequately protecting personal information about the candidates.
Selection
The SelCom then selects one person to serve as RIPE Chair and another person to serve as RIPE Vice Chair. The SelCom announces their selections no later than two weeks prior to the following meeting, the transition RIPE meeting.
Transition
At the transition RIPE meeting the newly selected persons take on their roles.
Continuity
In case the RIPE Chair resigns the RIPE Vice Chair takes on the role of RIPE Chair and promptly initiates this selection procedure. In case the RIPE Vice Chair is not available either, the WG chairs collective selects a person to act as interim RIPE Chair and initiates this selection procedure.
In case the RIPE Vice Chair resigns the RIPE Chair selects a person to fill the role in consultation with the WG chairs collective.
Extra text: At the RIPE meeting the community can confirm their support for the selected RIPE Vice Chair.
Pragmatism
This document is a guideline that explicitly allows ad-hoc deviations both for pragmatic reasons and in unforeseen circumstances without having to change this document each time. Any such deviations and the appropriate community involvement should be clearly documented each time.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the contributions and efforts of everyone who participated in the community discussions that form the basis on which we were able to build this document. In particular Bijal Sanghani, Randy Bush, %%%% offered detailed suggestions and comments.
Cheers, Sander