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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Next NANOG
On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 06:28:51PM -0500, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote: > > >On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Rodney Caston wrote: > > > >> Vegas would be nice :) > > > >which allow Nanog to allow more people to go. Has there been talk about > >allowing more then 500 to attend? > > That brings up an interesting question. Is it desirable to have a > larger group? > I don't have a simple answer to this, but it's harder and harder to > get good interaction with a large group. > > Not sure if this is a problem just with my aging hearing and vision, > but it's often hard for me to make out all the presentations unless I > get front-row seating. Unfortunately, there was no wired front row > seating. > > /* begin some sort of mode > > it would be FAR easier to understand, even with large rooms, if people > would: > > use adequately large type on slides > know that graphs to be seen from a distance can't be too busy > SPEAK INTO THE MICROPHONE IN A CLEAR VOICE > > */ end crotchet mode. > > With a larger group, there's more of a drive for parallel sessions > and all of the attendant logistics. Even with parallel sessions, > there are limitations...many of the more popular IETF groups get far > too large for meaningful interaction. IDR is still within bounds, but > MPLS long ago passed the useful-meeting level. Even if you have read > all the drafts and qualify for the first couple of rows, without > using some NFL blockers, skipping conversation at the breaks, and > quite possibly getting there early, the seats fill up. Well, we run into a problem there... NANOG meetings have, as much as informative, been kind of a social event for those attending and I think that this has become a very large reason many people come. With a large group, that somewhat tends to go away. Then there are the logistical problems. You saw how crowded the convention rooms were. There were still some empty seats but those don't have tables for your laptops. If the meetings grow much larger than about 750, they start to rememble a short-lived convention than a technical conference. Not to mention the fact that most of them could no longer be held in a hotel. (There wouldn't be room.) If we started having multiple tracks and expanded the size to, say, 850 or 1000, then to have these things at hotels (for convenience) we would have to have two hotels side by side (one track in one and one in the other) to be able to have a large enough room so there would be enough seats for everyone (I don't know of too many hotels who have two sets of rooms the size we were in in Atlanta) and even then, if one track were way more popular than another, not everyone would be able to attend. The next answer for space is an arm of a convention center. And frankly, thats just not what I want to see happen to this thing. My only suggestion for future NANOG meetings is that , perhaps, there might be more vendors participating in the beer 'n gear portion of the meeting. I'm sure there are those with smaller devices (ie, not something that takes up 4 racks) or peripheral devices (eg, network sniffers, circuit analyzers, and such) who would be willing to ship some demonstration sets out for a 3 hour demonstration. And as for location, the one NANOG that was held in Phoenix seemed to go off really well. (Of course, that was in October when temperatures were more reasonable.) Then again, I'm biased. :-) I would be in favor of Vegas.. its a reasonably convenient place with good airport access. Of course, I think this is as much up to the sponsor (if any has been found) as anyone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wayne Bouchard [Imagine Your ] [email protected] [Company Name Here] Network Engineer http://www.typo.org/~web/resume.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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