Don,
I appreciate you taking the effort to reach out to the community.
I will not be attending the next NANOG for several reasons not
worth mentioning in the greater context of your request.
I have attended most of the NANOG meetings starting with NANOG 13.
I am among those whom have passively observed a steady decline in
value from attending the NANOG over the past several years. It
is far too easy to criticize any organized event, and there are
many on this list that could do a far better job then I.
I will thus make one specific observation, then focus my attention
on what I find valuable in the other conferences I most frequently
attend: RIPE and APRICOT.
In my opinion, the most successful conferences I have attended are
those that actively encourage engagement and participation.
Conferences where I've simply shown up to listen to talking heads
fade into obscure memory on the significance scale.
What I like about the RIPE and APRICOT (and perhaps even ARIN)
conferences apart is that they encourage and invite participation
from the community through the use of tracks and working groups,
while still maintaining a significant number of interesting
presentations for the community as a whole. Some would argue that
for the North American market, these special interest groups,
such as IPv6, VoIP, and VOD should be kept within the confines of
the ARIN and IETF meetings and that operators should attend those
meetings if they wish to participate. I respectfully disagree as
I think that it unnecessary excludes a lot of willing participants
who could add significant value.
RIPE NCC and APNIC, like ARIN, conduct parallel and overlapping
meetings with the operator community. The RIPE meetings and the
annual APRICOT meetings include tracks for the registry functions,
but also Working Group tracks for topics that overlap with the
IETF meetings. Although sometimes RIPE and APRICOT offer two
tracks in parallel that would be worthwhile attending where I
have to choose one over the other, I am happy these choices are
available.
There are several topics I feel deserve to be segmented off so
that we can make the NANOG meetings more productive. A few WG
topics off the top of my head:
1/ IPv6. Most are aware that IPv6 needs to be adopted at some
point in the future. Many are cognizant of the fact that it is
sooner than most believe. Some understand that there are still
some key problems with IPv6 that have yet to be solved. A few
fear that today's hardware cannot handle tomorrows dual-stack
route explosion. Outside of a few talks and presentations there
is no forum in the NANOG meeting to work through these issues.
2/ VOIP. How does it work? How is it implemented? What is ENUM?
What is VOIP Peering? How can it help save money? What is Jitter
and how does it relate to Voice? Why does QOS matter for VOIP?
What paid- and open-source tools are out there to get started
with VOIP?
3/ Video-on-Demand. Why it matters? How to implement it? Does
multicasting content really save bandwidth? How big will content
really get?
4/ Network Convergence, Carrier of Carriers, Risks and Rewards,
etc
5/ Peering, perhaps...
Note that this goes beyond the concept of Birds-of-Feather
meetings, which generally seem either too short or too long.
I'm sure this will ruffle the feathers of a bunch of people and
I expect to be beaten back into silence, but at least I have
expressed my opinion... :-)
Best Regards,
--
Randy Whitney
Verizon Business
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don
Welch, Merit Network
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 4:58 PM
Cc: nanog-futures@merit.edu
Subject: Re: 2 meetings / budgets [Re: mlc files formal
complaint against me]
I've been involved with NANOG for over a year now. I have formed my
opinions on how well things work or don't work and will steal my own
thunder in this post.
I have already charged Betty to increase the value of NANOG
to Merit. I
think she has taken some good steps in this direction. During the ABQ
meeting I plan to challenge the new SC to increase the value
of NANOG to
the community. NANOG was great years ago. The community says
it is not
as great as it was because they are not attending/participating. If
NANOG has outlived its usefulness we can put it to sleep or
change it to
make it more useful. Merit can help facilitate the change,
but the SC,
PC, MLC and other members of the community are the only ones who can
truly make NANOG more valuable to the community. The ratio of
unproductive interactions to value-adding interactions that I've
observed among the NANOG leadership is not what we would find
in a great
organization.
The reason I've sent this message rather than wait to say it
in person
is that I want everyone who cares about NANOG to think about
how we can
make it more valuable. If appropriate discuss it here on
NANOG
