2008.02.18 NANOG Newcomer breakfast notes

Mon Feb 18 17:45:38 UTC 2008

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!