2006.06.04 NANOG Open Community Meeting Notes

From BillN being chair to now, raised reg costs 3 years ago, just no two ways around it. Years ago, was one camera and a broadcast over the mbone; now, bigger streams, more cameras, and more costs associated with it. NANOG is not in trouble, there are some financial issues, yes, but Merit board and NANOG leadership are aiming to preserve the reserve to help cover contract languages, allow Merit to take the risk on behalf of NANOG to sign up for the meeting. Aim to get the venue in advance, and get sponsorships to help get the numbers in line again. Chris Malayter, venue selection--all fixed location, or RIPE model; all 3 fixed would take some of the

Here's my notes from tonight's (overly!) long Open Community Meeting. When I said "yes" to going long vs cutting the discussion short, I was thinking we'd go long by 10 minutes or so...not by a whole hour+ ^_^;; Matt 2006.06.04 NANOG Open Community Meeting NANOG/San Jose NANOG SC <steering@nanog.org> AGENDA Steering Committee (Randy) Program Comittee (Steve) Financial Report (Betty) Mailing List Report (Rob) Open Discussion (Randy) Aside from vetted presentations, we're speaking as individuals, and we differ! The microphone is open throughout. NANOG Steering Committee Report SC Goings On Get meeting schedule under better control thank you, Rodney! Charter amendments voted on in October ML Policy and Proceedures Copyright and IPR issues Press, photography, ... Future Meetings Thank you Rodney for pulling chesnuts out of the fire! October in St. Louis with ARIN since it's meeting with ARIN, it's Monday/Tues, they have Weds-Fri Joe organizing Toronto first week of February 2007 Josh is looking at Miami for the first week of June 2007 Mailing List Still working with ML Panel to document their process Still working with MP(ML?) Panel to develop an appeals process (vote in October) Statistics are published monthly on the NANOG web site Please volunteer for the ML Committee a selection will happen in Oct. 3+1 so far, that's the lowest limit right now. Need to share the load. ML Panel Appointments No terms, etc. in current charter Straw proposal charter change parallels SC and PC two year terms staggered two sequential terms max without a vacation ML Panel process cont. this would give members a light at the end of the tunnel volunteers would know what they're signing up for Allows change without bad vibe of removal normal organizational practice Charter Changes Randy and Steve F are working with Dan Golding and Steve Gibbard, the old charter group, to get the known charter revison proposal pieces in order for San Jose Meeting. (for voting in October) (not sure they'll quite make it) Dan Golding, there's a lot of bootstrapping language in the current charter, changes will remove the bootstrapping language, lists terms, which things are staggered, etc. Hoping to publish by the end of this meeeting. Mostly bookkeeping. Rights in Data NANOG trademark is held by MERIT Presentations are copyright by the author Right to freely distribute, but not modify, granted to NANOG PC is drafting this formally copyright notices on slides are OK if small and unobtrusive But what about rights to Streaming and Videos? Press Press likely to be present in San Jose MERIT may prominently tag their badges MERIT will ask that no pictures be taken in the actual meetings themselves This ensures that members are free from having their picture published without their consent and without prejudice as to who is taking the pictures. Ren has been taking pictures of individuals to post on the Multiply site; so, if you haven't had your picture taken in the hallway, talk to her. But again, not in the meeting room. Mailing LIsts Engineering and Ops Discussion only <nanog@nanog.org> Discussions about NANOG itself <nanog-futures@nanog.org> Steering Committee <steering@nanogsc.org> Program Committee <nanogpc@nanogpc.org> ML <nanog-admin@nanog.org> Agenda Over to Program Committee (Steve) Steve Feldman, PC Chair Disclaimers--all opinions, errors, are his program is result of hard work by the whole PC NANOG 37 program 37 submissions, up from 26 22 accepted 1 cancelled 14 rejected No breakdown on the rejections; they were fine, but there wasn't enough time to put them all in; some will resubmit for next time. Areas for improvement Speaker solicitation--PC still needs to solicit more; get broader representation of NANOG community Scheduling this meeting was harder, didn't know where it was going to be. Program Format Mon-Weds format Morning Plenaries Afternoon BOF, Tutorials Evening social events (moved program out of evenings for more social time) Newbie meeting--beefed it up with more content from Bill. About 50/50 split in terms of how many like each format. After October, will use survey results for subsequent meetings. Lightning Talks Criterion: on-topic for mailing list Signups start Monday morning instructions during plenary deadline: 12:30 Tuesday PC selects 6 best submissions Take place during 1 hour of Weds morning plenary Feedback Talk to us! PC members have yellow and green badges Send mail nanog-futures@nanog.org nanogpc@nanog.org And fill out your surveys!! Open Discussion What topics would you like to hear more (or less) about? How can we (PC and community) get speakers on those topics? Charter revisions some proposed PC updates, take out his name, bootstrap details out of it; specify when the PC is selected by the SC, things like that. Draft will be published on the futures list. Transparency more debate recently; how much of the workings of the PC should be visible to the outside. PC members feel the discussion has to be in private so they can be honest; if they go on public record, opinions will be curtailed. Bill Norton goes to microphone. He has sympathy for those who put together presentations for submission to NANOG; getting permission from PR, Boss, etc.; to get rejected, may make people not want to go through the submission process again. Could we put some coaching or shepherding into the system, so that it's not a fling over the wall, then get a rejection without understanding why they were rejected. It's very difficult to figure out what's going to be said to a bunch of slides; could be good, could be bad. Hence the call for some shepherding. Or some type of feedback to the speaker that others could learn from. What about anonymizing the feedback? Might be hard to sufficiently anonymize so that people aren't immediately recognizable. SteveF notes that comments are included from PC members and himself with rejections, along with offer to resubmit with fixes. Randy Bush, he has a foot in the academic research paper community. In academic world, the paper stands alone, the talk is secondary. Here, the talk is primary, the slides are an adjunct, so it's hard to understand what they'll be talking about during the slides. Bill Norton suggests a white paper that goes along with the slides to clarify the slides; as long as it's not required, might work. Randy: separate publishing the PC minutes from the views of the reviewers. Publishing the PC minutes has 2 purposes; 1) how the PC operates, under the transparency guideline. 2) having the review of programs on record is harder to support, as the author doesn't need to see their criticisms online. Ren notes fear of rejection may bring on fewer submissions. Bill Norton also notes that PC members may not be honest in their feedback if they know their words will be on record. On the flipside, if there's an anti-MPLS person on the PC, wouldn't you want to be able to see a consistent bias against programs of that sort coming from them? Randy: where his other foot rests, when papers are submitted, reviewers must first declare their conflicts; hating MPLS, working for a company submitting papers, etc. should be pre-declared. But we *DO* want a diversity of opinions, at least! In the academic world, 75% of paper reviews, the reviewers...er, on 25% the reviewers don't know who wrote it; you get title, number, body of text, no name or institution. The reviewed get back a review with no names or institutions. Most are single blind; the reviewers see the paper's author, but the reviewee doesn't get signed reviews. Rejection, biases are something we just have to learn to live with. Bill Norton: how many here have submitted proposals to NANOG that have been rejected? Only 3. It does suck. Could some of it be pulled back in? Maybe Betty could do some research into it? Bill, Randy, and Lixia could be anomalies? Others who get rejected might not come back again. Ren Provo--several folks who took commentary from review, and fixed it based on that feedback; they did their revisions, put it back in, and got accepted. That was a conditional rejection, so maybe the new feedback loop is helping. Bill Norton: when he was on the PC, the rejection note comments seemed to reflect a misunderstanding of the talk on the part of the reviewers. Ren does note the slides need to be standalone, since they'll be in the archives, without the talk. Chris Malayter, Broadwing; he doesn't see a problem with having the feedback loop, that you talk to a person on the PC about your feedback; but on the transparency side, he'd like to give the elected PC as much freedom to create their own level of transparency as they're comfortable with themselves. Is there enough of a continuous change process in the PC meetings--if so, then yes, meeting minutes are needed. If there's not that much change, then no need for meeting minutes. Dan Golding notes there's a web page for submitting papers and comments back; could have an automatic set of minutes where author's name and reviewers' names were peeled out? Steve Feldman doesn't favour publishing details of individual talks, to avoid public shaming. PC is answerable to the SC; if the SC mandates, they can produce attendence records and minutes, as part of being accountable. Betty from Merit; to achieve transparency without getting into specific talks, if PC could publish when they have calls, and who would be on the call, and number of talks being reviewed on the call. That at least lets people know what the flow is like. Joe Abley, FNSI? PC members shepherd members who would otherwise get their talks rejected. Small number of them, the PC member will talk to the submitter, to make sure it's complete and sensible. That way there's at least one person championing the talk through, the submitter has already explained it to one PC member. Bill Norton notes that Dan Golding was key to the new charter; how does the SC know if the PC members are doing a good job; how would they know who to remove if they aren't doing a good job? Should be one SC member on the calls to monitor the calls (other than Steve), not to participate and choose talks, but to be the elected overseer or adult supervision for the PC members. It hasn't been been happening yet, both Chris Morrow and Joe Abely sit on both committees, makes 3 out of 16 that sit on both. To have any more, makes conflict at appointment time. The SC has to consider replacing half of the PC when their terms expire. When there are PC members intimately involved in the SC, they have to recuse themselves from the decision process. Only 3 people on SC who were also not on the PC, so only 3 made the whole set of decisions. Dan Golding did put the exclusivity in the ML, but not in the PC/SC; should be a charter revision if possible to make the PC and SC exclusive, other than the Chair and the oversight member of the SC that watches the PC. PC should keep minutes about process, not about reviews PC shepherding proposals that need some more help on proposals that aren't clearly solid on their own? Signed reviews vs unsigned reviews. Today they are unsigned. Bill Norton; the feedback that goes to the authors; paragraph forms with no names. Steve Feldman notes there's comments for internal use only, and section on comments back to submitter; so far, nothing has gone back to the submitter that shouldn't be put there. So far, the current PC is very well behaved, gives good feedback to the submitters; currently, isn't zero feedback. Audience (Jacobs?) asks if the feedback is separated out? Yes, at least dashes between the feedback. Steve Feldman notes a lot of what we do is simply because that's the way we've done it in the past, not because there's strong reasons for it. Keeping simple minutes would probably be good. SC meetings are published a week later, every Thursday via teleconference, minutes are on the website. Betty Burke, Project Manager, Merit Network Acknowledgements Susan R. Harris casualty of some restructuring at Merit, no longer working with NANOG unfortunately. SC, PC, List-Admins Thanks to all of them for their long hours! Merit Staff Attending Mary, Brian, Glenn effort to get Merit more actively involved with NANOG. Brian is backbone engineer, Glenn is DNS admin Merit Staff in Ann Arbor Brad, Jeff, Jason, Bert, Rick Watching via camera, Bert is on PC, these are all engineers with full time jobs, and very active with NANOG Merit NANOG Staff on site Sue, David, Larry, Carol, Val, Laurie, Teresa Many thanks to all of them for helping make these meetings a success, esp. in the video area. NANOG 37, Neustar All the sponsors! Dave Rand Bungi JD Frazer Userfriendly.org Tony Kapela Kapela and associates Google sponsored a break. Updates Accomplished Improved broadcast options and server Laura Kirkmeyer is onsite working to improve it. Improved video gear Network Monitoring Tools Larry, monitoring wireless gear Organizational Changes Appointment of Merit CEO Next quarter Voting Process Charter Revisions Registration Process New switch hardware Merit CEO arrives Possibilities Presenter's website? New CEO is Don Welsh, starts July 10th, will join the October meeting. After this meeting, get ready for voting and charter updates. Improve the registration process! Improve switch gear for network connectivity. Anyone who wants to donate some switch gear, talk to them! :) Jared asks what they need? Talk to David Gilbertson, he has specs on what they need. Steve Feldman did a great job at heading up the PC; his authenticated website for the voting is great! Some of the delay is that the presenters have to go through filter at Merit to get in, and then another filter to get it up on the website. Trying to improve communication between the systems. Challenges and Opportunities Most IT organizations are facing: escalating costs declining, flat, or slightly increasing revenue Most are striving to reduce costs, and increase revenues Reduce costs: salaries, general expenses, etc. Increase revenues: attract and retain customers enhance and add services, etc. Merit isn't alone Don't want NANOG to become a trade show; the sponors play an important part of the budget mix; how can we make it a good investment to put $8,000 into a beer and gear NANOG 36 - Dallas, Feb 06 Revenue 181,692.18 Expenses Salary 75,717.79 Non-Salary 143,786.61 hosting 79,648.51 G&A 47,482.04 Per Meeting Balance: ($37,812.22) FY 06 close Revenue 676,540 reg 402,870 B&G 192,000 break 30,000 sponsors (ARIN) 51,670 Expenses Salary 173,225 Non-salary 567,510 eqpt 7,440 supplies 38,678 merit staff trav 34,698 non merit trav 0 speakers 0 hosting 285,528 G&A/overhead 201,166 Balance ($64,195) 2.25FTE Plant Marind(?) does an audit of these numbers. Not such a good year for NANOG. NANOG budget assumptions Revenue ~$10K increase based on 3 meetings per year, 400 attendees @$350 each B&G sponsors per meeting @$8,000 ea (hoping 8) Break sponsors per meeting @$6,000ea (hoping 5) continued support from ARIN Expenses hotel salaries ~$43K less supplies & equipment ~$25K less will ask the community for gear they might be able to donate to them. Chris Malayter asks if they can put a website up with requests for hardware donations, etc. overhead ~$10K higher FY 07 predictions Revenue 686,000 reg 410,000 BandG 192,000 breaks 34,000 ARIN 50,000 Expenses Salaray 130,000 non-sal 556,162 eqpt 8,265 sup 12,675 staff trav 24,000 hosting 300,000 GandA/over 211,000 Balance ($641) 1.65FTE Trying to keep registration numbers down. As a 501c.3 organization, has to do cost recovery; NANOG must be able to cover its own costs. Future meeting sites Oct 0g St. Luis 1st week feb, 07, toronto, Joe abley 4th week May 1st/2nd week June 07 Josh, Miami Fall 07 w/ARIN, TBD Bill Norton asks about the GandA/Overhead category. GandA/Overhead is paying the university to do accounting, covers rent for the space, it's a general business expense, it'll get paid one way or the other. Telephones, insurance, legal fees, etc. Bill Norton:, back to Dallas. Hosting seems to be damn expensive, hotels are just so expensive. Could a university handle 400 people? Yes, lots of universities have large freshmen lecture halls. Internet2 meetings are always on university campuses. Lodging close to meeting hall is good. You can give feedback on the survey form about where you would like to have meetings!! ChrisM, Broadwing; if we move to a university for the sessions, how much would a bussing scenario cost, would that outweigh the hosting costs? Are universities also union shops? Access to the wiring infrastructure tends to be one of the biggest expenses. Hopefully, university campus would allow us to avoid that very large expense. The meeting setup would be very different, of course. Rob Seastrom, inter.net; the event horizon seems to be a little further out, at least; but if you can plan further ahead, at least a few years out with some flexibility with the hotel on the exact week, gives some very strong negotiating positions with hotels. Betty agrees, everyone is somewhat held hostage until we announce dates, since it limits when people can travel. There's certainly a committment from the SC and Merit to try to get ahead of the eight ball. It takes a committment from the community to help Merit host. People need to step up to the plate, and help provide transit for these meetings. Merit doesn't know where people have transit! It can make or break the cost of the facility for 20-30% based on negotiating leverage. Rodney is working on slides for presentation tomorrow; five companies involved in getting packets from here to the internet, because of the rules of the facility. Not easy, and the single biggest task a host has is to solve that problem! The further out we can plan the meeting, the easier it is to plan logistics for hardware and network connectivity. Randy notes--what about self-hosting? Just go to a hotel in Biloxi, and do it that way. RenProvo: RIPE does it well, has a known location everyone knows the cheap hotels, the hotel is pre-plumbed, etc. Pick one meeting a year, so that everyone knows the fees, the footprint, and works out a better cost for the hotel year over year. Betty has been looking at where it has been easiest to host, and cheapest, with best registrations? Still need to go to a host to ask about transit costs, instead of waiting for a host to come to them. Randy notes if we can't come up with transit, as a community we have bigger problems!! Rodney Joffe gets 60-70 emails with people offering preferences of where they'd like it to be! It's really difficult to find out how many people would come if it was in a particular city. Difficult to pick a city, and then hope enough people will show up to support it. DanG; may consider separating out the transit provider vs the hosting provider. Limited number of facilities-based wiring shops that can show up, vs companies that can offer people to host. If you can split the transit hosting from the location hosting, may be a more viable option. The ability to keep Merit's travel budget low is a big part of the issue; Carol Wadsworth, Brad? and one other get on hotels and see them for the first time on Friday, figure out the details. Having people who know NANOG to be eyes and ears would be good. ChrisM notes having direct flights in from cities, and other countries, keeping weather in mind (flip Feb and June, please!) will help give an idea of what the registration numbers will be. Betty notes that they got feedback from the community that they need to keep the room rate manageable, they try to find places that keep the room rate below $150/night. someone (puerto rico IX?) at mike asks why have 3 meetings a year, why not have 2 meetings a year? More rare, will be more attractive, bring more registration and lower expenses. Randy jumps in; the issues Betty hits are mostly independent of that; most people's managements don't care if you go to 2 or 3 meetings a year, it's the expenses that matter. BillN asks if they limit Beerandgear sponsors; yes and no; depends on venue. If there's room, they let them in. If it's a small room, they turn away. If a room is too crowded, people don't stay, it's not a good sell. Carol keeps an eye on the space, to fit vendors and food in the room; has varied from 12 to 6, which also affects the revenue coming in. $8K per beer and gear sponsor, sounds like a good revenue to tap, why not aim to go with 12 per meeting to help with the costs? MikeHughes--reverse psychology on sponsorship; if you have fewer slots, raise the costs for the exclusivity at smaller venues; Cisco and Juniper will be more likely to pay to have a foot in the room in front of the engineers. Betty notes the companies like the ability to plan ahead of time for sponsoring based on fixed costs. AvivaGarret, from Juniper; prorated costs based on revenue of the company, so bigger companies pay a bit more. Betty notes that leads to a pressure for smaller companies to sponsor, if it's sufficiently cheaper. Random at the mike notes the costs to attend are generally fixed, while costs to provide the meeting are variable. Why not go to fixed locations so the expenses are better understood. Betty notes people like shorter trips, so the moving of locations gives people who don't like to travel a better shot of going. JoeAbley, smaller regional meetings have sponsorship structures which allow companies to give a single amount, and they are a sponsor for all meetings being held. Betty notes they said Yes to ARIN for that model. DanG notes that companies have wanted to do parties like Yahoo, or hospitality suites in hotels as well. $9k-$16k revenue from a hospitality suite easily, why not consider them? Randy notes that there are no private parties allowed at NANOG; must be open to all if you're associated with NANOG. But how commercial do they want to be? It's like the internet, it mostly works, so there's not a huge pressure to make drastic changes. JaredMauch, NTT, what about bumping the reg fee by $25, over 3 meetings, 400 people, that will help adjust the numbers. Very few people in the room are very sensitive. Randy notes the price sensitivity for the reg isn't as high as hotel price sensitivity. Rob Seastrom, If you're passing through to an employer, not as price sensitive, as a consultant, much more price sensitive. Jared notes his was only talking about $25 for reg! Betty notes that Merit takes very seriously the pressure to not raise rates. They don't want to make it into a trade show either. pleasure out of it. But having at least one home base would be nice--but who would pick it? Betty notes there are questions on the survey about where home base would be. They look at registration counts as the way to tell where good locations are. Important points are for community to tell Merit what *we* think is best--what locations, how much the costs should be, etc. That wraps up Betty's section--if you still have questions for her, track her down in the hallway. Rob Seastrom does the ML presentation Mailing List Commitee Status Update (Wasn't sure Chris Malayter would be here) Agenda Status update on list committee membership process flow recap old business AUP additions Present Committee Sue Joiner: Merit Chris Malayter - Broadwing (Chair) Steve Wilcox Rob Seastrom Process Flow User sends an email to the list an MLC volunteer judges email to be in violation of the AUP The SC is authorized to make changes per the NANOG charter (7.1.1) For one-off violations, an MLC volunteer sends an offlist note to the offending user, giving guidance about the list AUP and explaining the MLC volunteer's concern. For repeated violations, the MLC discussion on the nanog-admin list may result in an official warning being sent to the user, outlining the specific violations the user has been responsible for, and specifying that further violations might result in revocations of posting privileges For repeated... Pending AUP addition Sent to nanog-futures on 10 Apr 2006 after being presented in Dallas,. List feedback, while minimal, was overwhelmingly supportive Challenge/response sender whitelisting software which requires interaction by any party to validate a post to the NANOG mailing list as non-spam shall be treated by the list adminstration team like any other condition that generates a bounce message Subscribers with software (such as but not limited to TDMA) that is (mis)configured in this fashion are subject to removal from the list without notice and are... Proposed AUP addition (not discussed yet on nanog-futures) Replace current 3.5 (Emergency Actions) with the following 3.5: If Merit determines that a subscriber is behaving in such a way that the operation of the NANOG list (or other associated Merit systems) are threatened, then Merit may initiate emergency proceedures to defer the threat. Within 12 hours of Merit's determination... Proposed AUP addition (discussed briefly at NANOG 36) Subscribers with software (including but not limited to MTAs and MUAs) that is (mis)configured in such a fashion as to send vacation notices to either the mailing list or to individual list posters are subject to removal from the list without... List stats: current subscribers (as of jun 4 2006): 8012 total messages jan-jun: 2899 list traffic stats jan-jun jan: 694 feb: 665 mar: 670 apr: 453 may: 399 June to 04 Jun 2006: 18 messages as weather gets nicer, people seem to go outside and stop emailing. current nanog subs: 8012 nanog-post: 7183 nanog-digest: 1322 nanog-announce: 653 nanog-futures: 192 total messages jan-jun: 2899 jan: 694 - 2 warn, 1 ban feb: 665 - 5 warn, 0 ban mar: 670 - 6 warn, 0 ban apr: 453 - 1 warn, 0 ban may: 399 - 0 warn, 0 bans jun: 18 so far, 18 messages, 0 warns, 0 bans summary list stats, jan-jun 2899 messages 14 warnins 1 bans no interventions When do we request that people change their behaviour on the list? warnings are only made over violations of the AUP here's the AUP as it exists online at: http://www.nanog.org/aup.html 1. Discussion will focus on Internet operational and technical issues as described in the charter of NANOG. 2. Postings of issues inconsistent with the charter are prohibited. 3. Postings to multiple mailing lists are discouraged. 4. Postings that include foul language, character assassination, and lack of respect for other participants are prohibited. 5. Blatant product marketing is unacceptable. 6. Postings of political, philosophical, and legal nature are discouraged. 7. Postings to the list must be made using real, identifiable names and addresses, rather than aliases. Posting modification stats: jan-jun (numbers correspond to AUP rules above) 1: 1 2: 1 3: 1 4: 3 (foul language, character assination) 5: 2 6: 0 7: 8 (real names, not aliases) Example of email requesting someone to fix their posting name. Questions? Nope, people must be getting hungry. back to Randy. Open discussion PC Issues What subjects might interest the members but are not at the meeting because the talks were rejected by the PC? Q: how do we know what was rejected? A: you don't. sorry. SteveF doesn't remember off the top of his head. Randy: perhaps minutes could note which topics were shot down, or which area? SteveF notes sales talks get shot down. Or, if there's a lot of talks in a similar area; tutorials, had 3 or 4 about MPLS, picked one, rejected rest. The others were fine, but they didn't want to overbalance the program. Some just lacked polish, requested more polish. He can't remember any other rejections. Oh, one IPv6 tutorial that was not accepted this time. PC minutes? With what content? Shows and no-shows? PC issues should the reviews be signed or anonymous? The press: how should we deal with attendees from the press? attendance fee? photography? JoeProvo: is Paul Ferguson the press? BillN: side point, audience has thinned out quite a bit, so straw polls are pretty meaningless. Merit will discourage people from taking photos during the meeting; how do people feel about that? Many other people take photos at the meeting, maybe we should get some idea from the rest of the group about they feel about it? Betty notes as Merit that they are asking people to refrain; they're not policing, but because they're unsure, if people could just refrain from taking pictures of the presenters or the BOFs, until the more formal, open discussion happens for the fall meeting. Not enough people here to represent a consensus. Q: what is the concern? A: People don't want their pictures in the press, people will be giving heated opinions tomorrow and this is NOT a public venue. Randy does not want his picture taken. Vanessa Evans, LINX: is it just the press, or is it any/all photos being barred? Randy notes Ren has been taking pictures of attendees for a facebook type website. Ren notes she will remove pictures, upon request, if they aren't comfortable with their pictures being online. Randy notes that for this meeting, the badges will attempt to identify people as press, and all attendees are asked to NOT take pictures inside the rooms; but in the hallways, you can be approached by the press, or by Ren, so you have the power to consent first. Marty, Renesys, that is across the board, press or not? Yes, Betty and Randy confirm that. Sylvie from Teleglobe notes she doesn't mind people she knows taking pictures of her, but random others, she doesn't like taking pictures of her or groups she's in. Ollie Jacobson--why is it coming up in this forum, and not others? People taking pictures on the dance floor at RIPE, for example. Is there a specific history around this? Randy notes the IETF has gone through this issue. Rob Seastrom, he doesn't care about open photography, they're welcome to take pictures of him. Randy is open about non-press taking pictures. BillN, there may be broader support for this if it was just press. Marty from Renesys: he didn't have any photos of him online until 2003, and then he started finding pictures of him online due to other people's choices. He asks to not have pictures taken, as he doesn't have permission from his company to be photographed at this conference. Two or Three meetings a year? Amortization of fixed costs at Merit Cost to attend Changes would be in 08 FILL OUT THE SURVEY! Marty, Renesys, thanks to Betty on the presentation, came out well. He supports two meetings a year, his numbers show that if there's a reduction in GandA by 1/3, you'd come out ahead based on attendees. He feels there's already too many meetings to attend all of them, with ICANN, RIPE, peering forums, DNS meetings at Cisco, etc. Merit doesn't own the issue of whether we meet twice a year or three times a year; it's up to the community. What serves the community better? They'd prefer two meetings a year. Some numbers don't change. Some of the overhead costs, the costs of rent, and other fixed costs won't change, they just get split over two instead of three; the hotel costs go down, the staff travel, logistics, supply costs, etc. Hold to same plan for FY07, and then see what we do in FY08. What about sharing venues with the peering forums, could there be sharing between meetings that are open and have common membership? RobSeastrom again: assuming one stays with ARIN, it would be reasonable to think the other one might be a bit longer, to cover more material. A week-long meeting can be tiring; hopefully the model will take the human factors in as well. Betty agrees: The longer the meeting, the greater the hotel expense as well. Adding a day adds to the hosting costs as well. Real issue is the partnership; how often do we want to travel and attend meetings? Commit to some plan for the next year so we can schedule for it. BillN: If we go with a longer meeting, how much will it cost for the longer meeting if we two two meetings a year? If we assume that a big piece of revenue is attendance, and we go to two meetings, we lose break, beer and gear, ARIN sponsorship, etc. Some of those predictions show that if we stay at reg of 400 paid per meeting, but two meetings, we lose BandG, breaks, we still keep fall meeting with ARIN, and one-non-joint meeting, to cover the expense balance would need to raise the registration cost by about $75 per person. Lots of variables that go into it, not a simple savings game to go to 2 meetings a year from 3, since you lose a revenue chunk. BillN notes if you raise reg fees by a chunk, most people don't care that much, based on the straw poll here. Betty: the program is the big challenge; the relevance of the program, is there enough program content that is relevant for 3 meetings a year, or will we get better content out of 3 days twice a year? John Christoff--there seem to be topical issues that we may lose if we wait too long between meetings, like the Cogent depeering. MikeHughes, working group chair at RIPE, one thing they've noticed with policy items; around each meeting you get a bell curve of activity, then it trails back off. Going from 3 to 2 reduced activity on working groups. But the two meetings has been fairly well received; but policy group pretty much ground to a halt due to too much time between meetings. Betty noted reduced volume on the list after the February meeting with light attendance. Could be a similar effect with NANOG. Rob Seastrom, can gen up number of articles month over month for past 5 years on the list; then we could track against attendance. Rob, Interramp?, if you go a whole year between geographically undesirable locations, you can lose track of people; with 2 meetings, may be stuck with only one meeting a year that's not in an undesirable location. Sylvie, Teleglobe, is the timing of the events planned this way? June, October, Winter? Huge snowstorm in winter seems to impact the winter meeting attendance on a regular basis. Jared notes it's harder to get flying in the summer, and central airports have thunderstorms that destroy schedules worse than snow. Feb. poor attendance most likely due to valentines day more so than snow. Betty is avoiding valentines' day from now into the future, blacklisted! Ren: Can it be detached from RIPE!! October is right after RIPE, you have to leave RIPE early to make NANOG. Randy: The schedules were chosen to avoid IETF, there were no RIPE and Apricot meetings at the time either. Ren: people support multiple continents, with meetings back to back, you have to pick one of the two meetings to ditch, and NANOG loses out. Randy notes registry and ops are tough to try to fit into the calendar year. JoeAbley notes the survey data shows actually a small overlap in the attendees: the survey had checkboxes with how many other conferences you attend. Didn't have much detail around it. Ollie Jacobson--that's the exercise RIPE has done, we should have "should avoid" and "should not avoid" dates? Randy: trying to coordinate with other ops and registry groups. There's an online calendar they use for tracking what days to avoid, including PacNOG, SaNOG, IETF, and others. If you take that list, and then add a cushion of a week between them, there's not enough days in the year. The internet is just too popular. The electronic survey form can be updated for Monday afternoon; hard copy is too late to update. So, USE the electronic form! the paper form is just twice the pain. Mike Hughes. Yes, dead trees are bad. Is there any point to take data from previous years, and try to do some union with the different meetings, given the attendee lists from each set of conferences. Betty notes there's summary data around that that was boiled down during the reconfiguration. Marty, Renesys, let's not quibble over $50 worth of toilet paper in the restrooms. The GandA cost isn't worth arguing over. Business may require you go from RIPE to NANOG, he does that, he has no pets, others might not be able to; he's seen the lists, and for those that overlap, yes, it's tough. Betty--No, not happy with GandA, but not sure... oh. Pets. It is what it is for 2007, we can think about changing it for 2008. ML AUP change, Rob Seastrom covered it. How can we make NANOG more useful, fun, informative? What are benefits of presentations, BOFs, tutorials, NANOG's future Audience: who do we serve? Level of organization Minimalist (already 3 committees) Learn from IETF/ISOC (why NOT to go down that path!) SC, PC, ML: too much or too little? Content? Does anyone other than Martin read the SC minutes? Ren is leading the charge on 2 meeting vs 3 meeting; if you don't fill out the survey and speak up, since it's on the web page, you lose your chance to vote for how the future of NANOG plays out. MikeHughes notes the survey was ACL'd to only be available to the local net only in years past... Betty notes it's not restricted; on the nanog website; did you attend locally, or did you attend remotely is the one question that narrows down who is filling out the feedback. NANOG is not a membership organization, anyone can fill out the survey. RobSeastrom: one request, for things that are binary in nature--can there be a "don't care" option? Betty: yes, SC has seen it, there's space for comments. If you'd like to work with her to do some modelling, she's more than happy to sit in open seating and cover it. Complete the Survey!! And with that, meeting wraps up at 20:02 hours Pacific Time. *whew!*