NZNOG People,
This year and last we have been part of UniForum New Zealand's annual conferences. Each year a great deal of useful, interesting and even entertaining material has been presented to around fifty NZNOG subscribers who have turned up.
And each year there have been expressions of concern at the cost of registration for this conference. With that in mind, The University of Waikato's WAND group have offered to host a much lower-cost gathering next year.
Current thinking would see this held on the university's main campus in Hamilton on 29 and 30 January 2004. Indicative registration cost would be $100, with on-campus accommodation available at an indicative cost of $45 per night. The dates are dictated by availability of that low-cost accommodation.
It is possible that the running time might be extended beyond two days, depending on the number of presentations to be included. The university is able to offer auditoriums of suitable size for pretty well any plausible number of registrations and for sessions of varying sizes.
I'd be interested to hear from people who are likely to attend, and _if you are likely to attend one or the other_ whether you would prefer the same format as this year and last. If you wish to raise subjects for discussion, by all means reply to the list. If you just wish to state a preference, please instead reply to me directly.
- Donald Neal
Explanatory Note
NZNOG doesn't have subscriptions, paid staff and so on. That means that to have a face to face meeting with formal presentations, coffee and so on we need to have someone else do a fair amount of the work. This can be done either by working with an organisation who are already running a conference - and UniForum NZ are the best fit going for that option - or by having an NZNOG conference hosted by someone. This is our first attempt at taking the latter course.
We simply don't know whether large numbers more people will really turn up if we run a much lower-cost event. I don't personally believe that the five hundred plus subscriptions to this list are going to turn into hundreds of attendees at anything. We also don't know how large an obstacle to attendance moving outside Auckland will be. It may even be an advantage. This proposal is an exercise in trying it and seeing what happens.
Whether this is the format we adopt for 2004 or not, I believe a decision about the format of the next gathering should be made in the light of the response to this one.
Donald Neal | "And if you think virus
Technical Specialist | writers are scary, you
Operations Engineering | have clearly never met a
Integration & Services Divn. | tort lawyer."
Alcatel NZ Ltd | - The Economist 28/9/03
All opinions mine only. |
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