[ripe-list] RIPE80, RIPE81

[speaking with my personat hat, not he PC chair hat] 

It's good to start that discussion. 

On Fri, 2020-05-15 at 08:41 +0200, Gordon Lennox wrote:
> RIPE80 was a success. Just look at the numbers. So well done
> everybody! Amazing job.

Yes, indeed I'm so happy on how that meeting worked out - even in sort
of keeping the meeting spirit a little bit. 

[...]
> I am of course looking forward to our next on-site meeting. Like many
> other people? 

I think, what this online meeting taught me, is the importance of
physical meetings. I've seen that in other online based communities
that once people start to actually physically meet it changes a lot to
he better. And as much as I enjoyed how RIPE80 turned out, it's not
even remotely a replacement for the "real" thing. But I undestand, that
this discussion is about additional online meetings.

> But I would expect virtual meetings to now be part of the normal mix.
> At least one every other year? If not more?

On the other hand, I must say that the three day online version
exhausted me almost as much as a physical meeting usualy does. I admit,
that might be due to the "first time" excitement. So we need to be
careful if we think along the lines "well, if we do not need to travel
we can just have an additional online meeting". This was a part of the
reason why the desicion on a shortened meeting with a very focused
schedule was made - people exhaust in front of their screens. Plus
there is still the fact that even while we can say "I'm attending the
virtual RIPE meeting" our life around us continues, people will walk
in, call us up and we lack the distance of the actual conference venue.
Additionally, this online event was (at least in my view) partly driven
by the energy of people missing the physical meeting due to the current
situation, so I'm not sure if that energy level would continue, but
that could be worth a try.

Thinking about it, I like the idea the DNSWG is trying, i.e. having
regular meetings for a small focused group of interested people. This
lacks the feeling of "all of us at the RIPE meeting right now", but it
might conserve some ressources while still achieving something good. 

But then I'm not fully decided - I think once the feedback for RIPE80
has been evaluated we should incoorporate that into the discussion. 

Cheers,
Franziska