Dear Colleagues, Firstly, let me apologise for not sending a message of action on this issue. I have not been fully online due to a sad situation in my family where a young family member unexpectedly passed away some days ago. As a current co-Chair of this working group, I have reviewed the messages sent to the Coop WG list and I am very pleased to see that we have four wonderful candidates that have expressed their interest to serve as co-Chair. Each Candidate has sent an introduction mail explaining their reasons for standing as a co-Chair. We have the following candidates confirmed: Alain van Gaever, Ofcom Erika Hersaeus, The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency, PTS Meredith Whittaker, Google Niall O'Reilly, IT Services Unit at University College Dublin To date, there is no set procedure to select working group Chairs, this is open to the working group to decide. I would like to have the co-Chairs installed as soon as possible (before the Warsaw meeting) that means that a consensus decision needs to be made on this list. I believe this is possible without the overhead of organising an online voting process. For efficiency reasons I think that this WG should not have more than three co-chairs. That would be sufficient in case one of us would not be able to physically attend a meeting as well as for continuity of this WG in case one of us would step down. Please remember that the bulk of the work needs to be done by the actual working group participants and not only the co-Chairs. And that is also the way things have been working before and still do. Moving forward, I propose that we select two new co-chairs to be a reflection of the broader community in RIPE. As I noted from discussions on the list, I see support for co-chairs coming from a government and industry background that would complement me, with my current affiliation to academia. After considering all the candidates’ backgrounds, sector affiliation, country diversity and experience in the Internet Governance space, I propose to this working group to have Alain van Gaever and Meredith Whittaker to be the co-chairs and ask for your full support in this proposal. In a moment, I will send a separate, more formal, mail to this list asking the WG to formally show their support to approve these candidates. I thank all of you for your enthusiasm and commitment to this WG and hope that we continue the productive discussions and exchange of information and identify areas where this WG and the RIPE community can contribute. Warm Regards, Maria Häll co-chair RIPE Cooperation WG CEO SUNET - Swedish University Network Email: maria@sunet.se Mobile: +46 70 535 41 38 Web: www.sunet.se