Summary

  • RIPE 93 is filling two community-elected Programme Committee seats. Nominations close Tuesday 27 October at 15:30 Sofia time; online voting opens thirty minutes later.
  • The active RIPE-853 charter says the committee has up to twelve appointed people. Its enumerated categories add to thirteen when the local host is included, and the current RIPE 93 roster names thirteen people.

RIPE's election notice gives candidates until 15:30 EET on Tuesday. At 16:00, the online ballot opens. Voting runs through Thursday at 17:00; the names of the winners are due at Friday's closing plenary. The notice asks for a biography, statement of interest and photograph. If somebody else puts your name forward, it asks that you be copied and willing. These are two seats from the community-elected part of the committee.

The more interesting number sits in RIPE-853, the current Programme Committee charter. It says “up to twelve appointed individuals.” Then it itemises eight representatives elected by meeting participants, one each from the Working Group Chairs, CAPIF, MENOG and SEE programme committees, and a local-host representative where appropriate. Eight plus four plus one makes thirteen. The RIPE 93 committee page currently carries thirteen named biographies. Antonio Prado and Babak Farrokhi have terms ending at RIPE 93; Svetoslav Naydenov is labelled the local-host representative and Mikhail Anisimov the CAPIF representative.

There is a plausible reading: twelve standing seats and a temporary host co-opted for the meeting. The charter does say the host representative may be co-opted. It also puts that representative inside a numbered list introduced by the twelve-person cap. A reader should not have to supply the missing parenthesis in a document about how the programme committee is constituted.

This committee recruits speakers, reviews submissions and chooses plenary talks. It shapes what the room hears before anyone reaches for a microphone. The charter reserves Working Group and RIPE Chair Team sessions outside its main programming remit. The arithmetic therefore concerns a specific agenda-setting body, not a vote on address policy.

The immediate fix is pleasantly small: say whether the host counts toward the cap, and make the charter's number and public roster agree. A committee should be able to count its own chairs before it counts the votes.