RIPE 82
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Closing Plenary
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21 May 2021
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12:00 (UTC + 2)
BRIAN NISBET: As always, the week has flown by. Even in our virtual world. We don't have a lot this morning. And we will not take up more of your time than we need to.
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The first thing I'd like to do is just give you the results of the RIPE 82 PC elections and I would again encourage people to look at the PC and really to put their hand up for it if they feel comfortable to do so, because we rely on voices and enthusiasm and knowledge and crafting that Plenary piece for the community.
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So, we had five candidates for this election and thank you all very much to all of them for stepping forward; that, in itself, is a pretty big thing. And just to announce the two people who have been elected for a two‑year term are Milad Afshari and Franziska Lichtblau, so congratulations to them. Commiserations to those who were not elected, but thank you again for stepping forward.
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And I would like to say thanks especially to Jelte Jensen, who will be stepping down from the PC due to this election, for all the work that he has done for us, so really greatly appreciated.
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So, the one other thing I want to say before we move on to the technical report is, please do rate the talks. The rating ‑‑ talk‑rating will remain open until probably some point on Monday. We really would encourage people to go in, give their feedback there, because the PC do look at it and I am sure I know the Working Group Chairs do as well, to get feedback on what was positive and negative about the various sessions and to really try and get what the community would like to see.
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So, with all of that, I think we will move on to the RIPE 82 technical report. So, Rob, are you ready to go with that?
ROB DE MEESTER: Hello. My name is Rob, and I am part of the RIPE 82 tech team and I would like to present to you the technical report for this meeting.
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First, let me introduce you to our tech team. These are the official members of our team, but of course we had help from way more people like our colleagues at the RIPE NCC, the chat monitors, the Meetecho team has been great, the steno team who are awesome as well. So I can't thank everyone.
This is our third virtual meeting and it's our second time using Meetecho. Most of you are already familiar with Meetecho, but just to recap, it uses Janus, which is an open source RTC server, developed and maintained by the Meetecho team. If you are interested, please check them out on GitHub, and in the RIPE 81 technical report, my colleague, Oliver, already explained a bit about our implementation of it. If you are interested in that, please check it out in the archives.
And after RIPE 81, we decided Meetecho was just a really good fit for us, and we received a lot of feedback from participants. We are really happy with the the platform and the team behind it, so the decision to stay with it was a really easy one.
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About two weeks before the meeting we started doing rehearsals with speakers and Chairs, we started the stress tests to show everyone the new features that it has.
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So what is actually new this time?
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Well, a lot of speakers requested the option to upload their slides to the platform and share them from there, rather than just sharing their own screen. In the last meeting, it turned out sharing your screen was sometimes just difficult because of browser permissions or bad Internet connections, and being able to use pre‑loaded slides just completely negated all of those problems, so this pre‑loaded slide feature was actually used by 70% of all the speakers this time around, which is a nice score.
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The most requested feature by the Chairs was the possibility to send the announcements but they were actual hardly used.
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Most of the other new features were requested by you. For example, it's now possible to enter the Q&A queue with not just audio but also with video and also nobody really liked Slido the last time, so, last time, we used Slido for the Q&A, Nobody liked it, including us, so now the Q&A functionality is built into the Meetecho platform.
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Meetecho also let's us change the room title on the fly which is really nice for the meeting team, and finally, there were just a lot of minor improvements like a search bar in the participant list, the detachable chat windows and some easy access to the meeting plan.
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So, as I mentioned before, almost all of these features are here because of you, because of participant feedback after RIPE 81, so we would like to thank you for all of this, but we'd ask you to please fill out the feedback survey after the meeting because we want to hear about the areas where we can improve.
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What else is new?
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So, other than the testing sessions we did with the Chairs and speakers, this was also the first time we held open hours for participants. This allowed everyone to get familiar with the platform, test their audio and video and, on the Friday before the meeting, we did a little tour of the platform on every hour, people could just drop in. About 60 people made use of these open hours, but we're hoping to increase that number in the next meeting.
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We also had a virtual tech desk this time during meeting hours and anyone could just hop in there, test their setup and get some support if they wanted it.
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This has actually helped us a lot with just troubleshooting individual problems, browser issues, and it was really nice to have ‑‑ we're definitely going to have the tech detection back for the next meeting if it's virtual again.
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This was also the first time we streamed the meeting to YouTube, and this gave us some increased coverage. It has some other nice features like being able to pause or rewind the video, it's easy to share it from YouTube so we like it as well.
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How did it go?
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Well, we thought we were really ready and everything looked really smooth until, about 55 minutes into the meeting, Jan Zorz sent a giggle in chat and it completely broke the general chat for everyone. So it turned out everything between angler parentheses is stripped out due to code injection, but we found out when there is nothing else in the message, it just completely breaks the chat. So for the first time ever it wasn't Jan's last name that broke the system but it was actually what he said.
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Anyway, we cleared the chat during lunch so that everyone could load the chat again and we were hoping for no more giggles that day and, at the end of the day, we implemented the bug fix for it.
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We also pushed another couple of bug fixes at the end of Monday. One of them was a case where the housekeeping slide just did not want to disappear during a presentation, like you can see in the screenshot here. There was also a problem where parts of Meetecho did not load properly with the ad guard annoyances filter for Windows, and Gravatar Avatar pictures looked actually really pixilated on the first day, which was also fixed.
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And then something that you pointed out was that if your browser is too restricted for Meetecho, it will just simply not work and it wouldn't give any description of what was wrong. So we added some clear error messages that, for example, ask you to enable JavaScript if it's needed. Just some error messages.
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Fortunately, the rest of the week had a bit less excitement. There were a couple of cases where a single chat message could get pinned at the bottom where other chat messages just kept scrolling, so in this screenshot, for example, you can see that Martina was just automatically confirming everything that's being said in the chat, and that has something to do with the history download and the ordering of the messages when you join the session. So it's kind of a race condition. That happened in some very rare cases and we actually have developed a fix for it, but we haven't had a chance to thoroughly test it so it's not implemented yet.
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Performance‑wise, Meetecho has done really, really well. It turned out that the stress tests that were performed before the meeting really paid off. The platform was able to handle the load easily and the testing sessions that we did with the speakers and Chairs helped us catch most bugs before the meeting even started. So that was nice.
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Here are some statistics. This is the amount of unique participants per day divided between the Meetecho in orange, the livestream on the website in green and YouTube. YouTube actually takes two days for their statistics to be available, so that's why there is no viewers on the Thursday yet, we just don't have the data yet.
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Then, interestingly, at RIPE 81 in October, just over a third of participants joined over IPv6. This time, it was a little over half. So that's nice.
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And then to conclude with just some browser and US ‑‑ OS usage statistics. As you can see here, a nice amount of browsers and operating systems were supported by Meetecho. At the beginning of June, we will publish a meeting report, and there are a lot more of these statistics will be available. So, please look out for that.
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And here we are, I have thought really long and hard about how to fill up more slides. But, almost unfortunately, I'd say the meeting just ran too smoothly. So, if you have any more questions, I am happy to take them. Thank you.
BRIAN NISBET: Thank you very much, Rob. The first thing I'd like to say is the meeting did run extremely smoothly, and great for dealing with that Jan person and his attempts to hack us all. Well done on fixing that quickly.
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But it was really good, and, honestly again, I think that, you know, in all the meetings we have done when we sat kind of a year ago with RIPE 80 and experienced how that ‑‑ how that went, and how well that went, and how it has kicked on through 81 and now at 82, it's a great platform, it's a great team, and honestly, the care and attention that the meeting team and the tech team all give to the speakers and Chairs and everything else and to all of our attendees, is phenomenal. I think this continues to be ‑‑ be just one of the best meetings that I have the pleasure of being involved in.
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We do have ‑‑ really, you deserve it, all of you do.
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So, just a couple of questions here.
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The first one is from Alexander Isavnin from the Free Moscow University:
"Will the stenographer scripts become available in archives on website?"
BRIAN NISBET: They are already there. They are all there in the archives piece for ‑‑ I don't know ‑‑ I can see the database one sitting here in front of me. If you can't see them on ‑‑ I'll just stick it in ‑‑ the URL into the chat there. If you can't see them there, then please do contact the tech team but they should all be there.
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And, Dmitry, Hostmaster USA:
"I would like to report slide scaling issues on a smaller screen."
ROB DE MEESTER: We are aware of those, as I said in my presentation as well, please also report this to us in the feedback survey, but of this particular one, we are aware, and it's being worked on. But thank you.
BRIAN NISBET: Cool. So we have a question from Gordon Gidófalvy from Ting Fiber:
"I am wondering, are you folks planning on open‑sourcing the Meetecho conference platform you developed for RIPE? It would be very useful for other OSS events?"
ROB DE MEESTER: It is actual open source and it's not necessarily specifically developed for RIPE meetings. But, yeah, check out that link on GitHub, and it is open source. So, you can use it.
BRIAN NISBET: And I think the ‑‑ so Dmitry is asking about the e‑mail for tech issues reporting. I think that's the one on screen, Rob, is that the case?
ROB DE MEESTER: Not that ‑‑ I'm not aware of that. But if you can e‑mail to the e‑mail address that's on the slide right now, opsmtg [at] ripe [dot] net, then we'll have a look at that.
BRIAN NISBET: Dmitry ‑‑ yeah, that's it there. I'm not seeing any more questions, and there is nobody in the queue. So, just give people a moment longer and ‑‑ no, I think you are clear, Rob. Thank you ‑‑ no, wait, wait, sorry. One last one.
ROB DE MEESTER: I just saw the question. Yes, you are right, the Janus gateway is actually Meetecho, you are right. Sorry, that was my mistake.
BRIAN NISBET: The question is: "Since when is Meetecho open source? Only Janus gateway is?"
ROB DE MEESTER: Yeah, you are right.
BRIAN NISBET: Thank you very much as the representative of the person doing all the work, hugely appreciated.
ROB DE MEESTER: Thank you as well.
BRIAN NISBET: So, on behalf of the PC, just to say thank you. Again, please do take the opportunity to rate the talks, to e‑mail us at pc [at] ripe [dot] net with any of your feedback or otherwise, and of course from the Working Groups' point of view, e‑mail the Working Group Chairs to talk to them but you also have the ability to rate the talks in the Working Groups and we would encourage you to do so.
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So, with all of that, that's the PC done. So we'll hand back to you, Mirjam, for the last part of the session. Thank you.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks, Brian, thanks for the support of this part.
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I hope I am on again. You can see my slides, but, yeah, applause again also for Rob and his ‑‑ the tech team and the Meetecho team. I think this was a very smooth RIPE, at least from where I was sitting here right now.
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Now, to the very last bit, official bit of the RIPE meeting, the Closing Plenary:
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Just some numbers to start with. We had, overall, 1,172 registered participants, of which 274 newcomers, and 550 viewers per day. I'll show you some more numbers in a second. I have just a few more numbers. We had 20 mentor/mentee pairs, I just wanted to mention that. I thank you all, especially the mentors also to make your time available for newcomers to mentor them during this meeting.
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We had five children taking part in the childcare service. And I was particularly jealous of the T‑shirts that they received, I thought the design looked wonderful; I want one too but I think they are too small. And I would also like to thank the trusted contacts, Vesna and Rob Evans, who were available during the week, and we did not receive any reports ‑‑ or I did not receive any report from the trusted contacts. So I believe they didn't receive any complaints or any reports during this meeting.
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So, let's move on.
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Here, you can see a distribution of the people ‑‑ how many people used what platform. We had Meetecho, we had YouTube and we had the livestreaming and we can also see that YouTube and livestreaming has been used during the week quite extensively as well in addition to Meetecho here.
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So, there are actually more numbers, more people follow us than participating here on Meetecho, which is great to know.
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Here, you see the traditional overview of the countries, the people from which countries they are coming during the meeting. Germany is on top one again and it's probably because we would have been in Berlin if all would have gone well. Also, the Netherlands, UK, US and Italy were around the top five countries at this meeting.
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Here, you can see all the faces of the RIPE Working Group Chairs during the week. Thanks to you all for running a big portion of this meeting, and all the interesting content and discussions that you provided.
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We have one outgoing Working Group Chair, and that's Gert Döring, who has been co‑chairing the Address Policy Working Group for 18 years. So I wish I would have a big applause button that I think Brian just had, so I will just do it on my own. A big applause for Gert for all his years of community service. I really hope you continue to participate in the RIPE community from a different point of view, and we will be helping maybe the new Chairs.
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I see a lot of clapping in the chat. That's well deserved.
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We have a number of incoming and reselected Chairs also. Brian Nisbet has been reselected for Anti‑Abuse, Sandoche has been reselected for the IoT Working Group, Jen Linkova for IPv6. And we have three newcomers: We have Leo Vegoda and James Kennedy who have now joined Erik Bais in the Address Policy Working Group as co‑chairs, and we have Desiree Miloshevic for the Cooperation Working Group, who is joining Julf and Achilleas there. So welcome you all to the team.
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This was ‑‑ we already know, this is ‑‑ Brian already spoiled this, this is the PC that have ‑‑ was responsible for the Plenary sessions at this RIPE meeting. And thank you very much for a great programme that you provided.
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And thank you, Jelte, specifically for your work on the PC, and, who knows, we'll see you again in another function in the future? But hopefully at the next RIPE meeting, in any case.
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And welcome back, Franziska, and welcome as a new team member, Milad Afshari, for the next round of Plenary programme.
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We also had elections for the number resource organisations numbers council to replace Filiz Yilmaz, who stepped down from her seat, and you have all elected James Kennedy to replace Filiz on the NRO NC and therefore also on the ASO Address Council.
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Welcome, James, and thank you for all, everybody else, who was running for this seat.
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You were probably were all there, but just in case, this was the agenda for the RIPE Community Plenary that we just had. The updates from the task forces, the RIPE Chair team and also the IANA Numbering Services Review Committee.
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And then we had, during the week, a BoF on SCION, which is a new Internet architecture. They already organised ‑‑ there was another BoF organised at RIPE 81, and, at this meeting, a similar team of people organised another BoF with the question if this might become a RIPE Working Group. Now, there was a lot of interest in the topic and quite a lively discussion during the BoF and also afterwards in SpacialChat, which was great to see there is a lot of interest, and we have talked a lot of people during the week and gathered a lot of feedback. Both Niall and myself, and I have to say there was no clear consensus from the community to form a new Working Group on SCION at this stage.
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As I say generally, there is interest in the topic and there is also ‑‑ I would like to stress that RIPE, that the RIPE community is generally open to new developments and new topics, so we don't just completely want to turn everyone away from the start, and I will be asking the people behind the SCION initiative to continue to actively work with the community in the existing channels and then we'll see later, you know, what we'll do. If there is any feedback from the community about this, please let me know and then we'll watch the developments there.
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As a quick reminder here, Nigel Titley gave a lightning talk earlier in the week about the Rob Blokzijl Award, which is an award set up in remembering Rob Blokzijl, the very first RIPE Chair who served us for over 25 years, and in recognising engagement ‑‑ a contribution of others in the community, this award has been set up and the foundation of the award is now looking for volunteers for the Awards Committee. So not just ‑‑ not yet for an actual awardee, but for the Awards Committee, and there were some already volunteers who contacted the board of the foundation, thank you very much to those, but it would be great if there would be more, and you can send a mail to this e‑mail address here on the slide and there is also more information on the website of the Rob Blokzijl Foundation.
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Now, to the fun part. As usual, we hand out some prizes at this meeting. The first registration was, apart from the RIPE Chair and the Vice‑Chair, I have to say, because apparently we always get the first numbers for testing purposes, but the one after us was Sebastian Becker from Germany. And the first newcomer was also a German participant, Christoph ‑ and the presentation rating prices go to Randy Bush, Jurrian van Iersel , Gerry...
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Also, as you might know, there were everyday winners from the Kahoot ‑‑ prizes for the Kahoot winners, and they go to Alexander Votteler, Stefan Hedenig, Harry Cross and Massimilian Stucchi.
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There is one more to come in the Closing Plenary, if you stick around, you can win more prizes. The prizes are T‑shirts and face masks that we will send to the winners.
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And there is also still the cybersecurity challenge going on and the winners will be contacted later.
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A big thank you again to our sponsors who contributed a lot to the tools and platforms that we're using here at this meeting. So, a big applause to those. And of course to the winners before, I forgot to applaud.
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And last but not least, I would really like to thank you all, everybody who has participated here in the meeting, and in the discussions and all the presenters we had, all the Working Group Chairs, the PC again. Usually I will say the RIPE NCC staff back in the office and the RIPE NCC meeting support staff at the meeting, but now we, of course, are all at home. But everybody contributed to this meeting and again, I think this was a very smooth ride. And thanks also to the stenographers, who, again, I think, had a hard time sometimes understanding all the different accents and dialects we are speaking here. We couldn't do it without you.
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STENOGRAPHER: You're welcome. Thanks.
MIRJAM KUHNE: I saw there was some questions to add an applause button in Meetecho for next time, that would be cool.
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Last but not least, I would like to ask you to fill in the feedback form that's on the RIPE 82 website. There is also one question about RIPE 83. If you ‑‑ we are considering organising a hybrid meeting later in the year, the meeting will be in November, and who knows, our situations might change, we might be able to do half remote and half physical meeting and we would like to ask you if ‑‑ what you would prefer, if you would actually travel at this point, but obviously we understand the situation might change again until then.
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Please give us your feedback also about the rest of the meeting this week.
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And here are the dates for RIPE 83 for now. We will assume it will be virtual but, you know, I am always optimistic, so I would love to see you all again later in the year, and that's it from me.
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Are there any questions at this point? I see a question there.
BRIAN NISBET: There is one question there, Mirjam, yeah.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Would the talent show contest videos be posted?
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Now, I don't know the answer to that. I would have to ask one of the NCC staff to help me out there. I don't know if there is anything in the chat. But I don't know that, I am sorry, we can find out and let you know.
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And I see one more comment from Florian Streibelt:
"Again, huge applause to the stenographers. They have to listen to all of us and our microphone set‑ups.".
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Indeed, yes.
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BRIAN NISBET: Just for the record, Martina is saying in chat that there are no plans to release those videos. I think what happens at the RIPE dinner stays at the RIPE dinner.
MIRJAM KUHNE: That's true.
BRIAN NISBET: Or, sorry, the talent show is the right thing there.
MIRJAM KUHNE: That was the right thing, of course. I hope you all enjoyed that, or the actual Eurovision contest, of course, which also took place yesterday, semi‑finals I think, I don't know.
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That's it from me.
LIVE CAPTIONING BY
MARY McKEON, RMR, CRR, CBC
DUBLIN, IRELAND.
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See you all in November!
