As these apply more to the nanog-meta-discussion, I'm posting them here. If people feel they might be applicable for the general membership, let me know, and I'll post them there as well.
Matt 2010.06.13 NANOG 49 community meeting NOTES: [I just want to say the IPv6 hi-def stream was *wonderful* to watch this time around--thanks to the people who pulled that off!] Steve Feldman calls the room to order at 1753 hours Pacific time. Welcome to NANOG 49 community meeting. AGENDA: steering comitte report program comittee report communications committee report marketing working group report merit report transition update Steve Feldman, Dave Meyer, Mike Smith, Chris Quesada, Andy Resnzweig, transition team Steering committee report -- steve feldman blue badge folks steve feldman, patrick gilmore, sylvie lapierre, david, joe, andy, robert, mike, duane highlights since nanog 48 marketing working on additional sponsorships all but one breakfast break sold out (or one break, period), fullest yet. Postel scholarships being worked on, 6/20 is deadline, after which they decide who gets to come to the fall meeting, and educate people back home. Welcome mike smith, new program committee chair, some condolences given. Preparation for this and future meetings worked on, hosts and contracts through end of 2011 now, will soon start on 2012. Working on transition stuffs as well. After nanog49, will work on finalizing Postel scholarship continue momentum on marketing sponsorships check out the collaboration room work on 2011/2012, transition work Mailing lists: [email protected] main operations list [email protected] meta-discussions about NANOG [email protected] meeting attendees only [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] David Meyer Program Committee [email protected] Committee members: cathy, nina, larry, jim, tom, brian, igor, barry, mike, mohit, sylvie, david, chris, kevin, dani, sonia, tom, Richard Lots of submissions for this meeting, hard to fit them in; if you want lots of statistics about that, bug a PC member. :D Communications Committee Report Randy Epstein Joe, Kris, Sue, Michael, Tim, 6 out of 600 messages moderated, 3 people with posting privs revoked. Look for red stickers to talk to them, or email [email protected] Any questions? Q via AIM: is there a jabber room or other way for people to ask questions remotely? A: We'll defer that to the communications committee... uh, no jabber room, but that's simply because there is no mandate yet...so, RS volunteers to watch AIM for questions, IM him at ke4djt with your questions Marketing working group Greg Dendy members: Greg, Patrick, Misako, Christopher, Andy, DAve, Carol, Schedule is full of sponsorships, breaks, beer and gear, etc. Marketing group goes out and tries to solicit sponsors from vendors, member companies, etc. Also set up the vendor collaboration room; visit it, see what's there, put cards in, and enter for door prizes. [email protected] Merit report, Andy Thanks to NANOG host, Netflix, esp. to Dave Temkin, and his help on finding sponsors. Netflix is also providing IP bandwidth, Internet2 provided access points, Sponsors provided food, as well as beer and gear. Merit team Larry Blunk, David Gilbertson, Sue Joiner, Dawn Khan, Carol Wadsowrth, Michael Zawacki Nanog48 -- Austin stats, (vs SFO) 452 total, 561 total in SFO, up to 580 353 Paid (466) 99 waived (host, sponsor, presenter, Merit on-site staff (95) 125 newcomers (28%) NANOG48, just about break even financially. NANOG50, Atlanta, TelX, with ARIN NANOG51, Miami, Terremark NANOG52, Denver, Alcatel-Lucent Web site and mailing list will have brief outage this summer as servers are relocated; date/time to be announced. NANOG transition. A long-term vision for the NANOG community Will give an overview tonight, and then tomorrow will dig more into nitty gritty details. Rules of engagement thanks to Sylvie for putting the slides together. SC wishes to present a long-term vision to the NANOG community Sundy, short meeting Monday at BOF, much longer presentation The NANOG now proposed mission proposed status and governance Now--provides forum for sharing of knowledge, information, and education for north american inteernet opererations community. we do that through big conferences like this, and through mailing lists. merit does hosting of mailing list machines, etc. NANOG is an activity of Merit Networks, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, which limits some of the activities they can engage in. Merit's primary responsibility is to their membership, which has implications on what NANOG can do. NANOG has migrated towards self-governance, starting in 2005 with the new charter. milestones created program committee created communications committee to handle mailing lists created marketing working group, to work towards sustainable funding. Why change? working self-governance model, but limited ability to act. Desire to contain changes within Merit's budget cycles July1 to June 30 Current merit fiscal includes N47, 48, 49 Merit has hotel contracts for N50, N51 hotels So, this is trying to coordinate with Merit's June 30th budget cutover for next year. Believe it is time for NANOG to become autonomous independent legal entity indepedent funding financial management and control members as owners (NANOG members, rather than Merit members) Brief flow chart that doesn't fit all the way on the screen. Legal status, will move to NewNOG, Inc, a new 501(c)3 non-profit corporation it will get a new board of directors Funding will move to membership funding, and activity based sponsorships, with a goal to have more general sponsorship as well as specific activity based sponsorship Financial reporting will move to Financial accountability to the community; currently, just another item on the general Merit books, without separate accounting. Staffing will shift from Merit Staff to limited paid staff and contracted services Steve notes Merit has done a wonderful job with the staffing, this is not a reflection on their handling of the staffing to date. New staffing will be executive director, one or two paid staff, most contracted out; don't need dedicated staff to run three meetings a year. Proposed Mission statement stays the same. keep organizing conferences, and running mailing list. Believe to expand into other areas; jabber room for online interaction publications, certifications, moving towards a group of professionals aimed at educating members. Governance--newNOG Inc, is a new, non-profit corporation which has been created; it is a transitional entity, it is not expected to exist in 2 or 3 years once the transfer of intelllectual property details are worked out. Board of Directors consists of 6 elected steering committee members right now; eventually will mirror current leadership. Want to increase membership by decoupling membership from meeting attendance. Funding by Membership sponsor organizations/Contributors Membership: bootstrap: current NANOG voting membership population (those of you here, and those who have attended meeting in the past year) parallel vote to be held October, 2010 quite a bit of work still ahead of us Fill expiring NewNOG board seats Ratify NewNOG by-laws this is a model for handling the transition, not necessarily the final model. This is the time to bring up concerns, questions, etc. over the next few days. Some other ideas being discussed bigger membership--people who would like to vote, who are active on the mailing list, but are unable to attend meetings Annual paid dues of some form? discounted memberships for students? Members get voting rights in NewNOG elections possible meeting discounts, subscription plans future benefits to be decided by community Conferences: revise sponsorship and hosting model hotel contract negotiation via agent contracted registration management contracted onsite logistics (wireless network, etc) Mailing-lists contracted hosting keep community mangement contracted/outsourced with performance obligations Timeline that is proposed: Merit runs the meetings through NANOG51, and NewNOG would take over NANOG52, in Denver. Merit will finish out the existing hotel contracts. Red line in October when election will be held, and all this will try to happen. Denver meeting, NewNOG would take over the running of the meeting; possibly contract Merit to handle outsourcing for that meeting. NANOG53, explore other vendors, see what other approaches to hosting the meeting may arise; Merit may bid in competitive bidding status for those meetings. NewNOG has contract for NANOG52. ARIN signed contract for NANOG53 hotel, many thanks to ARIN for going out on that limb. 2012, planning will start shortly. How can you shape the vision Join the governance WG--Steve Gibbard, Dave Barak, Betty Burke Join the membership WG--Kris Foster, Bill Woodcock, Ren Provo Join the Funding/Sponsorship ($$$) WG --Chris Quesada Join the Finance/Budget WG--Dan Golding, Todd Underwood, Tom Daly, Sylvie LaPierre Join the Conference/Event Planning WG -- Open/Executive Join the Technical Transition Services WG -- Richard Steenberger, Rob Seastrom, Tom Scholl If you'd like to volunteer, talk to any of the people listed, or send email to [email protected] Would like to give Dawn and opportunity to say a few words while Bill stands and waits. Dawn, many of you saw his posting on nanog-futures. Many at Merit think they can run NANOG very well; if they wanted to fight it, they'd have to fight with the people who run the community; so they've decided to help with the transition; they'd like to avoid debate with community members, and will work to support it as best as they can. Steve Feldman notes it's a disagreement among friends as to whether it's the right move, but both sides agree that it's best to approach it civilly. Q: Will term limits of NANOG carry over to NewNOG? A: Yes, NewNOG will continue those term limits. Q: What about resources, like IP space? A: Check the letters on newnog.org, those will stay with Merit, and we'll apply for a microallocation. Q: Why only 10 minutes? A: More time is allocated during the BOF tomorrow; this meeting actually didn't have a set time. Q: Bill Norton--he shared on the mailing list that even at one of the first SC meetings, they noted that being an advisor to Merit did have some limitations even back then. So, Q1: is this a done deal? A1: it's not a done deal, but we're well down the path on making it happen; but if there's a huge outcry, it could be changed; if the wrong set of people are in charge, they can be swapped out, etc. Until October election, there is room for change; but contracts are being put in place that become harder and harder to reverse. Q2: it would be good to see financials; there are things already in place that will have replacement costs, but we don't know how much it will costs to put this new overarching entity in place. A2: new proforma budget will be shared in the BoF tomorrow; they haven't been included in this slide deck because they thought the room was time limited tonight. A: To comment on Bill's question--there's some politics going on here, on both sides; through the transition, people do have to be a bit delicate. We don't know how Merit spent every penny, but comparing it to other conferences, it's not clear there's additional efficiencies Merit can squeeze out; Betty has already squezed out a lot of inefficiencies in the past 2 or 3 years. We won't get into a situation where it should cost a huge amount more than what it cost under Merit; we should be able to get similar numbers by working with professional conference managers. Based on comparisons with other conferences, we feel we should be able to do this without needing a great deal of additional money. Q: Why is there a need for $30,000 to transfer the NANOG name? Should we come up with a new name, as our appraisal of the NANOG name says it's worth about $340. A: To avoid conflict of interest, they approached the University of Merit, and asked, and the domain and name were valued at between $30,000 and $50,000. So, to be fair, and to protect both organizations, the pricing that was mentioned previously will be honored. This is to ensure that a documented exchange of value takes place that protects both sides. Q: Randy Bush doesn't care what it's called--call it FrakMerit for all he cares. freakanomics folks says banking should be boring; this should be in that category; it should be boring, and not something we should need to worry about. Having this happen in community meeting is fine; but he came for technical content; taking up technical discussion time during BOFs to talk about silly business crap doesn't make him happy. We put you up there to make it work; we want to do networking, you go do business 0.5. Q: Paul Vixie--he heard Bill's question--is this a done deal? ARIN signed a contract to help facilitate this; it was not meant to indicate that it *should* happen, they have that hotel contract as a liability on their books, hopefully *someone* will come fill the room and sell seats, as otherwise they're out quite a bit of money. Q: Joel Jaegli, having watched the governance and process has been interesting; we get one shot, we vote at the October meeting, so we need the constructs to be in front of us before then so we can vote on the new charter then. Since we have long-term future liabilities on hotel contracts being booked, we will quickly arrive at point of no return for end of 2011 or beginning of 2012, and it will be on someone's books. A: Actually, June of 2011 hotel is already on this newNOG's books, so there are already financial implications. Q: Duncan...this all breaks down to why--no statement of vision of what newNOG wants to be 2-3 years down the line; there are financial implications hitting, but there's no statement of what the bet is and what the payout will be to making this change. Where will this be in 2-3 years time, after it's all been firing on all cylinders? A: To answer about liabilities, they already existed in the past; Merit assumed them in the past which let them to make decisions about one host over another, or shift schedules around based on their control over the contract liability, etc. That meant the SC had very little input about the meetings. Now, with newNOG bearing those liabilities, it allows the SC to make decisions about dates, locations, and hosts without being subservient to Merit's financial interests and membership. Nobody here is a Merit member, they have their own mission, they have their own financial responsibilities. A: Todd answers the why-now bit. Nanog governance has reached democratic self-sustanance, with 2 or 3 swapouts of leadership since the new charter was put in place. People now have a mature belief that our self-governance will continue, regardless of which people are in place. We pushed Merit hard to plan hotels further in advance so we can plan our schedules further in advance; but that puts more liability on Merit's books, which makes them more and more nervous, and pushes back harder against the increased liabilities involved. A: It's much better to be doing this now when things are relatively calm and peaceful, than during a period of turmoil. Doing this in 2005 would have been very difficult, for example. Q: You've talked about what's happened in the past, and what will change; but what's the future payoff, beside the payoff of the freedom to do what we want? A: That *is* the payoff; the ability to have more flexible sponsorship models, different number of meetings a year, document, trainings, etc. short-term, the goal is to not destroy what we have now, to not break the structure while we do that transition. Q: Vijay, agree with Randy, we trust you, execute as you see fit, if we don't like it, we'll vote you out. What would make life easier for him, is to provide information about sensitivity models as they are perturbed; if attendance drops to 300, what is the financial model, for example? Can those financial sensitivty models be posted? Q: Randy Bush was on first steering committee, these issues have been going on for a long time, why wasn't this done sooner? Merit has their own goals, and they acheive those goals well; but those are not NANOG goals, and sometimes they come into conflict. There was a NANOG meeting that was scheduled in conflict with other NOG and RIR meeting, to avoid conflict with a Merit meeting, for example; that was the type of thing that happens when goals are in conflict. People up there are worried about breaking things; but some things should be changed, or be able to break. We've scheduled meetings based on finding hosts, and we have meetings where few people show up, because it's hosted in the middle of nowhere, and then we have meetings where many people actually show up; if we govern ourselves, we can aim for more appropriate venues. Membership plus attendance, many other orgs follow that model already. Q: Patrick notes Sylvie and others have a model already that will let you perturb and see how the model survives. The BoF will have access to many more of those details. Q: People need to brainstorm more about future opportunties; BCP plans, outreach, etc. Think a year or two out, when the transition is done, what would you like to see, so that people can start working on it now? If people want to start a network education core curriculum, for example, people should start working on it now. Q: Patrick, text message, new comment; you people are impressive, reminder that for people who just come to meeting, and don't come to community meeting, this should be a no-op; if you actually care, come to one of the working groups, and work to change things. Q: Leo Bicknell, this is a natural progression; why now, you have to have people in place who want to make it happen; if it's happening now, that means we have the right people in place to make it happen. In meetings in past, he's heard of things going very wrong at some meetings, causing things to go in the red for particular meetings. What is the planning or reassurances in case really bad things happen during the embroynic stages of the organization? A: Conference cancellation insurance can be purchased, and they are folded into the budget for horrific events. Q1: Right now, Merit brings a reserve to the table; as we book further out, our liability goes higher and higher. A: Thank you for volunteering for the finance committee, Leo--and Vijay, we know you were a business major! Q: RS, relaying for Dinesh; as an outsider, his view is that independence *is* the payoff; we have come a long way, let's look forward, not to the past. No other questions, so Steve wraps up noting his main role is to herd cats. Many thanks to those who have provided input; please keep it going! Goal is to create an organization that is self sustaining over time. They have started by creating a non-profit with some by-laws and an initial governance, to keep things functioning for the members. Thanks to everyone out there for supporting them during this effort! Social tonight, across the street at 8, please attend, it's in the agenda guide, Harry Denton's Starlight Room. Meeting wraps up at 1908 hours Pacific time. _______________________________________________ Nanog-futures mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures
