DRAFT: RIPE 93 Programme Committee Meeting

Date: Wednesday, 28 October

Present:

PC Chair: Massimiliano Stucchi

PC Members: Amedeo Beck Peccoz, Annika Hannig (online), Antonio Prado, Babak Farrokhi, Brian Nisbet, Clara Wade, Jan Žorž, Matt Parker, Osama Al-Dosary (online), Paulius Judickas, Svetoslav Naydenov

RIPE Chair Team: Anna Wilson, Mirjam Kühne

RIPE NCC staff: Hisham Ibrahim, Jelena Ćosić, Marita Phelan, Ulka Athale

Minutes: Kjerstin Burdiek

1. Support for Session Organisers

The PC discussed how to clarify expectations for session organisers. Mirjam noted that they had been working on defining this, but there still seemed to be some confusion. Several people mentioned that BoFs and tutorials perhaps did not get enough support, as the PC had focused more on the plenary sessions. Some organisers did not seem to know exactly what was required for the format of their sessions and did not communicate their needs in advance, leading to difficulties for the meeting team during setup.

The PC discussed how to prevent this situation in the future. They agreed with the RIPE Chair Team that they would work together to improve communication with session organisers, including publishing more information publicly and reaching out privately to individual organisers as needed. One suggestion was to request BoF organisers to submit a statement clarifying the goals of their BoF, and the PC themselves could more clearly define the different formats of a BoF. In general, it should be opt-out for session organisers to get PC support, not opt-in.

2. Ratings

The PC discussed how to improve their methods for rating proposals that had been submitted following the call for presentations. Massimiliano reminded PC members that they should not submit ratings for presentations without slides, or this would cause the presentation to disappear from their queue to review.

Some PC members noted that the previous rating system had sent notifications when slides were uploaded or changed, which was better than the current situation in which presenters needed to be asked to inform the PC of changes. The PC discussed possible solutions, such as bringing back this notification and having presentations appear in the queue even if they were marked as having no slides. Marita said she would investigate whether these technical solutions were possible.

3. Communication about Submissions

The PC discussed how best to share their reviews with the proposers of presentations. As there had been a mixup where some private comments were shared with the submitter of a presentation, the PC considered how to ensure a smooth handoff process between initial internal review to external shepherding and support. While internal comments should consist of constructive criticism, many PC members still felt there should be freedom for them to express what they needed to, and they could then simply paraphrase when conveying these comments to submitters.

Some PC members said that it had been difficult to properly fill in email templates. Pretalx had some functionality for this, and Marita said she would do a demo to help the PC here. Some had also found it challenging to stay on top of emails and confirm that someone on the PC had followed up on sending them, as the software did not send notifications about this.

The PC discussed ways to ensure there was a clear responsibility for different communications. One suggested solution was for PC members to assign themselves a proposal to be in charge of communications for, such as contacting presenters to ask for slides or minor fixes even before the first PC call to review submissions. Then the PC members could review who was in charge of which talks during their call and swap them around if needed. Marita also said the RIPE NCC would look into making it mandatory in the software to upload slides, which the PC supported.

4. Stenography

The PC discussed feedback from the stenographers. The stenographers had mentioned that some presenters were quite difficult to transcribe due to speaking too quickly, especially if this was combined with different accents and some speech quirks. They noted that it might be helpful to let stenographers know if a presenter has an unusual way of speaking, as well as to remind presenters that stenography was done live by people, so they should make sure to speak as clearly as possible.

The PC said they could send this information in the email to session chairs and mention this when shepherding talks, especially long talks a speaker might rush through. Session chairs could have a card they could hold up to remind presenters to slow down. In the email, the PC could also recommend the RIPE NCC’s presentation skills training. The stenography information could be added to the RIPE Meeting website under the “Present” section as well.

5. RIPE 94 Registration

Mirjam reminded the PC that RIPE 94 registration would not open at the end of RIPE 93, as it had for previous meetings, because the RIPE NCC was switching from the current meeting registration software to a new system, Pretix. Marita noted that Pretix would integrate well with Pretalx as they were from the same developer. Registration would open in January, while the call for presentations would open prior to this. However, the RIPE 94 website was live, and prospective attendees were encouraged to book their hotel already. She would remind people of this in the Community Plenary.

6. WG Chairs Liaison

Brian asked if the PC had anything they wanted him to share in the WG Chairs Lunch the following day, but the PC had nothing to mention.

7. Internal Communication

The PC discussed how to improve their internal communication, as some had found it difficult to get responses from others when needed. They considered what the best means for communicating was. Some noted that emails were not good as there were too many automatically generated emails filling up their inboxes, and others were not in favour of their current channel, Slack. Ultimately, the PC decided to try out a new channel, Signal, as most members were already using this service.

ACTION: Massimiliano to create and share Signal channel with the PC. Marita to ask RIPE NCC Ops Team to close the PC’s Slack channel.