On 9 May 2023, at 12:30, Franziska Lichtblau <rhalina@old-forest.org> wrote:
On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 09:40 +0200, Melchior Aelmans wrote:
One question, as it's not clearly forbidden, is NCC staff allowed to be a WG chair, partake in NomCom, etc? I would say yes.
I think it absolutely should be allowed. We want the NCC to be rooted within the RIPE community and excluding them from active participation would not support that goal. In my experience if you are actively involved in a community you get a way better understanding of the inner workings and principles. For the NCC staff that means better input to their decision making process. We try very hard to get people to engage and participate in the RIPE community - let's not reduce that pool unnecessarily.
while i do not see any particular harm in WG chairing, the RIPE chair nomcom had to tread a fine line in separating chairmanship and NCC and therefore I think it is best to be cautious due to conflict of interest, but it does not mean that nobody from staff can participate: rather, to protect variety of opinion by avoiding single group of taking control. such issues can be handled by the charters lf such bodies though; we didn't discuss PC, or NRO NC, but same approach applies.
The document states very clearly, that NCC staff needs to disclose their position. This is something we already do by, e.g, asking people to disclose their affliation when commenting on the microphone. So we already know how to deal with potential conflict of interests with a lot of different stake holders.
good point, likewise a meeting etiquette can handle other multiple hats one may wear. -- dk@ (PC member; not NCC)