NANOG costs

Wed Apr 10 15:47:09 UTC 2002

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 07:24:33AM +0100, Simon Lockhart wrote:
> 
> >We used to pay $150 or so to attend NANOG conferences.
> > Why are we charged $300 now?  Where is our $150,000+
> >going?
> 
> To be perfectly honest, I'm more than happy with the cost of the NANOG 
> conference.
> 
> I get probably 2 or 3 invitations to "conferences" every week through
> the post, and they're all the equivalent of $2000 upwards for a 1 or 2
> day conference. And these conferences are more a marketting hype, so
> will be *heavily* sponsored by the companies who present at them.
> 
> So, $300 for a 3 day conference, where it's stuff that's actually
> relevant and useful to my job, and isn't just a marketting exercise by
> the vendors who spam me with plenty of material anyway, is, in my view,
> good value for money.

It all depends on your financial status. I can think of quite a few very
competent "industry" people who have been unable to attend the recent
nanogs due to their companies either having gone under or being in the
process of going under.

But then again, there are already too many people who don't belong at a
NANOG showing up and crowding the rooms because they didn't know what to
expect. Keeping the costs slightly high does help both companies and
individuals consider carefully if they really care about all the geekiness
that goes on there, or if they are better off pursuing their "CCNA to be"  
careers through some other means. Not being elitist, just being realistic 
on what some people expect to get out of going to the conferences. This 
isn't Defcon after all. :)

So while I agree that it probably doesn't cost more then a few peoples
time for a few weeks, and the money is probably going to fund other Merit 
activities, I'm not certain that I'd want the prices dropped much lower. 
Unless of course, they'd like to give discounts for people who have 
attended many past NANOGs are who are now unemployeed. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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