sounds like your company is faring rather well... sending at least one person to any meeting, just jet'ing for a weeks meeting to Dubai... You've supposedly not seen any 'costs optimized by reduced staff' guy around for a long time.
There are dozens of cost optimization guys around, but the cost of one RIPE extraordinary general meeting doesn't worry us because we are putting a lot of effort into IPv6 trials and we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Don't ever forget that soon nobody will really NEED IPv4 addresses any more because IPv6 is a viable alternative. If your company isn't doing internal trials of IPv6 with selected customers, then yes, you should probably start looking for another job.
If some people feel that the meeting is not important enough to make an effort to attend, then they don't get a vote. Whether it is because they can't afford to attend or because they've already got full IPv6 services on offer, it makes no difference.
I think you're definitely wrong on this - and imho somewhat quite arrogant by that.
RIPE's open to anybody, anybody being allowed to become a member. But excluding a bunch of members from the meetings by sheer cost (or time) is fine for you. The current practice of having to be physically on site for a vote has to stop soonest possible.
Please do not criticise my proposal because you disagree with how RIPE currently functions. If you have a criticism with how RIPE members vote, please take it to the appropriate venue. If RIPE does begin to allow remote participation and voting in a general meeting, that doesn't change my proposal in any way.
We're in internet business - and rely on phys presence. That's ridicilous.
It's also ridiculous that we have so little IPv6 deployment that we have to argue over how to distribute the last few crumbs of IPv4 addressing. Why does the Internet still rely on this ancient protocol over 10 years after IPv6 was introduced? So, how do you propose to distribute the final /8 fairly? --Michael Dillon