On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 01:09:40PM -0800, William B. Norton wrote:

On 12/4/06, Martin Hannigan <hannigan@world.std.com> wrote:

...

Focusing on expense is a short term way to manage a loss in the front end, the bottom line. It would be useful to talk about solutions that drive attendance, IMHO.

I agree and would like to see if we can brainstorm some ideas that might spur discussions, other ideas, etc.

1) Provide a mechanism for vendors to send to NANOG a box of schwag (Tshirts, USB memsticks, USB disks loaded with freeware, product literature, whatever). This might provide a subtle enticement to get a NANOG vendor kit. I know some people purposely bring a bag with too few clothes with the expectation of getting tshirts to wear on the way home.

since you can't register w/o specifying a shirt size, this is not an unreasonable assumption.

2) Identify/recruit Adhoc Working Groups that may be for small public groups, and provide sign-outable breakout rooms for these meetings. This would leverage the "we are all in the same place at the same time" aspect of NANOG, and facilitate additional value for the attendees that attend these meetings. Their alternative might be going out to dinner, which may or may not work as well. I guess the addition here as compared with previous break out rooms is to assign a schedule (time and a meeting name, a facilitator) to allocated meetings and descriptions of the meeting.

for me, NANOG is mostly irrelevent to me, I'm not a "Tier-X" ISP, and my networking needs only tangentially involve the 2x32 routes, MPLS/circuit switching @ 100Gb, or the like. So if I come to NANOG, its to (borrowing from friend Gibbard) get a new/fresh perspective on topics that are interesting to me.

...

I would hope that there is plan in place to address this for the Toronto meeting.

--bill