"dear coo/ceo/whomever: i want approval to send the five folk who go to nanog, and the five folk who go to maawg, and the five folk who go to first to *all* go to the new frobnitz joint conference."
think that'll fly?
Why not? We already solved that problem for the five folk who go to the ARIN meetings. --Michael Dillon P.S. Thinking out of the box would suggest that the person funding these conference trips should force people to rotate the conferences that they go to. Want to get approval to go to another NANOG? Then you have to attend the next MAAWG and the next FIRST conference before you can attend NANOG again. It is now standard enterprise practice to rotate their best managers through various different functions of the company. Why don't we do this with some of the technical management functions as well?