Exotic meeting locations in North America

Tue Dec 5 11:58:37 UTC 2006

There really is no need for all NANOG meetings to have the same format.
In fact, if we accept the idea of varying formats, then some of the cost 
issues
can be tamed. For instance, one full meeting, one regional meeting, and 
one
special-focus meeting per year. The full meeting could be the one that is 
done
in conjunction with ARIN in a major center with full free networking, beer 
and gear
etc. 

The regional meeting would be in a smaller city with the expectation that 
the
majority of attendees are from the local area and don't have access to big 
travel
budgets. And the special focus meetings would target some specific topic 
and
pick a location to match. Some of the regional and special focus meetings 
would
not supply comprehensive free Internet access. If Internet access is 
available
people would pay for it and expect bandwidth limitations and higher than 
normal
latency. Depends on the location.

Here are some exotic locations that could work with a special focus.

Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut is rather exotic. The native language is 
neither English nor French nor Spanish. It has the issues of remoteness 
and reliance on satellite telecommunications. 

New Orleans has dealt dramatically with disaster recovery and rebuilding 
infrastructure. It is exotic because it is still in the process of 
rebuilding unlike most American cities.

St. John's, Newfoundland - a British colony until 1949 when it joined 
Canada, this is located on a large island, has a history in trans-atlantic 
telecommunications and still has a certain amount of undersea fiber 
connectivity.

Montpelier, Vermont is the smallest state capital in the USA, located in 
the Vermont,New Hampshire, Maine area which is rather more rural than the 
average in the USA as well as being somewhat mountainous terrain.

If you don't count New Orleans before Katrina, I'd guess that well over 
90% of NANOGers have never been to any of these four cities.

Other special focus areas might be:

Government and the Internet, Government and IPv6 - Washington DC.
The Research Community and the Internet - Ann Arbor MI
Network Security from a Military Viewpoint - Sierra Vista AZ near US 
Army's CECOM-ISEC headquarters
Strategic Aspects of Network Security - Harrisburg PA not far from US Army 
War College Strategic Studies Institute in nearby Carlisle

The idea of regional meetings is mainly to have a scaled down NANOG to 
reach a much wider audience that does not have a large conference travel 
budget. This is rather similar to RIPE's meetings in Qatar, Moscow, 
Bahrain, Nairobi and Tallinn.

The idea of special focus meetings is to do something entirely new, 
perhaps redefining the NANOG role and audience in the process. It is clear 
that the traditional NANOG audience is shrinking because the traditional 
Internet provider has been mostly replaced by larger general 
telecommunications providers. The same old topics and same old restricted 
set of participants doesn't have enough future potential to keep NANOG 
running in the long term. Special focus meetings can help bring in new 
blood.

-------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dillon
Capacity Management, 66 Prescot St., London, E1 8HG, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672    Internet: michael.dillon at btradianz.com
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493    Fax: +44 20 7650 9030

http://www.btradianz.com
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