NZNOG People, There are now over three hundred addresses subscribed to this list. Most of those addresses seem likely to correspond to people with an interest in network operation. There were very pleasing turnouts at last year's Christmas functions.I wonder whether it's time to try organising a more serious gathering. Each year the North American Network Operators' Group holds three face to face meetings, at which subjects of interest to network operators - and few others - are discussed. The content varies from tutorials in how to make specific products do specific things to the results of network-related research by government-funded agencies. You can read the agenda from the most recent meeting at http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0110/agenda.html . I do not assume that it would be possible to do the same thing here, even if that was what people wanted. I do wonder whether there would be enough interest to justify trying to organise a face to face conference to be held this year. I'd welcome opinions on that from subscribers who might be willing to attend. (Please don't bother replying to express apathy - I can deduce that from silence.) We should assume that there would be some sort of charge for attendance, reflecting the cost of the venue, food and coffee, and quite possibly some effort to meet some costs of presenting. My guess is that we'd need enough content for close to a day to make the thing worth doing. One option would be a stand-alone event either in Auckland or Wellington (i.e. Auckland?) though our non-existant financial structure might cause problems with that. Another would be to clip ourselves onto the side of some moderately relevant conference such as that now being planned by UniForum NZ for mid-year, in the hope of avoiding all that tedious mucking about with venues and things. (No, I have not discussed this with UniForum NZ, though at least one of their board is sympathetic. :{)* ) For now, I'm primarily looking for expressions of interest in attending, along with suggestions about more or less convenient places and dates. Though of course to hear from volunteers to present material or do other work would be nice. Yes, I do realise that final decisions on attendance are bound to be driven by things like the location, the quality of the programme and whether any of your routers have had the magic smoke come out lately. Right now I'm chiefly seeking an idea of whether this is worth proceeding with further. - Donald Neal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not read it - please contact me immediately, destroy it, and do not copy or use any part of this communication or disclose anything about it. Thank you." ============================================================================== - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog