DrPeering -

I went to NANOG and RIPE and APRICOT last year. I can’t put my finger on it but they felt different.  Is there a best or are they just different?

Scott Patterson

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Scott -

I used to travel to as many Internet Operations conferences as possible -- I was on the road three weeks out of every month. My experience is the same as yours - each Internet Operations conference was different... But...

I just got back yesterday from the New Zealand Operators Network Operators Group (NZNOG) conference and I have to say - I’m impressed with this one.  NZNOG is one of the best Internet Operations conferences in the world and I would like to enumerate why.

Top Ten Reasons why NZNOG is among the Best Internet Operations Conferences in the World

1. 1)NZNOG meetings are informal. You feel this in all of the presentations, in all of the discussions in the hallway and in the room. There is a real give and take between the attendees, with courtesy, a respect, and an enthusiasm that is just contagious.  I credit this ambiance to the grass roots nature of this conference - NZNOG started when a few folks wanted to get together and have a bunch of speakers and topics and found funding for it.
   

2. 2)NZNOG opens with a pre-conference dinner. For folks coming in from out of town, this is a great way to ease into a conference; gone be the days when the first experience with an event is to stand in line on some floor in a cold hotel, taking a number to get a badge, then find people to speak with who are groggily slurping down coffee who are in various stages of jetlag. No, your first experience at NZNOG is walking together en mass to a nice Indian restaurant, with a couple informal welcome speeches, with people migrating around tables swapping seats and stories over beers and food.  Just a perfect way to start a conference whose purpose is facilitating interaction among the attendees. Perfect.
   

3. 3)Social Time is recognized as a critical part of the agenda with long breaks, finger food instead of full on breakfast (no seats required to eat), and hosted on a beautiful university campus.  All of these things and other environmental factors  seemed to work together to assist in the interaction among the attendees.
   

4. 4)NZNOG organizers act more as hosts than colored badges to be honored. It felt as though I walked into a restaurant and the conference organizers were restaurant greeters, keen on making sure everyone had a good time and met the people it made sense to meet.  For the people who know everyone to make the time to introduce people around is incredibly valuable.
   

5. 5)NZNOG is still the right size - about 150 people.  We could all fit into a large lecture hall, tightly so we could see everyone, and make ad hoc comments without microphones. I will confess that some of the comments went by so fast I couldn’t recognize what was being said in this New Zealand form of the english language - it mostly sounded like english anyway ;-). Anyway, the point is that NZNOG is still small enough that discussions happen between the attendees seamlessly.
   

6. 6)NZNOG was chock full of solid topics given by eloquent speakers.  This is important because often, with the laptop computers in front of people, there are many distractions from absorbing a speaker’s message.  The topics ranged from technical (vulnerabilities in the routing architecture - Geoff Huston’s how routing announcements are lies), to practical (how we built a multi-10G interface router using off the shelf parts and open source software) to informative and future-looking talks. There was something for everyone.
   

7. 7)NZNOG was adaptive to the interests of the attendees.  How extraordinary that the conference would adjust its schedule and not try to hurry later speakers to make up for interesting discussions that arose from insightful talks.  It is a time management challenge of course, but the focus being on the attendees rather than rigid adherence to an agenda felt right.
   

8. 8)NZNOG allowed speakers to use their own laptops. This is commonly seen as a bad thing at most conferences because of the lag between speakers as they plug in.  However, at NZNOG, this simply provided a break for people to check their e-mail.  What I liked most was that speakers could update their presentations, animations, jokes, etc. based on what the previous speakers or discussions brought up. I liked, as a speaker, the familiarity with the presentation software and the content that was on my laptop, and that what I had practiced with would be available to me when I presented.  To me, it is far worse to hear a speaker highlight that they had a slick animation to illustrate a point but that it didn’t show up because the conference insisted on using PDFs. The other thing that happens is version skew - the speaker updates don’t appear in the slides on screen and that causes distractions.  I rather give the speaker the flexibility and creativity and allow the one minute break in the conference flow, which leads to my next point.
   

9. 9)NZNOG meetings ran informally but very professionally. The video services provided were top notch and provided by a van filled with video equipment running outside the conference doors.  With about five pro cameras and microphones brought in by an enthusiast (Richard Naylor I think), the video was captured and streamed, and from what I saw it looked great!  As a side effect, It felt like a community event with this sort of community involvement. The video presence was not invasive - it didn’t feel like the cameras and bright lights were on and ready to record your talk questions and discussion - they kind of blended in. The room was comfortable, the speakers were well rehearsed and insightful, the Internet connectivity was solid, the talks were interesting, and everyone got a lot out of the event - what more could you ask for?
   

10. 10) NZNOG remains a loose organization, demonstrating the flexibility to change over time.  This is a broader point.  Most Internet Operations conferences are operated by dedicated organizations, with formal roles and responsibilities, and perhaps somewhat formal community oversight. In the case of NANOG for example, Merit Networks runs the conference but has the program designed by a selected Program Committee of a dozen or so volunteers, selected by an elected group of Steering Committee members. All of this structure means that innovations have multiple levels of groups to go through - a real killer for creativity. This structure virtually guarantees that that the event will go on as it was when it received the organizational structure. Consider the uphill battle that a newly selected program committee person would have if they wanted to change something fundamental in the program structure -- no, they will go along for the ride for the first few meetings. If Jonny Martin and crew at NZNOG wanted to try something wacky, something never tried before, something that might fail completely or be a big hit, I believe they could and would try it.
    

In summary, NZNOG has something truly great. I believe that the Internet Operations conference breakthrough innovations will happen at NZNOG and other smaller Internet Operations conferences. This is one to watch.

Dr Peering

DrPeering@DrPeering.net

PS - It is important to acknowledge that there are real cultural differences across Internet Regions; a grass roots NZNOG launched in an Internet Region somewhere in Asia (for example) would probably look a bit different. These fora would probably evolve to meet the needs of the participants there much as NZNOG has done - it would just evolve differently to meet their needs.