Summary

  • At RIPE 92, Vice Chair Anna Wilson said a return to a roughly equal split between attendee fees and RIPE NCC funding would put a ticket near €900 at then-current costs. She presented a question for discussion, not an adopted price.
  • Attendees who pay their own way said that level would shut them out; a sponsor argued that a mixed room was worth helping to fund. In RIPE NCC board minutes, Hans Petter Holen described the argument as focused on the level of the fee while members were also questioning the organisation’s budget.

The €900 figure landed in a room full of people who do not all have the same expense account. At the RIPE 92 Community Plenary in Edinburgh on 21 May 2026, Anna Wilson, the RIPE Vice Chair, explained that meeting costs had risen and that RIPE NCC funding now covered a larger share than it once did. A rough return to the earlier 50:50 split would mean a ticket of about €900 at current costs. She did not announce a new fee. She asked what such a number would do to the meeting.

The answer came without an economic model. Remco van Mook said independent contributors could be priced out. Sascha Romain said he would stop attending at that price and urged differentiated pricing for self-funded participants and corporate tickets. Another speaker worried that employers would send fewer younger staff. A sponsor described paying precisely because broad attendance made the meeting valuable. Randy Bush boiled the argument down to its owner: attendees or members—which group should bear the bill? Wilson had budgeted only five minutes for feedback.

The microphones kept coming; the session chair cut off the line when the agenda ran late.

Hans Petter Holen entered the written record later, in the 194th RIPE NCC Executive Board meeting minutes. RIPE Chair Mirjam Kühne reported the plenary feedback: individuals and smaller organisations feared exclusion; sponsors valued diversity; inflation kept pressing on costs. Holen, the RIPE NCC managing director, said the debate had been framed more around how high fees should be than around who should pay for meetings. More professional organisation had costs, he added, and members were questioning the NCC budget at the same time.

His distinction is the story. A ticket price is visible on a registration page. The other half of the calculation sits in a member-funded budget, sponsorship terms and a decision about whose presence makes a technical community useful. If the NCC lowers its support, attendees pay more. If it holds the ticket down, members and sponsors carry more. If it cuts the programme or venue bill, the meeting itself changes. Each choice moves a cost; none makes it disappear.

The Chair team had already written in March that small increases from 2027 were under consideration and that the last rise was in 2023. That makes the €900 line an upper-edge illustration, not a schedule. Kühne later said at the plenary that perhaps the number should not have been mentioned; the board discussion still had to face the burden it exposed. Holen's budget question and the room's access question belong on the same sheet of paper.

A meeting of network operators is more than a venue invoice. Operators, researchers, vendors, independent engineers and newer participants do not enter with equal travel budgets, yet the value of the room depends on who can challenge whom. Sponsors in the transcript made a practical point: paying to keep that mix can serve their own interest. The strongest pricing decision would show the ticket, the member contribution, sponsor receipts, waivers and likely attendance changes together. Otherwise a neat number can purchase a thinner room.