Esteemed colleagues, Based on recent discussions about the RIPE Chair selection, Anna, Mirjam, Hans Petter and I have been drafting language that will move us forward. Below you find the first document that is ready enough for discussion. It deals with the procedure and the time-line. We are still working on the second document which will describe the selection committee in detail. This will be modelled very closely on the IETF NomCom as described in BCP10. We feel that doing this in two steps is a logical split and will keep the discussion both alive and somewhat focussed; drawing hope from the way we got ripe-714 done on this list ;-). Also we may want to re-use the selection committee for other purposes in the future; in that case it will be better to have it described in a separate document. Of course we can only reach final consensus after discussing both documents. We welcome comments and suggestions from all of you. It will help greatly if you suggest concrete changes to the draft. Thank you, in the name of all authors and participants on this list! Daniel ------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Appendix A - About the Authors Hans Petter Holen is a RIPE participant since RIPE30 and the present chairman of RIPE. Rob Blokzijl asked him to ensure that the community establishes the procedure described here. Mirjam Kuehne is a RIPE participant since RIPE29 and a member of the RIPE NCC staff. She took on the task of supporting the community and Hans Petter in this effort. Daniel Karrenberg is one of the RIPE founders and a member of the RIPE NCC staff. He took on the job of editing this document and writing the bulk of the text. Anna Wilson is a RIPE participant since RIPE31. She has led several fairly intense community discussions about this procedure. Appendix G - Document Genesis In 2014, during the closing plenary at RIPE 68, Rob Blokzijl announced that he would be stepping down as RIPE Chair and handing the role over to the current chair, Hans Petter Holen. This decision was well supported by the RIPE community. However, it was clear that the process for selecting a future RIPE Chair should be open, transparent and endorsed by the RIPE community as a whole. At the time of the handover, Rob urged the community to establish such a process under its new chair. In 2016, Hans Petter started the discussion by publishing an article on RIPE Labs: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/hans_petter_holen/draft-ripe-chair-election-pr... At the same time an open discussion mailing list was set up: https://www.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-chair-discuss/ At RIPE 76 in May 2018, Anna Wilson (HEANET, Ireland) led a community discussion (https://ripe76.ripe.net/archives/video/155/) to gather input on the elements that form the basis of a proposal which was published on RIPE Labs in July 2018: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/mirjam/proposal-for-a-ripe-chair-selection-pro... Based on the discussion on the ripe-chair-discuss mailing list, another RIPE Labs article was published documenting the consensus at the time: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/mirjam/ripe-chair-selection-process After that more people shared their input on the mailing list which led to another face-to-face discussion, again led by Anna Wilson during the closing plenary at RIPE 77 in October 2018 (https://ripe77.ripe.net/archives/video/2329/). During that meeting it was decided to first establish consensus on a description of the role of the RIPE Chair. This has been published as ripe-714: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-714