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RIPE 93
Diversity in tech
Main hall
27 October 2026
6 p.m.
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RIPE 93 main hall.
Diversity in tech session.
DENESH BHABUTA: Good evening everyone. Welcome to the DEI session. Before I start, well my name is Danesh Bhabuta, some of you know me, some of you are meeting me for the first time. Before we start, an announcement, those who is interested in going to the social tonight, the buses leave outside the hotel at 8:20 and 8:30 p.m. So actually I think if we overrun, it won't really matter, I can make this session a two‑hour session do you think? Okay, fair enough.
Return buses operate every 30 minutes between 22:45 and 1 a.m.
So, those of you who have been following the DEI sessions for a while will know that those of who who have joined us before will know that we have been exploring the three letters, DEI across successive RIPE meetings, in Bucharest it was diversity and another team being human in tech. In Edinburgh we looked at equity with I want to break free. And here at RIPE 93 in Sofia, we reached the I, inclusion, and the theme is: Can you hear me?
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It's a question someone asks when they have made it to the room, but aren't sure anyone is listening. So, the three letters, diversity asks who is in the room? Whose experiences and perspectives are represented?
Equity asks: Who can get to the room? Do different circumstances, resources or responsibilities prevent people from joining us? And inclusion asks: Who is heard in the room, once somebody is here are they listened to, can they contribute, can their contribution make a difference?
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Of course these three ideas overlap. We can have a diverse room without everybody being included. And if someone can't join us at all we never get to hear what they could have brought. So the question for tonight isn't just whether people are welcome, it's whether we make it possible for people to participate, to be heard and help shape our community.
We have two talks today. Looking at different points in that journey. First of Maria with actually a rather intriguing title "I sent my children around the city without supervision. This is what happened."
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Mind that title is a practical question: What happens when your children are too old for conventional childcare but still too young to be left at home while you are away at a meeting? Maria will share her own experience and ask whether parents, perhaps with the support of the widower community, could collaborate on ways forward. I am not going to give her story a way, that's for her to tell.
I'll swap my Chair hat into a speaker hat with: From seat to say: Inclusion and the boards that lead us.
Once people are involved at that level, who gets opportunities to lead? Whose views influence decisions and how can we make the wider membership make itself heard? After that, if there is time, hope three there is, the floor will be yours for, you can share your experiences, anything that you wish to talk about, under the DEI thing. It's not a quiz, no right answers, just your views.
So, the first talk by Maria, she is a developer and team leader of BIRD at cz.nic and she is also a parent and getting everything to be sorted to be able to attend a meeting is not always easy though. Over to you.
MARIA MATEJKA: Okay, this is Maria, the scholar schemist inverted from the company scheme because this is not about a company and this is not about BIRD, this is about myself and trying to get there.
I will raise the mic. Yes. This is the disclaimer. Your mileage might vary. And this is a hard disclaimer, please don't think that anything I say applies to you, your children, anybody else around. This is my experience and the experience of my children. There may be many consequences, many contexts which are not mentioned and and this is probably a good idea to speak about it probably later in the discussion. Anyway, I'd like to start with this claim.
I have done way more in the hallways and way more while walking around while speaking to people outside the room. I have never done anything big while being participating remotely, and I am still trying to arrive in person. This may have been different during Covid where everybody was outside and we had to speak about everything through virtual meetings, but now it's like I catch somebody there in the hallway and say, "Hey, do you want to have a consortium"? And they are "Hell, yeah." They know what I'm speaking about. We did it literally ten minutes ago. Which is why I am here and why I am not participating remotely.
Because, discussing things in person is just faster. I can meet here lots of people, one after another, and speak about what I want, we can sit above a paper and write things and draw things, draw schemas, we can jump into other discussions, we can overhear something and find out hey, I want to be included in this discussion as well. This is impossible when I am on remote and the only thing I can hear is what's said on the microphone here in the hall, in the meeting room.
Well, I have three children. And for all purposes regarding my children, I am almost a single parent. I won't elaborate on the specifics. My kids are too old to be sent to the RIPE childcare, which doesn't even exist now, but when it existed, it was like up to like eight or nine years. My kids are ten and twelve, which is too young to be left at home, they are not going to bed until I tell them "go to bed". They are, they just pull out their phone or run a computer. Well, I can lock it, but well, you know how these technical things work.
There is also another problem. My kids don't speak much English, which means I can't put them into the RIPE childcare, even if it existed, because their languages in the RIPE childcare they don't include Czech, and my kids were extremely afraid of being somewhere where everybody speaks English only. And getting childcare is hard, well for one conference a year, maybe, but I have like eight of them, and that's maybe too much. I should think about passing this to other people, but I have been doing this for like three, four, years since I have had more people in the team. That's hard to find another person who will go to the meeting and do all the conversations I need to do.
So, it's year to arrange a bit of childcare. But it's still hard. So sometimes it happens that I don't have childcare, which was the situation two weeks ago. So I said, well, kids were insisting that I take them with me. I didn't have anybody to take care of them. Well, yeah, let's go. What can possibly go wrong?
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And somebody knows now what can go wrong. We took the infamous, the revenge of buy earn, this is a photo where we were waiting for the next train because our connection failed. So, you have to expect delays, you have to expect some more screw ups on all the way you are going there and you have to expect that you get there late, like very late. We arrived to Utrecht in something like half an hour before midnight instead of 8:30, or 9:30, I don't remember, but it was more than two hours late in the end, and the kids were extremely tired. At least I had sometime to get dressed with them. But the real question is, what are we going to do ‑‑ well what are they going to do when I am in the meetings? And the limits are quite easy. I don't want them to split, because if they split, they are ‑‑ well they are quite independent, but they are not so independent that one child in a foreign country would be okay getting around. They are still okay using phone and using navigation, so, they could easily get back to me when they needed anything. And we had no local peers, so that ‑‑ well they were also in school, the local kids, so...
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Let's do something which would be educational which would be physical enough so that they don't look into screens the whole day, and there should be no stupid challenges like no ‑‑ I have several rules. I don't want to hear from you, hear about you from the police, from the hospital, and I don't want to read about you in local news. If this happens, you failed.
And I must say they didn't fail this. So I prepared something which looked like a little educational scavenger hunt. There were things like find somebody who is local and historic, take a photo of them, well not them, probably a statue or some plaque. Find some streets of funny name, long street, short street, take a photo of some trams, whatever. And they had some list of these, some of these involved communication, yeah, the kids actually managed to buy some souvenirs, nice. They didn't buy postcards.
The real problem was that it stops being interesting after a while. It can work for half a day, it can work for a day. Well RIPE meeting has five days. And some of the kids have like this amount of ‑‑ a squirrel ‑‑ the attention of a squirrel. So this is what happened. They just started ignoring the requests, pulled out their phones, sat somewhere and played whatever they wanted like Roblox.
We were thinking about what might help. We were thinking of this with the kids. Maybe if there were multiple teams, if we made it a little competitive. Or if we had somebody who would walk with them. But that would brick all the ‑‑ that would make the problem again but in remote country, I could then just leave the kids at home with the same person probably because taking somebody who doesn't understand Czech with my kids means that we are back with the same problem. We may have to find more different tasks today to do but I am not so proficient in thinking about what kids could do. So, there is an open question, what to do and whether there is even something, somebody who would want to cooperate.
And there are even more caveats. Your children may not be so independent as my children or they may be more independent, or they may be independent in a different way. And this is still not full participation. Because lots of things are done at the evening socials, and even with lunches you do some negotiations, some speaking during lunches, but when you have kids for the lunch as well, you are suddenly caring about more people at the lunch instead of caring about your business:
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Then there are the legal questions. What happens when the kids break something, like a window, or not, or their leg, what happens when they make, what happens when they get injured? And in the end, I got told by a bunch of people, mostly from Germany and Austria, that that this would be even impossible in Germany and Austria because I can't take the kids from school in Germany for a week. Well I did it in Czechia, it's legal in Czechia, it's not legal in Germany apparently, I didn't know that. And I even didn't know whether I am allowed to send my kids unsupervised over the Netherlands or in Poland. I am quite sure if my kids were under ten it would be illegal in the USA, at least in some states, but I don't know, I didn't check. Maybe you know. The maybe you tell me that I broke the law. That would be nice.
So that's it. Shall I do this again?
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(Applause)
DENESH BHABUTA: Any questions, comments? We have got the microphones on either side and here as well. And Ulka is the chat monitor on Meetecho, so anyone on Meetecho has any questions or comments, please type it in, or we can bring you in by voice. Nobody? As a parent myself, I will say that for me, it's just easier, the iPad. I mean it's not the right answer, or it may be one answer, but it just tends to be that children do get very antsy, if that's a word, very quickly, and so they just want to do what they want to do.
MARIA MATEJKA: Yeah, letting them sit at the phone or a tablet would be the easiest way for that time. But then I would have a hard time putting them into bed, which is like the whole problem with ADHD kids, or almost ADHD, I don't know. All kids maybe.
TOBIAS FIEBIG: I guess you already have considered that you can actually ‑‑ I'm not sure whether you do that, but you can lie to children. So, like concerning the gamification there could actually be a website of people, like children in a similar situation who did that in very different cities where you can actually have a scoreboard where you can climb up. Just saying...
MARIA MATEJKA: That's not such a bad idea.
BRIAN NISBET: I have no children, so all of this is being said from a position of ignorance. But not quite the same going out into the city thing which I think is cool by the way, and again child born in the seventies so going out and doing things of evenings in more free circumstances is definitely a memory.
But, I wonder if there might be a middle ground between the provision of childcare and letting them run free with the rats and the birds and the squirrels, and whether there is something there around, and Tobias mentioned gamification, indeed activities like tablets for playing games and things like that and whether there is something that could be discussed with the NCC, in our case around, you know, a less expensive for older kids. There is a bunch of caveats there and the language barrier is absolutely a thing. Critical mass etc., etc., but I wonder if given the childcare piece has stopped, and again for reasons that there might be some intermediate thing as some of the people's children get older. So I mean it's easy for me to say, but, you know, given the number of pre‑teens and teens who are playing things like Dungeons and Dragons, that will take hours, and they'll happy just do it all day in a room on their own, it might be an idea.
MARIA MATEJKA: Basically the thing is I have kids which are, which don't like being in a room for the whole day. I have to send them out. The real question is whether there is anybody else who would cooperate on something like that, or even think about this, or whether it's like I am too weird for this. I may be.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Maybe instead of table top RPGs, do lap,
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Randy Bush. It seems IIJ and Arrcus haven't fired me yet. I did this over 50 years ago with one child and brought them to a few meetings far away. Luckily, it was a child who was good at entertaining themselves, so she sat in the back of the room and drew and reported to her mother that all I did was go to the white board and draw circles and lines. But there were no iPhones, and by the time she was your children's age, she didn't want to go. It's no fun trailing along after us and meeting strange dinosaurs. So... and what you didn't underline is having them stay home when you don't have a strong partner and enough money to really pay for serious childcare for a week just doesn't work. And I think as someone hinted a minute ago, we have a gap here that...
MARIA MATEJKA: I'd like to remark that even if you have enough money to pay for the childcare, it's often not the best option.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Alistair Woodman. Yeah, I can ‑‑ I have to sort of push back on Brian's suggestion. I don't see how any organisation would embrace the responsibility necessary for creating a lively environment. This is a risk that a parent needs to take. I think modern parents need to learn to take these risks a lot more. My parents let me travel around the whole of the United Kingdom without a thought when I was a 13 year old because I happened to be a train spotter and I had to figure all this stuff out by myself and I think it stood me in great stead for later life having to figure out how to deal with data processing, figuring information out in the good old days. And I do think that giving kids now challenges, including possibly giving them a map and taking away their iPhone and seeing how successful they are with it, or just have a panic mode thing is the way to go. But the parents need to do this themselves, because I don't see any organisation wanting to accept the liability, they'll get crucified if something goes wrong and the parents have to take the responsibility.
MARIA MATEJKA: This is definitely my risk, and it would be the risk of the other parents involved in this and I don't expect anybody to take responsibility.
DENESH BHABUTA: Anyone online?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am speaking for myself now here. Answering to the previous speaker, I am a scout, a scout leader, so actually, we as an organisation, usually take that risk upon ourselves to bring a bunch of children for a week into the forest for time away from the parents and time just with the children with our own personal responsibility. It's ‑‑ we usually try not to think about all the legal repercussions that follow on from that. I don't know if something in that scale or fully planned adventure for a week is something feasible or for something like RIPE. It definitely would need some community engagement in that sense, and unfortunately I think community members would also like to join, then the RIPE meeting and not just be there to entertain children.
But I think just to put the idea out there there are possibilities, or there are other situations that do stuff with children or pre‑teens on a regular basis. So, maybe there are more people like me around who do ‑‑ who have fun working with children and maybe something could be put together, but it's actually a lot to plan, it's a lot to do.
TOBIAS FIEBIG: I was just thinking like where was I put when I was that wage and my parents were busy? It was with my grandparents. And I think in the opening we said it takes a village. And we had Randy speaking earlier, and I am trying to ‑‑ like it's a stupid idea, but I think it's a problem worth solving so we can try to think outside of the box, but I mean we are basically a community, we are a village, and we have our elders who usually, after, well they have retired, tried to enjoy the community, they have been part of it for most parts of their life. I mean it's kind of community grandparents, I do see an opportunity there.
MARIA MATEJKA: I am definitely not against things like me taking 15 or 20 kids somewhere for a day during the RIPE meeting and then others doing the same, or something like that even.
TOBIAS FIEBIG: And not you, Randy, or somebody similar.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Doris: So actually one of the last comments on the microphone reminded me of a discussion I had this week with someone who was a bit like sad or like, down because they really want to break their spouse but they weren't really able to take them to any socials, so now their spouses are staying in the hotel for the whole day. And it just gave me the idea, like well what if we could somehow bring the spouses together with the children that are... it's just an idea.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have some experience. I have for some years it was a RIPE meeting at Rotterdam, I had a good idea to take my daughter with me. There was still childcare, she had a lot of fun, but she was also already interested in taking a look around, so she was not all day in the childcare. In the meantime, she is 14, and she asks every year, because she is already visiting other places with me like the computer meeting, she is doing stuff like this, and this time it was a problem getting before the information what to do with her, because this time I had to find it by on our side it was so there was school holidays so I could take the family with me. At the moment my wife is going around doing sightseeing with the kids, I am here, but this can do everybody. And every child is different and she'd be happy to apply and we now found a solution if she can get a (inaudible) to come in. I think we must take the children early especially if they are interested because for our age, from my experience for the last years of my two children, they grow faster than we did in these times. They are faster interested where more open as we played with them they still know what's going on in the world, so I think if we don't bring in fast enough in the community... because if we ignore them long enough, they will later ignore us. So it's better to bring them in fast.
MARIA MATEJKA: In my case it's more like showing them what I am actually doing because none of my kids is actually interested in computer networking, and I am encouraging them to do something else, just for like operational security.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Yes, but even then it's good to have the open view and to have experience what other people are doing and how we are doing and think this is one thing in our community to bring all this knowledge out to the other people, for better understanding. So it helps to bring them in early.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for bringing this here and into this session and for all the good discussion and suggestions. I just wanted to remind people, I am really sad about the childcare, I wanted to remind people how this all started. This was actually an initiative by the then diversity task force where also the session came out of, and the idea really was that our community members could bring their spouses, who are possibly also involved in the community or in the industry, but then maybe have to stay home and look after the kids, so the idea was that they could both come and bring the children and go to childcare. It worked for a while, but then at some point the demand was really low and the costs were really high and so we kind of stopped it. But we are definitely open to looking at other options. We heard some good suggestions here and to see how we can continue to facilitate something like this. I love the idea of more community involvement as well, so, I just wanted to assure you we didn't just stop the childcare because we didn't like it or whatever, there were reasons. But thanks for this discussion, it's great.
NIALL O'REILLY: I have some perspective on some of the problem of making children autonomous before they are legally separated from their parents, because a few years ago I volunteered in the mountaineering club in UCD, the university where I used to work as an instructor for the beginners. And it took a lot of preparation because of the administrative constraints. And if we should, I think such an initiative like this is absolutely worthwhile. I look with regret at the impossibility nowadays of letting a 13‑year‑old Alistair going all over the place train spotting, because kids need to exercise their autonomy and competence before they can become legally autonomous. But to come back to the mountaineering club in university, I had to go through police checking, I had to do the child safeguarding course, because there might be students who are not yet 18, they would be 17, they couldn't be excluded from the university, so the university insisted that all the sports clubs and all the different societies had to do all the administrative stuff. Most of it was circus, but it has to be done. And so, because the requirements differ, as you mentioned, Maria, from country to country, doing something like this, creating the village that Tobias mentioned in each city where there might be a RIPE meeting is going to be different from one to another, is going to take huge planning, it's worth doing, whether it's feasible, I don't know.
MARIA MATEJKA: At least fortunately in Czechia I am still able to send my kids alone. So my oldest child, who is 12, did go ‑‑ he just sent me a message, hey, I am going to look at the new phone collector in Prague, I said okay, and he had an afternoon trip. That was nice.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: No, you are not weird, I send my kids, I gave them a tenor so I go catch a train when they were twelve. That worked out great. So, that should be encouraged I think. And every country where RIPE meetings are, you could actually do that, I guess, if you are not super into legal obstructions.
But the more, the things that I experience that would make my kids not want to do this is also the language barrier. Like, they are not 14 and 16, now, they realise that they are actually sort of fluent enough in English or something that's okay, and also they, moreover they know that they don't have to care about that if, you know, that you make yourself understood but it takes time for most kids to realise that and some are more experienced I guess. On the other hand, I would like to take my kids here, but like school obligations are like, in the Netherlands, it's a real problem, you cannot take your kids out for a week from school. That's one thing. I still do want to try this when current age because they are interested in computer and computer networking but they think it will make for a shit career in the future. And I don't know whether that's true or not, but at least I want to show them like this is the people that I work with, they are good people, and like, you know, maybe you won't have like a fantastic career but at least you can be part of a community. So there is that.
DENESH BHABUTA: We'll come back to this in comments later on. We have closed the microphone. Thank you Maria.
So, Maria gave us a tangible example of how being able to participate can depend on things that have very little to do with willingness or ability to contribute. And with my talk I'd like to that I can that one step further. Once people do make it into our meetings or committees or community spaces, who has an opportunity to influence what happens and who gets an opportunity to lead? Because at the end of the day we are looking for leaders in the future. So, I am going to use the boards of our Internet organisations non‑profits as an example because I have served on them myself. But, I do want to be clear, this isn't a lecture or a blueprint on how every organisation should be run. I am asking about questions, systems in which I have participated myself and benefitted.
So, let's begin with a slightly uncomfortable question. Think about the last time you voted in a board election, what made you choose that candidate? Hands up if you have ever voted for somebody whose name you recognised?
Pretty much the whole room. So now familiarity and reputation aren't inherently bad. In this community we have often worked together for years, trust matters, but being recognisable doesn't necessarily mean whether somebody has the full range of skills a board needs. And I ought to also be open about my own experience. I have been elected to boards such as NomiNet, LonNap, the UKnum consortium, I was a Board member at UKnuf, those weren't identical processes, and I'd like to think that people valued my judgment and experience and what I could contribute. But I have also been around in this community for years organising events, taking part in meetings, nurturing and building relationships. Being known has almost certainly helped.
I have benefitted from the very dynamics I am asking us to consider in this room. So, in this illustration, you'll see it's not data from any election, but imagine the wider group of people who might have the potential and skills to everybody is. Then consider the practical filters between them and an election being able to travel, finding the time, managing caring responsibilities, networking and becoming visible. So Maria has just given us one reason why those filters matter, someone may be perfectly capable of contributing but have fewer opportunities to make connections that lead to recognition. You need to be here, as she said,
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When somebody asks, shouldn't we just choose the best people? Well absolutely. But best people from which pool. The wider one? Or the ones that we know? Because the wider pool may include people who have much more knowledge. There are also questions about time and information. If you are new to the idea of standing for election, how quickly can you understand the duties, the time commitment, responsibilities and possible liabilities. Can you talk to existing directors? Do you have time to speak to your employer or manage family arrangements?
Could earlier information sessions, mentoring or clear explanations encourage a wilder field? Maybe some organisations already do this well. I'm not advocating one timetable or election model for everyone. I am inviting us to think about the barriers we may not be noticing.
So, who might be capable of serving but never even considers standing because they aren't yet a familiar face?
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Let's say someone does get to that seat, do they automatically get a say? I see three stages: Present, someone who is present at the seat. There is a place for you at the table. Being heard, people listen to and engage with a contribution. And being influential, your questions, experience and perspective can actually affect the eventual decision. But influence doesn't mean everybody has to agree with you or that every suggestion must be adopted. It means you have a genuine chance to test the thinking in the room and help shape the outcome. We can have a Board, committee or Working Group with visibly different people around the table while the same few voices determine everything. Representation does matter, but presence alone isn't inclusion.
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And this is where leadership comes into play. It plays a massive part here. Thinking about taking responsibility, including others, speaking up, asking yourself questions and delivering, those are behaviours, not titles. They can open up discussion or shut it down. Chairs, in particular, can make a difference. Do they encourage challenge? Do they notice people who haven't spoken? Are different views considered seriously before a decision is made? None of this means compromising governance or governance standards, boards have serious duties involving strategy, risks, accountability, finances. And we should expect competence and integrity. The inclusion question is whether we're enabling a wider pool of capable people to demonstrate those qualities and meaningfully contribute. Have you ever been present on a Board or a committee or a working group but not really been heard?
What might have changed that? Something to think about.
My final question is about the people who aren't on the Board, how do they have a meaningful say? For many membership organisations, elections and the AGM are central to accountable. They are important, but the AGM is only once a year, between those moments how easy is it for members to understand decisions, ask questions or raise concerns, directly with the Board rather than in extra groups elsewhere on forums and things?
Some organisations already do this. They already have good ways of doing this, but others may not. I am not suggesting they all work to the same template or should adopt identical approaches. So, I have some questions here.
Could questions and answers be more open between AGMs? Would member forums between AGMs help?
Could boards explain key decisions and their reasoning more clearly?
They are suggestions to explore, it's not a checklist really. And what about independent challenge, especially in non‑profit elected boards? In some settings, you know, an independent Chair might help a Board hear different perspectives and more effectively. A senior independent director might provide another route for concerns, particularly when the concern was a Chair. External reviews or independent advisors can also bring knowledge that may be missing in the room, but there are trade‑offs, there are costs and clear responsibilities, potential conflicts, and the possibility of creating yet another circle of insiders.
But would any of these ideas suit our organisations or might something else work better? I genuinely don't know the answer to this, or the answer for every organisation. But the important connection to inclusion is that participation doesn't end with electing a Board. Members also need understandable, usable ways to be heard and to hold leadership to account.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I have had opportunities to serve on various boards, I am grateful for them and I am not pretending that that visibility and relationships played no part. What I'm asking is whether our systems make enough room for people we don't know yet? Maria asked what it takes to get into the room. I have asked what happens afterwards, can people be heard? Influence decisions, and perhaps one day lead.
So, I would like to say let's widen the seat, let's share the say.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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So, I am going back into my Chair mode now. Any questions?
NIALL O'REILLY: I have had an interesting career in RIPE, as most of you know, but mostly because at some stage or other somebody decided I was a good Stucchi. Back in the early days there were very few people around, so, the field was smaller and everybody was only there because they needed to learn stuff and they needed to engage, and the challenges are not what we have today.
And having been stuck with one job back in the, when I was Chair of the TLD Working Group, that's long since defunct, I had a profile and I didn't have barriers. The only barrier that left, that was left was my own reluctance to be coerced into doing something useful once again. But the same barrier I think is critical for all of us because choosing to exercise agency even when it's conceptually available is a bunch of work, and if there are competent people doing it already, why should I bother? And so, there is a personal, individual challenge here that's, if you like, a dual of the organisational challenge of opening up the paths to leadership that we need to open. And the ‑‑ I don't know what the mechanisms are to line up the solutions to those two challenges so that the paths become open. Maybe the kind of trainings that the RIPE NCC offers can be expanded beyond the technical to the leadership skills. We already have public speaking modules, we have ‑‑ there are things ‑‑ you know, we all find it easier to grumble into our sleeves or into our beards than actually do something. And in some ways this reflects also the content, the concerns in Maria's talk, because, as I said earlier, kids need to be autonomous as early as possible, and people need to be coerced into becoming activists as soon as they have come out of the newcomer phase in our community. And that again, needs an approach that we haven't started on yet.
DENESH BHABUTA: Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Will, as an individual this time. My thinking is, Niall, I think you opened the path for me as like a person who came to this community not being easy, I was shy, I was not easy to go and be able to go to the mic and have a nice deep voice or something like that and make funny jokes, and so some people in this crowd, thanks to them, they know who they are, even if they are not in this room, they opened the path for me to say "Hey, you can go and step up, you can go and say something, or maybe you can become a Chair. I was, I am never going to be a Chair. Look where I am. And I think we ‑‑ and from that I learned that we are welcoming and we are bringing people, we are doing our best to give to the other people the opportunity to be part of that, and I think we are doing a decent job and it's coming, it's becoming something kind of natural, and so I think we have got a decent mechanism, us as participants, to say are you interested? Do you want to do more? Do you want to know more? Do you want to do more? And that's ‑‑ I think we're doing a good job. We should remember to continue doing that and try to include everyone and that's what I try to do with many people also in this room. I hope I did well. So, let's continue in this way I think.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have very few hats, maybe that's a little bit bias in my comment or question here. Between getting into the room and ending up in some position of influence or power even, there is something in there of a process in the ramp. Like, it's not one transition, and the opportunities and possibilities for that are I think a major concern in all of this. That's not just to have the path to go from the one point to the other but also to learn the necessary skills and everything. And like you can't just go from zero to being I don't know, a RIPE Board member or something, you will just fail because you don't have the experience, and that's also not fair to the person that would be theoretically thinking, of course that's never going to happen probably, hopefully. But we need those paths and they need to be available enough, and like people lead different paths sometimes and different step sizes. I think maybe there is a little bit missing in the middle here of getting from A to B.
DENESH BHABUTA: Thanks for the comment. I think it's to do with the amount of time it can take. And actually I had this slide earlier where it showed the known people and the pool of others. And it's more about actually should we be thinking about and trying to focus a bit more about the wider pool, because someone in the wider pool may have skills and experience that they can bring into the community, rather than just going with people that you know. Because of course an effective Board in my opinion, is one that considers everything rather than just a narrow skillset or a narrow industry, because being on board does come with wider responsibilities.
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TOBIAS FIEBIG: I would like to comment on the the suggestion of leadership trainings. I am personally very cautious about these professional leadership trainings because I find them to be focused on a key note inspired person focused and leadership KPI in terms of visibility focused approach to leadership, one that does not really entail personal responsibility and duty to communities or employees. But instead, more the managerial dream of making decisions and having the authority while lacking the responsibility. So I am always a bit hesitant of these trainings.
NIALL O'REILLY: Immediately on Tobias's remarks, absolutely the kind of leadership training we need is nothing to do with the leadership training he was describing, We have to develop something to meet our needs, our find something to meet or needs, not take a buzz word collection and stuff. Absolutely.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Rob. I think if this is a problem, it's not the problem we think it is. The difference between the known pool and the unknown pool is minuscule because the overall pool is so damn small. Organisations get in massive trouble getting people to vote at all, let alone stand to be voting. And so, yeah, I have actually voted for people I don't know because I have read their CV and I have read their manifesto and I have looked at where they are geographically and I thought they had the skill to do the job. I didn't vote for you because I know you, I voted for you because I knew you would represent the sort of things I wanted represented on the Board of NomiNet. But I only knew that because I know you. I only knew that because you can show up. If you can't show up, if you can't travel, if you can't get involved, how effective could you possibly be on a Board of somewhere that travels and needs you to show up and get involved?
MIRJAM KUHNE: I just wanted to add to the discussion for leadership training and wanted to remind people that we actually do a have training that kind of falls in that category, that's the training for future Working Group Chairs, and it focuses on the role of the Working Group shares, specifically in this community, how to Chair and moderate, how to encourage discussion. I like the idea of maybe looking into more of this and I think that's maybe the type of leadership training Niall was alerting to. I just wanted to remind people that that's already available if you are looking for something you want to do more actively, that could be something to look into.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I want to thank you for this talk because I think it invites us for doing a self reflection and to improve ourselves, and I was also thinking about the talk by Tobias and Franziska on Monday, which is also like inviting us to do some self reflection. As a long time attendee, I think we do improve ourselves but I think we also feel that these talks on a Monday and this one, they really invite us to do better things
ANNA WILSON: This is a personal thought. And actually, I learned it first in one of my hobbies and the more I thought about it the more I realised it applies in many places including this. If you want people to take a position in an organisation like this, you have to ask generally, you have to put the announcement out, and then you also have to ask individuals. You have to do both. It doesn't work otherwise. And I think we have to be a little bit more mindful about the types of people we ask rather than just the usual suspects, and that's on us who are the usual suspects. And I think about it myself and I go oh, I only ran for Vice‑Chair because someone asked me. I only ran for ASOAC member because someone asked me. I only became a working group Chair because Niall O'Reilly and Mike conspired about me in the third person in front of me a long time ago. Thank you.
LEO VEGODA: I agree with all of that. I think the recruiting and asking people is really key. One thing I would point out, and again this is back to the, in the 1970s, we could get a train to anywhere all on our own. The stakes were lower back in the 1990s; if you were the Chair of a RIPE Working Group, or you were on the Board of the RIPE NCC and things didn't go right and the RIPE NCC toppled, it was a shame, it would have been very irritating. But ultimately things would have sort of organised themselves and there would have been a fix and things would be much better. But now, we are infrastructure. So it's really important that we don't fail. And so this discussion which, you know, is, a perfect discussion to have here, we really need to make sure that we get it right, because if we do fail and we get a Board that is weak or a working group Chair, you know, group that is weak, we have a problem.
DENESH BHABUTA: Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Will again, I just want to answer that Leo. I think we also need to remember that we have the right to be wrong sometimes, and we tend to forget that and we put a huge pressure on people telling them, we might have done that and say, okay, you can be wrong sometimes, it's okay to fail somehow, not to the level you mention, I agree, but I can make a mistake and I'll own it the best I can. But thanks for your comment.
MARIA MATEJKA: I have been in quite some leadership positions, and I am afraid I'll end up in some more, but my experience is that the things are going kind of against themselves. If you want to end up in the leadership position, you have to be present, you have to be there, you have to be seen, which means you have to be ‑‑ you have to slowly become that person who is always right, and you have to somehow step on that other person who would like to come with you because there is money for only one person to come. And then you ask: Is it me going here doing all the influential things, or is it somebody else being here learning how to be part of the community? And then, like, I have to combine two things, three things which don't go together. Is it being influential? Is it being heard? Is it pulling in more people? Sometimes it just doesn't work together.
DENESH BHABUTA: Okay. Thank you. Thank you everyone. We have actually run out of time again, so, I am not trying to go any further. But thank you Maria for your very practical talk, making us think about things in the community about various things.
Thank you to Ulka for being the monitoring Chair.
And thank you Mary for the stenography.
and thank you to Mirjam actually for giving me the opportunity to Chair these sessions and curate them. It was one of those where I actually, me being here was very touch and go, so I didn't know if I'd be able to do this session or even do the talk. And I know that the RIPE NCC staff were panicking in the background, so my apologies for that. But, no, so, Mirjam and I have spoken about a way forward, so that this type of thing doesn't happen again in case I can't come or someone else, so Mirjam, please.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks, this will be quick. This is like a call for action. I mean just as reminder this session is diversity session, or it used to be Women in Tech, then it was diversity, now it's DEI, It's kind of evolved, and it's become this really integral and inspiring part of the RIPE community, I am always amazed in how this discussion kind of evolves during these sessions. It's technically owned by the RIPE Chair and I have been lucky to be able to find volunteers like Denesh the past three session that you have moderated, and others in the past, and other volunteers, so these sessions don't just appear by magic, I am sometimes a nervous are we going to have a session this time? Who is going to do it? In the end they always turn out to be fantastic. I just wanted to ask if you would like us to continue and if you have ideas you'd like to participate. Looking for topics or suggesting topics if you have ideas, you want to moderate from time to time, I am thinking of maybe setting up a little mini Programme Committee with some of us. Please come talk to either Anna or myself during the week, and then we'll hopefully have a way forward to make it a bit more sustainable and not have to depend on one person each time, either Denesh or some other volunteer.
Thank you very much, and that's all I wanted to add, and I hope you have a wonderful evening at the social and thanks Denesh for running the show again.
(Applause)