I suspect, given my previous comments on the process list, that what I'm about to say won't be surprising to many.

I would like the NomCom to proceed. Yes, some questions have been raised, but a) I do not feel any of them are anywhere close to existential enough to put a halt to proceedings and b) they all say that they think there are four good candidates that can do the job. Equally, we went through a hugely long process to get to where we are and what we have now was always a possibility out of that.

There are checks and balances in the documents and there is the plan to learn from this process and improve it for the next time, this is all reassuring.

I actually think it's a pity there has been a pause over the last week, albeit I completely understand why and would likely do the same if I was chairing the NomCom.

But yes, in short, I believe the community consensus is still to proceed and I would be very happy if you did.

CAUTION[External]: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click on links or open the attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the RIPE community,

If your feeling is something like "Oh no, not another long message from
the NomCom! I wish they would just get on with it." you do not need to
read further. It would certainly help us if you explicitly told us
briefly to "just get on with it".

Thanks

Daniel

------------------

From:

Daniel Karrenberg - Chair of the RIPE 2020 Nominating Committee.

To:

Christian Kaufmann - Chair of the RIPE NCC Executive Board,

Franziska Lichtblau - Chair of the RIPE Program Committee,

Hans Petter Holen - RIPE Chair ad-interim & Chair of the RIPE WG
Chairs,

RIPE Community.

Christian, Franziska, Hans Petter, Friends and Colleagues,

The process to select two persons to succeed Hans Petter Holen as RIPE
chair has been under way since September 2019. The NomCom has worked
diligently to run the process that has been agreed by the community and
codified in ripe-727 and ripe-728. We have called for nominees,
canvassed when we had only one nomination and received four further
nominations. We have dealt with the unforeseen withdrawal of Hans
Petter. We have recognised the increased urgency that Hans Petter's
resignation as RIPE Chair puts on the process by slightly tightening our
time line without compromising on running an exemplary process. We have
held three formal and two informal meetings, talked to the nominees by
teleconference and received substantial input about all nominees from a
diverse set of people in the community. We have kept the community
informed by announcements on the RIPE mailing list, by providing a
dedicated blog, by publishing complementary material on RIPE Labs, by
reporting to the community plenary at RIPE80 and by talking about our
work whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Last week, during RIPE80, there were some calls from within the RIPE
community to stop this process and start over. There also have been
suggestions to issue another call for nominations and then continue as
before. Since our mandate does not extend beyond executing the process
along an agreed time line we are extremely reluctant to deviate from
this unless we observe a clear and strong consensus in the community to
deviate for the sake of pragmatism.

We have discussed this extensively and decided against changing the
planned time line because we see no such consensus. We also considered
the consequences: Deviating from the plan at this time would put Hans
Petter into the difficult position of having to work a new and demanding
job next to filling the RIPE Chair ad interim role. This is too much to
ask of anyone even without taking into account the recent discussion on
ripe-chair-discuss. Hans Petter has told us that he accepted the
ad-interim role on the assumption that we will finish our work on time
and that he will likely have to resign if we take significantly longer
than planned.

Unfortunately during the RIPE 80 community plenary there has been no
discussion that provides further guidance to us. It is difficult for us
to assess whether this was due to the virtual format of the meeting,
widespread agreement with what we have done so far or any other reason.
We certainly expected those who had called for changes to the process
earlier during the week to speak up and a discussion to take place that
would provide further guidance for us. This has not happened.

We have therefore decided to briefly pause our process and not to start
candidate selection after RIPE 80 as originally planned. We have
continued with preparations but have not started discussing the nominees
among ourselves yet.

We ask the RIPE NCC Board, the PC, the WG Chairs and the community at
large to give us timely guidance on how to proceed. The question before
us is whether we still have the support of the community to continue
with the agreed process and time line or whether there is consensus in
the community that we should do something different. We need this
guidance now so that we can keep the delay in the time line as short as
possible.

We also ask the community as a whole to support us once we do proceed.

Daniel Karrenberg,
Chair,
RIPE 2020 Nominating Committee