Dear colleagues,
Yesterday at RIPE 76 in Marseille, the Rob Blokzijl Foundation presented
the first Rob Blokzijl Award to Wilfried Woeber "For more than thirty
years of contributions to the development of the Internet: building and
interconnecting networks, sharing knowledge, connecting people, building
consensus and helping others to contribute and succeed."
The award honours the memory of Rob Blokzijl, the first Chairman of
RIPE. It recognises individuals who have made substantial and sustained
technical and operational contributions to the development of the
Internet in the RIPE NCC service region and supported or enabled others.
The awardee receives EUR 10,000 from the Foundation.
Speaking for the 2018 Award Committee, Daniel Karrenberg said: "We
received a total of ten excellent nominations from the community. It
speaks for our community that all of them had considerable merit and the
final choice was not an easy one."
On behalf of the Foundation, he thanked the members of the Award
Committee for their work in soliciting and evaluating nominations. He
also thanked the RIPE NCC and specifically Mirjam Kühne for the
excellent support in making this first award a success.
In a short ceremony, Lynn Blokzijl presented the award to Wilfried, who
was visibly moved at receiving this honour. Wilfried, who is officially
retired from Vienna University, has built networks in the RIPE region
for more than 30 years. More importantly, he has shared his knowledge
and experience with many others within RIPE, the NREN community and
notably the emerging efforts in Eastern Europe when the iron curtain
started to be penetrated by networking efforts. Later, Wilfried
contributed significantly to some of the first deployments of IPv6.
Besides his technical work, Wilfried also served in various governance
functions; notably he was a long-time chair of the Database Working
Group, a RIPE NCC Arbiter, and a member of the NRO Number Council. Last
but not least, Wilfried has supported quite a number of young students
who have gone on to become successful members of the RIPE community,
making their own contributions to our shared success.
More information on the Rob Blokzijl Foundation is available here:
http://rob-blokzijl-foundation.org/
Kind regards
Axel Pawlik
Managing Director
RIPE NCC (On behalf of the 2018 Award Committee)
