Notes from the most excellent newcomer breakfast that Ren hosted this morning, for those of you who were still nursing hangovers from last night and were unable to stagger down in time to join us. ;P Matt (what can I say, it's a compulsion...) 2008.02.18 Newcomer Breakfast notes Ren calls the breakfast to order at 0904 hours. Please fill in the front, introduce yourselves, and let us know if there's any way we can help you out. Look for yellow and blue tags, those people can help you with face recognition, and introduce you to people. This is not an exclusive society, by any means. Jared Mauch is a repeat SC member, and people are strongly encouraged to become involved. Todd Underwood, chair of PC introduces the history of NANOG, starting with the thrice yearly meetings of the engineering team at Merit for the non-profit educational network. After commercial networks got involved, NANOG was born. Merit happened to run the NSFnet engineering meetings, so they continued along running NANOG. About 4 years ago, the membership of NANOG decided they wanted a more active role in running the organization. The policy and direction are set by steering committee, while Merit still handles the administrative arm. Joe Provo is next up. Has been in the internet business since 94/95 timeframe, did access provider thing at RCN, been attending since 97 timeframe, figured he should help keep it going. He tossed his hat in the ring, and got involved in the program committee. Would very much like to hear from people who are attending to find out why people are attending, what makes it Philip Smith, chair of Steering Committee, comes from Australia, works for a vendor, so he's got a mixed background. The elections that Joe mentioned come up every year, there's usually a good crop of candidates that show up, which is a good thing. At the community meeting they listed some ways of contacting the steering committee, but one of the best ways is to just walk up and talk to them. He first got involved in the Internet in 1990 at university, and things just escalated from there. He's also involved in APRICOT which starts tomorrow (need to stop overlapping these conferences!)--other parts of the world do look to NANOG as the model for operational groups, and they base their operational groups around what NANOG has evolved into. We start doing around-the-room introductions; rather than slaughter people's names, I'll pass on trying to capture the list of attendees. Back to Ren Lightning talks have opened, there will be 3 today, and there are still slots for tomorrow and Wednesday, we encourage people to submit topics, especially government, research, etc. areas. Welcome again, glad to see everyone here, and enjoy your breakfast!