Summary

  • RIPE 93 Programme Committee chair Massimiliano Stucchi named AI-generated slides and the Friday morning slot as current headaches. The Committee converted one presentation slot to lightning talks after receiving lighter submissions.
  • RIPE 93’s published call asks for draft slides, clear evidence of the presenter’s contribution and restraint in using generated art or text. A lightning talk gets ten minutes for both presentation and discussion.

A conference programme is a rationing device disguised as a timetable. Massimiliano Stucchi said the quiet part aloud at RIPE 93’s opening on 26 October. The RIPE NCC meeting account records the Programme Committee chair juggling AI-generated slides and the question of who gets Friday morning. One conventional slot had been turned into lightning talks, matching a batch of lighter submissions. The audience would get more voices, each with less runway.

The published call for presentations explains the squeeze. Proposals need draft slides. Presenters are asked to show their own contribution, credit significant work by others, and avoid substantial use of generated art or text. Operational experience, research results and case studies have the best chance of keeping the room’s attention; product pitches are discouraged. A regular plenary uses 20–25 minutes plus discussion. A lightning talk has ten minutes in total, including the questions. There is barely time to say “next slide” twice.

Those rules are about the value of an operator’s hour. A polished deck can consume it without adding a single incident trace, measurement or working configuration. The Committee’s job, as its official RIPE page says, is to recruit, select and schedule plenary content. Stucchi leads that committee through RIPE 96. His background spans RIPE NCC training, IPv6 programme work and hands-on NOC participation at two exchanges. He knows what a useful network talk has to survive after the projector goes dark.

The AI-slide concern and the lightning conversion are two distinct facts from the same week. Together they show the editor’s problem at a technical meeting: allocate limited minutes to work the audience can examine. The ten-minute slot gives a lean idea a fair stage; the draft-slide and attribution rules ask its author to arrive with something more substantial than a smooth transition effect.