2010.10.03 NANOG50 NANOG Community meeting nots

Mon Oct 4 14:58:31 UTC 2010

Here's my notes from the community meeting from last night;
sorry about being a bit late with them, the meeting ran long,
and we dashed straight out from it to the social, which had
already started by the time we wrapped up.  ^_^;;
Apologies for any typos still in the notes, I did a quick
proofread this morning while jotting down this morning's
notes, so it wasn't terribly thorough.

Bcc'ing to nanog-futures@ as well, as it is germaine
to both lists.

Notes are also available online at
http://kestrel3.netflight.com/2010.10.03-NANOG50-community-meeting.txt

Matt

NANOG50
2010.10.03 community meeting notes

AGENDA:
Steering committee report -- steve feldman
Progream committee report dave meyer
Communicatons commitee report

This is a dialog, not a lecture; come to the mic
with questions, comments, etc.

steering committee report -- steve feldman
blue badges are steering committee

highlights since nanog49:
day-to-day nanog stuff has Just Been Working
 thanks to hosts and merit for that!
prep for 2010 election
Postel network operator's scholarship
preoparation for this and future meetings, through 2011
 and the transition

After NANOG50
 select new PC members
 select new CC members (nominations still open)
 start on planning for 2012 meetings
  and the transition

Mailing lists...look at website for list.

Dave Meyers, Program Committee Report
PC has yellow badges; if you like things on program,
come let yellow badge people know.
PC members really pull the conference together.

PC committee member list

Communications Committee Report, Mike Smith
Red target badges!
List of CC members is shown.

They try to take a light hand when running the list;
nanog-futures is a great forum, please do speak up.
They are very much in need of more people, so make
sure to nominate your friends (or enemies!)!

Marketing Working Group -- Cat Hoffman
members listed..
Full sponsorship attendance at NANOG49
 sponsorship appreciation lunch and pre-promotion for NANOG50
 Atlanta NANOG50
 full sponsorship promotion attendance
 pre-promotion of NANOG51
Vendor Collaboration
 check it out in Chastain Room (may be called NOG room)

Merit Report  --  Andy R.
Thanks to meeting host, TelX
network connectivity, engineering
power in general session
onsite meeting staffing
2 socials!

Other contributors for logistics
Break sponsors, breakfasts, etc.

Beer and Gear is Monday evening, they double as
breakfast sponsors as well.

Vendor collaboration is Comcast, Arris, A10, [and one more I missed]

Merit Network Team
Larry Blunk, David Bilbertson , DSue Joiner ,Dawn Khan, Rob Levitt,
Carl Wadsworth.
Pete Hoffswell

NANOG 49, SF
Attendance
607 total (record!)
505 PAID
102 WAIVED
199 newcomers (32.7%)
9 students
26 countries
31 US states plus DC

NANOG49
revenue 409,061
expense, 423,340
balance -14,279

hosting was 184,221; SF was about 80,000 more than
previous meetings; expense place to host, about 34%
more than other locations.

2 big staff transitions at the beginning of the year,
from Merit, put against the revenue from meetings,
cost of about 40,000.

2 meetings upcoming
NANOG51 Jan30-Feb2, Miami FL, Terremark
NANOG52, June 12-15, 2011 Denver, CO, Alcatel, Lucent

NANOG Election
election process
SC candidates
NANOG charter amendment
NewNOG charter

Election slide, giving eligibility
instructions should be on NANOG page; you can vote any
time up to Weds morning.
Announced Weds at lunch.

Please, if you have opinion, please vote!

SC candidates, 5 for 3 positions
Thanks to Joe Provo who is aging out after 4 years.

Rob Seastrom
Richarch Steenbergen
John Osmon
Michael K Smith
Patrick Gilmore

Order is random, don't read anything into it.

Rob Seastrom starts off with his statement, listing his
experiences and background; his position statement is on
the web, you can read it there.  He'd like to help make
Nanog stand on its own, and has some 501(3c) experience.

Richard Steenbergen is up next; he's been on PC for 4
years, he's termed out there, so now he's running for
SC.  He thinks NANOG's been doing good job on the reform
process that last 4 years; he'd like to help make the
transition go smoothly, keep mailing list on topic,
make it a good place for engineers to get information.
And if you vote for him, you get custom-printed M&Ms.  :)

Michael K. Smith--chair of communications committee;
been on SC as non-voting member for past year, working
to make newNOG a success.  Has been working on doing
business modelling for the organization, and wants to
keep doing it!

Patrick Gilmore--he helped start newNOG, and wants to see
it through; there's five really good candidates, so whomever
you pick, newNOG will be in good hands.   If you like what
he's done, vote him back; otherwise, vote him off and signal
a desire for change.

SC members will become newNOG board members, btw.

New Charter Amendment on Ballot
Lets Merit wind down, and newNOG wind up; it's an
endorsement for newNOG organization.  If you're in
favour of it, vote for it.  :)

There is also a newNOG election happening at the same
time; everyone from NANOG will be eligible to vote for
newNOG as well.  Merit is running that as well.
Shall we adopt the new bylaws as drafted by Steve
Gibbard?  Yes/No?  Otherwise, the hastily done ones
from Steve stay in effect.
Bylaws do allow for amendments, so mistakes in either
case can be rectified over time.

That's it for the NANOG section of meeting.

Now over to Sylvie's slides.

Transition report--newNOG
that's a placeholder name, once we have rights to a better
name, we'll use a better name.

milestones
next activities
reports from WGs

created 5 working groups
membership WG (kris foster)
governance (steve gibbard)
development (chris quesada)--getting revenue stream
finance (dan golding) -- budget to spend the revenue
technical (richard steenbergen)--support technical needs
 of the organization

Sept 24, applied for 501(c)(3) with IRS; that will take
 many weeks, as it was a very, very thick sheaf of
 documents.
Loan by ARIN to fund an executive director position
 Merit has loaned money to hire the executive director

newNOG treasury
income: donations:     11,125.00
other income              102.11
Expenses: hotel deposit 5,000.00
 IRS application [get rest of numbers online]

Executive director search
 accepting applications until Oct 15th
  http://www.newnog.org/
Form an RFP working group
  get involved!!  send mail to board at newnog.org
Issue RFP by end of Oct to contract
  Association management services
  IT services
  Conference Management services

Membership-wg at newnog.org

Ren got drafted to do this.
But Joe can stand in for her.

membership-wg, hammered out membership structure to
fold into the bylaws
Basic overview of different member models used in
different organizations following nanog49 (thanks Janine!)

fine print listing of qualifications for newNOG membership
is put up.

There was discussion on newnog-futures about the types
of memberships.

Steve Gibbard, governance working group, notes that the
life member was no longer 10x, it's now at board discretion.

Joel Jaegli, on 9/2, failed to get a rise, he's not sure
he'll vote against them, he would have preferred different
language in them.  The other bearded one is not here to
voice his thoughts.
Joe agrees that this will be an iterative process over
time.
Joel notes that once success from last time around was
that we left a lot up to the discretion of the various
orgs responsible for them; that is a useful model to
consider going forward, such as membership models and
dues.

Kevin Oberman, ESnet, he's been here for many years;
the logo used to be a drawing of a necktie with
the words "official member"--those who had an interest
paid their money, and showed up.
Why do we need to have requirements for demonstrated
professional competence as part of the requirements?
Why can't we simply let anyone who wants to pay,
show up to the meetings?  Why can't we let it be as
open as possible?
Joe notes that the openness idea is to have paid
attendance separate from 'membership' status.

Dan Golding--not part of membership working group;
the weasel words were so that anyone who wanted to
join could; you need to have some definition for
membership for non-profits for IRS.
Otherwise, you have to list it as "those with interest
in topic area X".
Some are happy with outcome, some are unhappy.
We got the best output we could from 14 person team;
with larger group, it's hard to come up with output
everyone likes, or is comfortable.
When you have larger working groups, concensus is
challenging.
Also, membership working group was pretty vague,
pie-in-the-sky for its goals.
Lessons learned; fewer people, more input from the
board, more constrained choices.

Fellow members selected by board, for outstanding
service to the community.

Board doesn't have to actually *add* any fellows,
but the option is there; it can be dropped if
people don't think it's useful.

Martin Hannigan, man who wears many hats.
Neutral with respect to NANOG to newNOG; not
subscribed to futures mailing list; heard that
randy made some interesting comments about it.
He doesn't really support it; he appreciates it's
hard work; but it sounds kind of obnoxious.  A good
deal of his advancement came from NANOG, and it
would have been much harder without access to it.

Joe: boilerplate was from IEEE, the front loading
of the lifetime membership was to build the bank.
difficulty with travel allows for people who can't
make the meetings to still participate.
the membership is to establish an eligible pool
for voting on corporate matters, not limit meeting
attendance.
it also establishes a revenue stream.
And a way to recognize one's peers.

fundamentally:
Need members who can vote
Need revenue stream from members

John Springer--are we all members?
At present, yes, for the first member.  After the first
election, you have to join to be a voting member.
So, as of Wednesday, if we pass this, then we all cease
to be members.

Current interim bylaws leave it up to the board.

Bill Norton asks--the vote for bylaws is thumbs up or down;
it's an all or nothing vote right now, no way to vote down
on membership.

RS asks Martin Hannigan about his question; turns out
he was asking why we needed a membership structure at
all?
Turns out that for non-profit organizations, you must
satisfy some prerequisites to become a member, like for
a credit union, you must belong to a legally qualified
category to qualify for voting.
Martin is happy to understand that, and will vote yes,
as he thinks that this group can pluck a turd out of
a punchbowl; but he thinks that membership qualifications
are problematic, and would be happy to have one that's just
pay $50 to get a membership card.
Steve notes that there's sufficient disagreement on the
topic, we'll probably need to go back and adjust the
membership topic some more.

Matt Petach from Yahoo asks how we vote for changes
to membership rules if we pass the new bylaws, and
cease to be members at that point?
If we pass the new bylaws, people will have to pay
the $100 to become members again in order to vote
for changes.

Better is the enemy of good enough; are we moving in
a positive direction, as we refine this, year over
year?

David Farmer, UofMinn--this is eligibility for voting
that we're talking about; when he first looked at it,
it wasn't clear it was about voting, it seemed that
applied to those who could participate.  We need to
be very clear what the restrictions on membership
imply, and what participation people can or cannot
engage in.
The IEEE model is *not* that way, so we need to be
clear if we point to it as the boilerplate that we
used for this.

Michael Sinatra, UCB, is there an intent to provide
discount for meeting fees for NANOG members?  It
has certain negative impacts; perhaps extend earlybird
pricing for members?
Once we have membership, we need to streamline it,
and codify the benefits that paid membership brings
with it.

If you are going to do that, you have to be very
careful that there is decoupling between membership
and participant status, so that we don't put participants
disenfranchised or feel turned away.
Perhaps, but we do want to make people want to become
members.

Dan Golding notes there was some discussion about
the breakeven point between membership and meeting
costs.

Joel Jaegli notes there are people who participate
who do not attend meetings; this will allow them
to participate more in the process.

Financial slides will be online after this.

How can you help?
participate in the process; it's expected to be iterative,
there will be refinements as we go along.

Governance working group, Steve Gibbard herding cats
to get bylaws drafted.

The working group was thrown open to everyone who wanted
to join, and got a large list.
He puts up a list of the major contributors.

Draft by-laws were written up; but they didn't write up
the membership section, that was the membership wg.  :D
rest of section was mainly merging NANOG charter with
interim newNOG charter.  Took structure from existing
charter.

There is an elected board that has actual power;
executive director will serve as board member,
for tie breaking, and to keep voting the same.

Executive director selected by elected members of
the board; the board can remove the executive
director.

Added some extra committees:
membership/development
budget/finance

Amendability--by majority of membership or temporarily
by the full board.

Assumption that we got a lot of things wrong, so goal
was to make it as amendable as possible.

The ability of board to temporarily amend was mainly
done to allow for adjusting rules to make IRS happy
for the first year; after the first year, it expires
unless specifically revoked.

It sounds like there's a lot of concern about the
membership rules, but not as much about the rest
of the bylaws.

If the new bylaws are passed, we have a provision
to allow the new members to vote them out or
to change them over the coming year.

Bill Norton notes that we're putting faith in the
steering committee to make changes to the membership
rules.  If we vote thumbs up on bylaws, we note that
we may have the board changing the rules over time; if
people pay lifetime membership now, will they be
immune to changes in the future, based on their
payment?

The fellows, setting of fees, etc. was all left to
the board.  The board could decline to set a fee, or
set the fee so high nobody wants to pay it, if they
want to take it off the table.
Could people be amended out of their membership?
That depends on what the board says, and what amendments
people bring to the table.

Patrick notes that it's a membership org; so there's nothing
stopping the members from voting to change the structure
after you buy your lifetime dues.  If you don't have faith
in the org, pay the annual dues; if you do have faith in
the org and your fellow members, then go ahead and pay it.
It really comes down to a matter of how much you trust the
other people in the room.

Don Welch, Merit networks; if the ED serves at behest of
board, it will be with some longevity, while board cycles
out.  The ED and assistant will have institutional knowledge,
compared to short term limits of the board.
Patrick notes the ED will be very powerful, as they will
have a seat on the board, as well as outlasting the rest
of the board.
It's a matter of making the right choice; the membership
can make an amendment to remove the ED if they can get
a majority to approve it.

development wg; Chris couldn't be here, but Sylvie can
talk about it.

Betty Burke, Chris Quesada, Valerie Wittkopf

sponsorship highlights:
additional sponsorship programs
 little change from attendee perspective
  beer and gear, breaks stay same,
  marketing, sales, still limited
 more flexibility for sponsors
  multiple sponsorship program, sponsors can provide
  for a calendar year, rather than just a single break or
  event.

Finance working group, with Dan Golding
Dan Golding, Bill Norton, Michael Smith, Tom Daly,
Duane Wessels, Board liason.

Remit:
Budget--create cash budget for now through 2012, a cash
budget based on sponsorship, revenues, etc.
Budget is done, waiting for board approval

create financial controls and systems to make sure
finances are being handled properly.

Budget is complete, submitted with IRS application,
board will review and vote on it this meeting.

Efforts ongoing for financial controls and systems.

Budget determined by looking at membership structures,
determine probable membership and meeting attendance.
provided a sounding board for development WG as they
created sponsorship models for 2011 and 2012 conferences.
(models were very conservative, we should be able to hit
those numbers).

Expense side; pretty limited data on what it costs to
run a conference; we have aggregate totals, but specific
breakdowns.
Extremely conservative expense model, buffer for all line
items, and assumes no discounts.

Some areas will not be clear until we've run a conference.
still pretty confident.

This was done as openly as possible; only requirement
was financial or accounting knowledge
all volunteers accepted

lots of collaboration with other working groups

If you are dissatisfied with this, please step up and
volunteer.

Small group, but everyone contributed spectacularly to
the overall effort.

most difficult issues:
 which sponsorship model to use
  shift from traditional "ala carte" to industry typical
  "bronze/silver/gold" model
 should make sponsors happier and easier to budget for.
 Staffing level of the organization
  small staff (ED), augmented by event assistants
 "Hooks" in budget for association mangement
  an option
Is the newNOG org financially viable?
 Yes, though this was not a starting assumption.
 If everything comes together, sponsorships, membership
  in reasonable numbers, etc.

This should be viable for 6 figures a year, which should
be enough to keep us afloat in case of bad events,
acts of god, and horrible conferences.

David Farmer, UofMinn--association management; are they
looking for a for-profit or non-profit doing it, some other
organization do it?
this will be part of RFP going out; it will be open,
it could be for profit, non-profit, etc; there's no
preconceived notions around who may apply.
We'll be looking for someone who is very good at
doing it.

Martin Hannigan--if buckets don't fill, what's the
contingency plan; do we have a line of credit, so that
the meeting can still happen in spite of poor revenue
stream?
A: Dan notes that was one of the biggest concerns
about this.
ARIN provided a good sized loan to fund the ED
position, thank you ARIN, that will get the ED
piece off the ground.  But for the conference
numbers were put in, they were worse than what
we are achieving today.  We tried to be as
disciplined as possible about any assumptions.
Between the ARIN loan and the conservative assumptions,
we should be OK.

Holly Jacobson, Cisco, this is great; one caveat,
there are some organizations that like to host
events in their home town; IETF has that kind of
issue.
A: Chris Quesada is pretty good about this; if
you want that type of privilege, you'd really pay
for it.  So, if someone wants it that badly, they
can get it, but it'll really cost them.

Right now, NANOG gets what's left for sponsorship
budgets, since we don't plan in advance.
Now that we're planning more than a year in
advance, we should be able to get into people's
budgets well in advance.

Mike Hughes, Google, there's often some provision
to restrict signing authority for the ED; they're
likely to have primary signing authority.  There
don't seem to be any financial restrictions or
expiration terms around it.
A: we'll probably add those in within a separate
document, requiring a second signature from
someone else in the org above a certain threshold.

Steve Gibbard jumps in to note intent in bylaws
was that board was final authority, and would decide
on what those limits were.
Patrick notes those limits aren't meaningful, since
ED can sign binding contract in spite of limits in
the bylaws.

John Curran said ARIN put a quarterly note at
30,000 note, 2%, payments begin 25 months after
initiation.  Each quarterly payment is contingent
upon report of progress, including financial
controls; so an ED that goes haywire will find
that the payment 90 days out will simply not
happen.
The controls ask for audited financial statements,
etc.

The ARIN note amortization is shown on screen.

Pat P.  financially strapped student; right now,
membership only buys you a vote; he's unlikely
to be able to spend the money.
Dan Golding notes he shouldn't get a membership;
$100/year for a vote is probably not a good
tradeoff.  But those who feel really strongly
about it, may make the choice.  Right now, the
assumption is 100 members to start with, topping
out at 250 in 2012.
There's probably 40-50 people just in the steering
committee, program committee, working groups, and
the recently rehabilitated.

At end of first year, end of 2011, 100 members,
2012, 250, 2013, 500 were the target member counts.

Social started 10 minutes ago.

Joel Jaegli noted a student served on the program
committee, so we should not count them out.
We should consider a discounted rate for students.

Election for bylaws; donny roiseman; vote is for
bylaws in full; in section 9, lists four committees,
but details five; how do we deal with errors like
that?
Look at controlling section of it; 2 mechanisms to
fix them; board can make adjustments with unanimous
vote; or wait a year and put it through the full
process; depends on severity of the error, and
community support.

Dan Golding:
When charter came out in 2005, there were at least
as many errors, and over next 24 months, they were
slowly corrected.  with any effort like this, there's
going to be errors that we'll find over time, it's
part and parcel with this process.

Louis Lee, will be a member for sure!

OK, we'll wrap up and go (late) to the social!

We wrap up at 1729 hours Pacific time.