Dear colleagues, We are both very pleased to let you know that the necessary preparations have been completed as Hans Petter Holen mentioned in his email and that we are ready to formally take up our responsibilities as the new RIPE Chair team from Tuesday, 1 September. We are eager to serve the RIPE community and ready to listen to what the community has to tell us. We are looking forward to working with the RIPE Programme Committee, the RIPE Working Groups and Task Forces, the RIPE NCC, and with individual members of the RIPE community, so that this community continues and develops as an interesting, relevant, and inclusive “forum for the exchange of technical information and the creation of expertise on IP networking”, as envisaged in the RIPE Terms of Reference (ripe-001). In particular, we look forward to working with Hans Petter both to complete the handover of the responsibilities of the RIPE Chair and in his new role as Managing Director of the RIPE NCC. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Hans Petter, both for ourselves and on behalf of the RIPE community, for his excellent leadership as RIPE Chair. His example and that of the founding RIPE Chair, Rob Blokzijl, will continue to be an inspiration to us. We would also like to thank everyone who sent their good wishes to either or both of us when the appointments were announced. We really appreciate your kind words of congratulation and encouragement. Kind regards, Mirjam Kühne and Niall O’Reilly