Dear colleagues, We are delighted to announce that today, 18 February 2014, the RIPE NCC welcomed its 10,000th member into the association. This is an exciting milestone that the entire RIPE NCC membership should be proud of. The RIPE NCC fully embraces the addition of so many new members from all 76 countries in its service region and from an expanding range of industries. The RIPE NCC is committed to providing support and guidance to all its members and fostering a spirit of cooperation among them. We believe that the open processes of the RIPE NCC are fundamental to the expansion of the membership. These processes are developed in line with feedback received from our members and the policies decided by the RIPE community, so the current growth rate is testament to the successful collaboration among the RIPE NCC, its members and the wider community. While this is a landmark to be proud of, we are also conscious that such growth brings its own challenges in terms of integrating new members. New members are joining from all corners of the service region, and we must be diligent in reaching out to these organisations and ensuring that they feel fully part of the membership, while maintaining excellent support and service for our longer-term members. Personally, I find it extremely rewarding to see members from very different countries and industries coming together in person and online to discuss common issues and concerns, and deciding among themselves the best way forward for the association. The RIPE NCC management and the Executive Board are prepared to meet any challenges that the organisation may face going forward. An increased membership, reflecting the full diversity of the Internet community, allows us to work together with a greater pool of knowledge and it gives us a much stronger voice than if we were to proceed separately. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all members for their support and help in bringing us to our current position. We look forward to working together to increase the strength of the membership in the coming years. A dynamically updated graph showing the current membership statistics is available at: https://labs.ripe.net/statistics/number-of-lirs Kind regards, Axel Pawlik Managing Director RIPE NCC