Hi Erik!

> On 25 Nov 2017, at 00:15, Erik Bais <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> As one might expect, being a RIPE chair, requires a huge amount of 
> spare/private and vacation time and an employer (if not self-employed) that 
> would see the value or benefit of employing the RIPE Chair.. and there is the 
> ‘stress’ especially if it is busy at the office (day-job) and seeing issues 
> that would demand your attention, with a community with its huge size …
> 
> Currently it is my expectation that the RIPE chair position is consuming more 
> than 14 weeks of work in its current way how Hans-Petter is running the 
> position. And that is currently unpaid …
> Obviously not everything is covered in this by his vacation days .. and it is 
> not that he is sitting idle on his hands at his day job.
> 
> If the RIPE Chair position would be a full time position, it would allow the 
> RIPE chair to attend more regional NOG meetings, member lunches, other RIR 
> meetings or ICANN meetings or help with more Governance discussions with the 
> various Governments that require our communities perspective.  Or talks about 
> GDPR or alike …
> It would be good for the community if the RIPE Chair would and could 
> position/voice the community view, which may or may not be similar or be 
> voiced differently in meetings with governments or ICANN meetings, apart from 
> the view of the RIPE NCC itself.

The role as RIPE chair is in many ways very similar to the AD / IESG membership 
positions in the IETF except they are virtually full time. I am not convinced 
about your idea for a number of reasons. First, I am not sure we need a 
separate body that work on GDPR etc as we have the NCC staff working on that. 
Duplicating this doesn’t seem like a good use of funds and resources. Secondly, 
if we employ a chair it would have to be more static as few people would leave 
an existing job for a five year contact and I worry that will limit the 
selection pool. Last, creating a legal entity that represents the RIPE 
community requires a lot more formalisation of how that legal entity registers 
members, policy etc. and I am not convinced we want that.

I think it is great you raise this issue as we should explore it but for me the 
negatives currently outweighs the positives.

Best Regards,

- kurtis -

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