[members-discuss] GM topic

Dear Mihail, all,Defining what exactly a diverse group is will be 
difficult. There are 20,000 members and over 5,000 subscribed to this 
list, with many obviously following closely. It is also interesting to 
note that over 400 people have unsubscribed from the members-discuss 
list in this month alone. Some are very committed to this topic, while 
others are actively removing themselves from the conversation. This 
highlights how difficult it can be to reach a good consensus or make 
sure all members are engaged on the topics that matter.

But clearly there are strong opinions from a large set of members that 
we can’t ignore. Translating this into a good Charging Scheme for all 
members will still be a difficult task, and one that we will have to 
invest a lot of time and effort into together with the membership. And I 
completely agree that we should not be afraid to discuss our budget or 
other things that the members want to discuss. In fact, that discussion 
is vital if we are to arrive at a good model.

Every year during the Activity Plan & Budget process, we do everything 
we can to get input from our members, but it seems this discussion 
mainly takes place when we discuss the Charging Scheme. As a financial 
person, I do understand why, as it can be seen as a boundary for the 
Cost Budget. But the intent of the Charging Scheme is to ensure 
sufficient revenue to execute our committed activities. Our Activity 
Plan & Budget defines these activities. The redistribution vote required 
by our governance is the safeguard to ensure an excess of funds can be 
returned to our members (it can also ensure a shortage of funds is 
charged to our members). As CFO, I will do what I can to ensure we 
remain conservative and reasonable, but at the same time, we must ensure 
we have sufficient funds.

Active participation is something that is always high on the agenda of 
the RIPE NCC. But I do want to highlight the position we are currently 
in. We see requests to ensure active engagement, and to give more 
training and carry out communication in local languages, but to increase 
these efforts, which we are more than willing to do, we need to ensure 
we have sufficient funds. We also have priorities such as enhancing the 
security of the Registry and members’ resources and accommodating the 
greatly increased complexity in the registry. In short, we are being 
asked to do significantly more while significantly cutting costs, so 
something will have to give somewhere.

I do think this is a challenge every organisation faces, whether it’s a 
for-profit company or a not-for-profit company. We have accepted this 
challenge and will continue to focus on cost efficiency, but to be 
successful in this challenge we also need a stable association, and 
financial uncertainty does not help stability.

Kind regards,

Simon-Jan HaytinkRIPE NCC, CFO

On 26/04/2024 10:40, Mihail Fedorov wrote:
> Hello Simon!
>
> I appreciate your work and thanks for noticing this discussion.
>
> You’re mentioning a significant and diverse group of members. As you can see in proposal just overnight it was signed by 450 LIRs from different places in the whole region, big and small. Does it count as diverse group? I honestly believe it’s majority of those who actually read this list.
>
> Member proposal is formed as simple “do not change” because current logic clearly prohibits to propose anything else. I thinks it’s terrible on its own.
>
> Proposed by board charging scheme was posted as a draft just recently and got hundreds of disagreements instantly. This clearly indicates it needs to be reworked. Yet it wasn’t done. Me, and many other members want to see clear answer why it wasn’t even tried.
>
> Reasoning behind not doing anything is absurd:
>
> 1. If members didn’t voted for this last year - you should not remove such option this year. Maybe they changed their mind?  After all if members disagree with anything other proposed they still can vote for original scheme.
>
> 2. Members clearly indicated that RIPE budget decrease MUST be discussed. It’s always sounds scary, but this happens and there is no shame in discussing that.
>
> Pardon my wording, but I still see no clear reason why different scheme wasn’t worked, only friendly responses without intent to do something. Sometimes not even friendly, just statements that it won’t be discussed.
>
> If you state that board is not opposed to different charging scheme or budget cuts - please clearly indicate why it was not done.
>
> Thanks!
>
>> On 26 Apr 2024, at 10:59, Simon-Jan Haytink<simonjh at ripe.net>  wrote:
>>
>> Simon
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/attachments/20240430/8930a2de/attachment.html>