Peoples' circumstances do not allow them to travel to RIPE meetings and spend a week there volunteering for the community. It seems likely to me that there are excellent working group chair candidates who have not put themselves forward because they know they can't commit to attend. People whose employers won't support them with time and salary (or independent contractors who lose income when they can't work) are similarly disadvantaged. Eliminating those disadvantages might add useful additional perspectives to indviidual working groups and to the wg chair collective.

I think providing this funding might well reduce those barriers to participation. To Michele's point I don't think there is a serious risk that anybody would take on the job of being a working group chair with simply to get a free week in a hotel. People are selected to be working group chairs based on their reputations and their ability to do a good job, not simply because they put their hand up. If some unforeseen negative consequence did arise, the NCC could simply rescind the policy (with appropriate notice) and call it an experiment, in which case at least we learned something.

If the NCC is prepared to make budget available for this, I think it is a good idea.

Joe