On 11 Oct 2016, at 10:32, Filiz Yilmaz <koalafil@gmail.com> wrote:

I tend to agree with Shane's point of somewhat defining the scope of RIPE Chair responsibilities, so what is expected of this position in its broad terms, as well as any selection process for the position.

Having said that, I would not use "Job description" in any document eventually describing these, because that sounds requiring a level of detail which I believe we do not need to prescribe to this position. There will always be things this position can find itself to be involved as our Community and industry evolves. So I would leave it to RIPE Chair Responsibilities or Scope of RIPE Chair, or something along those lines.

+1 I would be wary of “defining the scope” though. That could be unduly restrictive and inflexible. A scoping exercise will also encourage far too much rat-holing and shed-painting, something which we’re overly fond of doing. [That’s probably going to happen regardless. Sigh.] An outline of the general responsibilities of the role seems to be the thing to do here.

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Nigel Titley <nigel@titley.com> wrote:

On 11/10/16 10:55, Jim Reid wrote:

...

I would be wary of “defining the scope” though. That could be unduly restrictive and inflexible. A scoping exercise will also encourage far too much rat-holing and shed-painting, something which we’re overly fond of doing. [That’s probably going to happen regardless. Sigh.] An outline of the general responsibilities of the role seems to be the thing to do here.

My primary definition of the job role would merely be the ability to stand up at the back of a working group discussion and shout "Bullshit" and get the working group back on track.

Sure but these are soft skills :). And I bet we, as a very capable community, can find a way of documenting such soft skills in some acceptable wording (preferably not identical to the above :) so that it can be understood by an outsider or a newcomer with ease, avoiding the thought that this position is given to some special people for some unknown special powers, but to guide and watch the best for the community. Some could be: - Capable of initial mediation and identification of common grounds between conflicting ideas - Capable of driving ongoing discussions to conclusions - Articulate, knowledgable of RIPE matters, etc. etc.... But I was not actually talking about the softs skills: we can still outline the actual responsibilities so we all know what a RIPE Chair actually does and so we can elect the right person for the job. Some I know and I agree to be in the merit of this position are: - Dedicating time for all RIPE matters, to travel to the RIPE meetings and to engage with all parts of RIPE region - Facilitating decision making on formation of new RIPE WGs and format of RIPE meetings. - Representing RIPE community in other occasions where necessary I do not think these are too tight. It just expresses what I expect from our leader in very broad terms as a community member. We can see if we can agree on them but I think it is worth a try as we are discussing an election process. Filiz Anything tighter than that and

we'll rapidly be debating exactly which shade of violet we should be painting the bike-sheds.

Nigel

Thanks Mirjam. This helps. Glad to hear there was indeed a draft document on this. This draft addresses my comments about the responsibilities and the scope of this position. It also relates to the current "process" discussion with its content as: "Term duration: The duration of this role is five years after which the exiting Chair may choose to place him/herself up for reelection in the pool of qualifying candidates. " I have no objections to the 5 years term. But we may need to consider the purpose of the "may" in this sentence, "the exiting Chair may choose to place him/herself up for reelection...", as we are discussing a process. So with this discussion we may have the opportunity to both come up with a process for an election and move this document from a Draft state to a proper RIPE Document status. Where will this discussion take place during the upcoming meeting next week? Thank you Filiz On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Mirjam Kuehne <mir@ripe.net> wrote:

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Hi all,

Some time ago we drafted a function description for a RIPE Chair. Hans Petter now asked me to pass it on to the list for further discussion. Please see the pdf attached. It is also posted here:

https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/draft-ripe-chair-function-descript ion

Kind regards, Mirjam Kuehne RIPE NCC

On 11/10/16 11:10, Shane Kerr wrote:

...

All,

Is there a document which actually documents what the RIPE Chair actually is? Sorry if I missed it, I don't think this exists. Perhaps such a document would be a good starting point for the discussion?

We have a nice web page talking about *who* the chair is:

https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/ripe-chair

We also have a RIPE Document which describes what the job of a RIPE working group chairs, RIPE 542:

https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-542

Somewhat related, we also have a document describing the RIPE Programme Committee, RIPE 600:

https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-600

Note that writing down what the RIPE Chair is does not need to be super detailed, or restrictive. Hopefully it can be done in a page or two of text.

Cheers,

-- Shane

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Thanks Jim for explaining the difference between election and selection. The missing "s" in my previous mail was a mere typo, not an intentional ruling out of any processes! Happens with non-native english speakers at times which may be the majority of our community. Hence the need for open, transparent and easy to find documents for any process to be defined, including the leader *selections* in our fora. Filiz On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 12:29 PM, Jim Reid <jim@rfc1035.com> wrote:

...

On 21 Oct 2016, at 09:04, Filiz Yilmaz <koalafil@gmail.com> wrote:

So with this discussion we may have the opportunity to both come up with a process for an election and move this document from a Draft state to a proper RIPE Document status.

s/election/selection/

Part of this discussion has to include deciding what process is used for appointing the RIPE Chair. We shouldn't rule out (or rule in) particular options at this stage. We should examine those options and aim to reach agreement on which one works best.

Personally, I strongly recommend we stick by the open, consensus-driven approach we use for selecting WG chairs and making RIPE policy. Votes give me the heebie-jeebies when literally anyone is able to vote and do so as many times as they want.

We must be very careful that the selection mechanism for RIPE Chair is not vulnerable to manipulation, say by an undesirable wannabe and their newly created 100,000 Facebook friends. At the same time, the barriers to entry for participating in that appointment decision should be no higher than they are for participation in any WG: ie an email address and some ability to communicate in English.

Randy Bush wrote:

...

...

So with this discussion we may have the opportunity to both come up with a process for an election and move this document from a Draft state to a proper RIPE Document status. s/election/selection/

imagine what rob would say about all this

I talked to him about it, actually. He volunteered that there was a need to formalise a mechanism to handle how to choose a ripe chair, and what the position would do, and so forth. He also said that he wanted a future ripe chair to handle this, which struck me as being a strange thing to say, but in retrospect perhaps not: it was an acknowledgement that this was not an easy thing to do, but that he had enough faith that the community would do the right thing. Regarding the words "election" and "selection", people get them mixed up and this is more to do with the fact that they sound similar than anything else. A typo happened and was corrected, so let's move on. Nick

I seem to remember a point being made when a person was being identified for a similar role in another community. I think the point is pertinent here: We already know the person who will be the RIPE Chair. By that I mean that we are not in a widespread head-hunting exercise. We are not going out to recruit somebody. I think we are more trying to identify somebody who already participates and has being doing so for a while. We are looking for somebody who is ready and able to take on the role and who will start with the necessary goodwill from the community. When Rob indicated Has-Petter nobody in the room asked, “Who?” And I think most people also knew that he would do a good job. Having recently seen some quite sophisticated processes in the political field resulting in strange outcomes I think we can do better. I think we know enough to keep it simple and aim for an appropriate outcome. Gordon

On 21 Oct 2016, at 13:05, Shane Kerr <shane@time-travellers.org> wrote:

I'd be happy if we deferred selecting a RIPE Chair until RIPE 75; I don't think there is any hurry.

Shane, I’d be happier if we didn’t set a timetable for this right now. There are a lot of things to consider and we shouldn’t rush those discussions to meet some self-imposed and abitrary deadline. Let’s take our time and get this right. Act in haste, repent at leisure and all that. Of course, all bets are off if Hans Petter wants to quit and wants to do that soon.