Summary

  • Gergana Petrova reported on three local hubs linked to RIPE 92 in Edinburgh: Sofia, Istanbul and Jarosław. The rooms brought a webcast, local operators and their own discussions together.
  • Sofia's 20 participants followed a Bulgarian-language programme and an early local lunch. Istanbul drew about 15, and Jarosław added a town tour and regional technical conversations. The official hub plan required local coordinators, outreach and two broadcast days.

At RIPE 92, Edinburgh controlled the main agenda. Sofia controlled lunch. The two clocks were two hours apart, and the people in Sofia were hungry before the meeting in Edinburgh paused. Hosts Dimo Nikolov and Kristina Kaneva supplied sandwiches and snacks at Bulgarian lunchtime, then took their social break later. That detail, recorded by Gergana Petrova in RIPE Labs, says more about remote participation than another screenshot of a video player.

Petrova, a RIPE NCC community-development officer, examined three local hubs during RIPE 92 in May 2026. The meeting's own hub page listed Sofia in Bulgaria, Istanbul in Türkiye and Jarosław in Poland for 18–19 May. A hub needed room for at least 15 people, two full days of meeting broadcast and outreach to its local technical community. To ask a question at the meeting microphone, a hub participant still had to register as an online attendee. The room made access social; the formal path back into the meeting ran through registration.

In Sofia, Nikolov and Kaneva of BIX.BG drew 20 people, mostly from the city despite outreach beyond it. They adapted the Edinburgh schedule, prepared a programme in Bulgarian, arranged work desks and estimated about €2,000 for the venue and catering. Their roughly €2,000 estimate covers the Sofia venue and catering, putting a concrete price on that city’s local event design. The Bulgarian programme and the lunch fix both acknowledged the obvious: the audience was in Sofia.

Istanbul ran a different experiment. Özgür Sırman and the TurkNet team hosted about 15 people in their office, some coming from Ankara. Operators talked through the technical presentations during and after the webcast. The hosts observed that attendees had set aside work time for the gathering; they suggested concentrating future hub activity on the two most technically useful days. A video stream furnished the subject. The people sitting near it supplied questions from their own networks.

Jarosław gave the meeting a university address. Five-time local-hub organiser Marek Zarychta hosted at the State Academy of Applied Sciences. Students, Erasmus visitors and regional ICT workers shared a room, toured the historic town and discussed national ISP rules, IPv6 and VoIP. Local institutions and community sponsors helped with refreshments. This hub had a regional social shape that a centrally scheduled presentation could not manufacture on its own.

Petrova also recorded a stubborn planning fact: registrations exceed actual attendance at all three hubs. Her roughly 30% no-show figure is a rule of thumb for free events, and her example turns 30 sign-ups into about 20 people in the room. Organisers can plan chairs, food and conversation around the people who will arrive. In her account, peer exchange, audio checks and refreshments recur because these details decide whether the local room stays lively once the screen lights up.

The RIPE 92 opening plenary acknowledged all three hubs. Petrova's report supplies the closer view: one meeting, three small rooms, and three versions of what their participants wanted. Her contribution was to make those choices legible. Global discussion reached the room through a network connection; the room became useful through local people who understood its clock, language and conversations.