I think your comments are a bit harsh on students, especially " I don't see any value to NANOG, though, as most students lack any experience in inter-networking, or common sense, for that matter."
This really depends on what the mission of the organization is. A vehicle to do NANOG conferences? A way of hosting mailing lists? Or something a bit more ambitious that addresses the need for a professional organization for network engineering in North America? The state of network engineering education is truly abysmal. From what I can tell, there are no reasonable undergraduate programs. On the graduate side, we get the sort of presentations at NANOG that led us to have a "research forum" which is a codeword for "get the hell out of the main session while some kid presents on something he doesn't understand". I guess that sounds a bit harsh, too :) What do student memberships "bring" to any professional organization? Nothing in terms of governance, common sense, or professional knowledge, generally. However, they do provide other, less tangible benefits. It gets students interested in the profession into a situation where they are affiliated with an organization that is composed of practitioners, not ill-informed academics. ACM has done a pretty good job with this. I doubt we'll see many (if any at all) student memberships initially. However, having this hook in the bylaws allows us to expand into more educational programming without having to do a change to the bylaws, which is a pretty big pain. As far as the bylaws in general - I think Steve Gibbard has done a wonderful job, just as he's always done for NANOG, with little thanks and absolutely no recognition. He's not the kind of guy that gets a special colored badge at conferences or who gets a lot of thanks from the podium, but every few years when we really need him, he's there for all of us and he always delivers. If anyone here is volunteering to help him, this would be the right time to step up. - Dan On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Sean Figgins <s...@labrats.us> wrote: > On 10/1/10 11:19 PM, Randy Bush wrote: > > >> my comment from 9/22 that at most there should be two membership > >> states, members and non still stands. > > > > if there is a membership fee, i can see a student discount. > > Not everyone on the membership working group agreed with all the > membership classifications. I, for one, see no need for a student > classification. In fact, I still see no value in student membership for > governance of NewNOG, which is all membership is for at this point. > > Students already get a discount on the price of conferences, so I am > told. I can see value to the students to attend the conferences, as it > is a learning experience for them, just like the rest of us. I don't > see any value to NANOG, though, as most students lack any experience in > inter-networking, or common sense, for that matter. > > The bylaws could use quite a bit of improvement, and should have had > some proofreading done before being put to a vote, as the structure is > less than consistent, but... At this point, I do not see any more > changes going into the bylaws before the election. My suggestion would > be to vote to ratify the bylaws and the transition, and then at the next > annual election, we can amend the bylaws and fix what needs to be fixed. > > My comments are in no way meant to lessen the efforts of the individuals > involved. They put in a lot of hard work for very little recognition > and even less personal benefit. There was very little time to pull this > together, and most have a paying job that demands their time and > attention. It is more a miracle that we have anything to vote on at all. > > -Sean > > _______________________________________________ > Nanog-futures mailing list > Nanog-futures@nanog.org > https://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures >
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