Results from the 2006 bit of the survey are below. I'll do the rest of the survey over the next few days. -- Simon J. Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT. "I'm sick of you people, your just a bunch of fickle mush heads" - Joe Quimby. NZNOG 06 -------- 38 Forms were returned and 37 were counted towards the total. Not all questions were answered by everybody. My comments are in [] brackets. I have tried to get quotes that generally represent what most people are saying. 1. Are you likely to attend NZNOG 06. Yes: 33 No: 2 Maybe: 2 2. Are you likely to attend Linux.conf.au in Dunedin at the end of Jan 06? Yes: 19 No: 18 3. The following are venues/times that NZNOG might be held. Please rate how likely your are to attend and which you would prefer. [ Most people who expressed a preference said they could attend both. ] (a) Jan/Feb: 7 (b) Mar/Apr: 9 Either: 16 "Yeah, but we've held great conferences in the past without ICANN. I just think that the whole ICANN/Internetnz thing has the capability to hijack NZNOG. " "May not be able to go if it's a teaching time. " "I'm OK for either, unless of course the cost is going to be much higher. A bit higher would be OK if we're talking 50-80 more. " "Very unlikely to attend, unless conf was over easter stat holidays. " "Not if I have to pay. " "Option B. It'd be easier to get to both Linux.conf.au & NZNOG if there is a bit of a gap between them. " "I would almost certainly attend either one, given that both the conference and I would be in Wellington. I'd have a slight preference for March/April due to (a) more chance of overseas networking folks (better timing for network-related things, and fewer clashes), and (b) making it easier to "catch up" on work immediately after Linux.Conf.au in Dunedin. " " If it is directly after linux.conf.au this would be good for getting overseas visitors with Linux interests (more interesting to me than networking people maybe), however it could be harder for me to get time off to go to two events in a row. " " Likely to attend either; more preference for option (b) on the basis that I'm not going to attend most of the ICANN stuff, so more likely to get interesting diverse speakers for an ICANN + NZNOG combo. " 4. Please comment on the following, how you feel about them and how important these are to you. # International Speakers "Important, but we only need a 2 or 3, - or at least 1 a day. " "Really important, it's the overseas speakers which many attendees need to justify the expense to bill payers. " "Good to have some, bad to have many. " "This is a big plus - makes the *management* see value in the event. " "It's very valuable to have 2-3 international speakers so that NZNOG doesn't become isolated from what's happening in the outside world. " "Important to give flavor and to justify attendance to boss. Perhaps only 2 or 3 needed. "

Low cost ( < $500 for programme + accommodation)

[ Many people said low cost was *very* important while a few were happy to pay more. Perhaps a "professional" option could be offered ( with what? ) ] "I'm not convinced cost is as much of a barrier as people claim - I think that old saw of people struggling to get sign off on a $400 conference, but getting a $2400 conference approved with no hassle is probably more true than people realise. " "Too cheap for the quality of speakers / programme " "The cheaper it is, the more people I can send along. " " Important. Expense = must justify to bean counters. Certainly individuals are less likely to attend if its expensive. " "Very, I can't afford 500 for a conference " "Low costs means easy to get work to pay for it. " "It's good. It encourages participation. Participation is good. " " Important that it is affordable for people who have to pay their own way. (IE, don't aim it only as a company-sponsored-attendance event) " "Not fantastically important to cut the price to the bone. A good conference for teachers can be several thousand dollars! " " Personal I'd be happy with the program as long as it was sub-$1000 (easyish to get work to pay for that). However it would be great to see the cost stay low so people can pay for themselves if they want and to make it easy for the small-mid size companies. " "Important (helps to get a much bigger audience), but I don't think it's the end of the world if it went over a little over $500. " "I suspect attendance in Wellington will be lower simply due to a number of people in Auckland being willing/able to drive to Hamilton, but not willing/able to take the time to drive/fly to Wellington. (Adding in flights to the "total cost" may also be valuable in planning.) " "Very important to me. The low cost is the one of the main reasons why I decided to attend. " "Important. Low cost enables unfunded people to appear and for other to not to have to go to high up the food chain to attend. " "Yes - I pay for it myself. " "Very important - $500 would be about my limit " Types of attendees ------------------ [ Just about everybody was happy with the follow sort of people attending. ] - Network Operators (people who type BGP commands) - Admins of large websites - Admins of Large mail servers - Security Admins at large sites - Large ISP technical personal - Small ISP technical personal - Network researchers - Small Hosting providers - Students - Wireless Operators "I would like to hear about large mail system scaling. " "Am more interested if it is someone from a large site. " " I'd also like to see Design Engineers as there are people who don't necessarily type the commands into the 'live' systems, but they _design_ the system. " [ Re Security Admins at large sites ] "Especially dealing with large customer volumes and/or traffic volumes. (e.g. Managed firewalls doing 1Gb/s for 30,000 customers.) " " Yes. Small hosting providers could be future big hosting providers one day. " [ Most people were happy with the following although some expressed reservations. ] - Network consultants "as long as they're geeks and not suits" - Programmers (Open source projects) " Maybe, if they work on projects relevant to network operators " - Government Policy people ( eg MOC, CCIP) " In moderation. They seem to add little value and observe a hell of a lot. " " Definitely would like to see more policy presence. Policy becomes law becomes our implementation pain. " - Vendor sponsored speakers "If they agree to be 95% non-commercial " "As long as they aren't just salesman fine by me." "Great way of getting a speaker that would be otherwise hard to get" The following were less popular. - Equipment Vendor salesman " I suspect allowing too many vendors along spoils the open nature of the NZNOG conference, however the occasional bit is fine by me. " " No, Spray them with mace at the door. We can go do vendor sex at every other conference... " - Script Kiddies Ooh, this could be fun. We could all bring a baseball bat and have a go. That would be GREAT! [ NOTE: Similar to the above was said by several people. ] Other things ------------ # Official event dinner [ The majority of people felt this was very important ] "This is critical, as it involves beer." "Do it right or not at all" # Curry Night [ Many people rated this as more important than the official dinner while others were uninterested. ] "I prefer the socialising to the actual food. Personally I hate curries, but in a case like this I'll put up with them to be able to meet the people there. " "Being the night before, many people must have been like myself and unavailable... " "Important, but showing the strain of size. " # Joe and Dean [ Popular with most people. ] "NZNOG without Joe and Dean is like a fish without a bicycle! Important - as a guideline for the types of people we need there " " WTF? Is this NZ Network Idol? Puhhleeaazzee.. I mean they're good dudes and stuff, but this is about peering and not hierarchy isn't it? " # Wireless Access at event [ About one third of people didn't care while the others all rated it as vital. ] "Required. I actually fixed stuff while I was in a conference." # Nearness to the office. [ Not important to most, see Wireless question above. ] "The office is the laptop where the network connection terminates, isn't it? " "Important that it isn't " # Vendor Booths [ Quite a few negative comments here. I think people would be happy to have a few booths if they (a) Contributed to the bottom line of the conference and (b) Were targeted at the audience and interesting. ] "Prefer not to have them" "A couple would be nice especially if they had cute gear and helped subsidize events. " # Breaks between talks [ People thought these were good, no real consensus on how long however. People liked the free soft drinks in 05 but weren't so hot on the finger food ] "Smoker" "Hmm - I think the current format works, but there needs to be a larger 'buffer' zone to be used for spillover at the end of interesting presentations. Maybe if it could be structured so the presentations ran through to 6:30pm ish? " "Should be longish, talk is important." "Definitely good. Half of NZNOG's value is social" "It's very useful to have 10-15 minutes between talks to grab the speaker and ask questions. At most pairs of talks run together. The Linux.Conf.au pattern seems to work reasonably well. (45 minute talks, 15 minutes gap, talk often runs a little into the gab.) " "A few more than '05 might be good " "Keep them brief, a couple of sessions, then a break, etc.. I badly need a good way to secure my laptop. " "Not too long. While talk is good having 45 minute breaks all day is overdoing it. Perhaps 20 minutes for morning and afternoon tea and an hour for lunch. " # Start and finish times each day. [ Several people requested a slightly later start on Day 1 for those traveling. In general people seemed happy with a 9-6 , with perhaps some less official things going a little later. Starting before 9 was unpopular. ] "9-5 is good. " "I'd prefer a later start, since as we all know, we geeks tend to stay up late each night " # Wider programme or narrowly focused on Network operators. [ Very mixed results here. Hard core network geeks said keep it narrow while most other people wanted it a little wider. There appeared to be less objection if "non core" talks were on tutorial or in a separate stream. ] "I would enjoy a wider programme, but due to my work Network design/operation/engineering/support would be more useful to my employer. " "Focused on networks. I.E. not general Linux stuff." "Wider/Diverse programme, but with a Network Operator thing " "Wide programs are good if there are a couple of streams, otherwise you sit through stuff that isn't interest to. " "It occurred to me that it may make sense to (a) revive SAGE-NZ (a "NZ branch" of the System Administrators Guide) and (b) have some sort of system administrators stream. Perhaps there could be a SAGE-NZ "miniconf" the day before/after? " "Since network operators can also have other roles (mainly in small companies), its nice to have the programme focused a bit wider than just network operations. " # Single or Multiple streams. [ No real consensus ] "I would prefer single streams - if we have enough content, run for more days." "Multiple is good, but maybe just 2, ended up with overlaps of 2 interesting topics last time " "Single is best if the topics are related. If the two streams were quite separate (ie. Administrative and Technical) streamed would be OK. " "Single if possible but multiple might be an option. Perhaps if there were multiple then people could pick beforehand what talks they were interested in and we could schedule the clashes so a minimal number of people were disappointed." # Recording and/or broadcast of Events. [ This was split into two. Almost everyone was in favour of recording and making the event available later especially if there were multiple streams. Several people suggested not broadcasting it however to encourage people to tune up to the actual conference. ] "Absolutely to both." "great to go back to parts missed, or confirm something" "If I can't get there in person I will *definitely* watch the streams, either live or delayed. They're a great way to increase participation... " "Makes it difficult to argue I have to go. :) " "Recording everything definitely, especially if there are multiple streams. Broadcast isn't as important since it encourages people to actually attend. " "a good thing, but need to be much better quality than '05. Also open standards are good - I don't like having to install proprietary software. " # Giveaways [ People seemed to think these were okay to have but not very important. especially they didn't seem to want (a) Junk or (b) Lots of money being spent on them. ] " Yes - especially if it involves beer. " " Freebies rock. " " To be honest I'd happily trade a lower conference fee for no giveaways, or just a T-shirt. If they're sponsored bits then fine, but otherwise I think the money is better spent on something else. " " Not important to me " # Misc "Thinking back to '04, the best thing I felt about it was that the residential nature of the con forced a bunch of people to communicate who wouldn't otherwise do so (especially in person). So things that aid that (curry night, distance from the office, breaks between talks, common accommodation) seem to me important. " 5. Please rate on the following topics and make other comments if you like. [ I have rated the topics as following. The first number is the average score the topic received, the second is the number of people giving it a score of 4 or 5 while the 3rd number is the number giving it a score of 1 or 2. Around 30 to 35 people voted each time. I have chopped the list of topics into 3 groups (feel free to shuffle each group up or down a topic or two). The first groups appears to have a lot of people very interested and not many people disinterested. The second group have less but still positive net interest. The 3rd group have below average interest a a larger number of people uninterested. I would guess we aim for large or multiple talks from the first group and single, lightning, streamed or no talks on the others. All depends on offers and speakers obviously. Oh and if you don't know what LAMP is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP ] VOIP : 4.3 27 0 Network Monitoring : 4.0 25 2 Peering : 4.0 23 2 Lightning talks : 3.9 23 3 Network Design Philosophy : 3.9 22 2 Network Measurement : 3.9 21 3 Internet Exchange Updates : 3.9 20 3 Security and Encryption : 3.8 21 2 IPV6 : 3.7 21 4 DDOS : 3.7 17 3 WAN Solutions / VPNs : 3.6 15 4 BGP and other routing protocols : 3.5 16 6 ENUM : 3.5 15 6 Fibre Optics : 3.3 12 8 Wireless : 3.3 10 4 Spam : 3.3 13 9 APNIC : 3.1 7 8 Mail Servers : 3.0 12 9 Virtual Servers (eg Xen, UML) : 3.0 11 10 MPLS : 2.9 11 13 Government Policy : 2.9 10 13 LDAP : 2.8 7 11 Multicast : 2.8 9 13 Web Server Administration : 2.7 7 15 Asset Management for Network Hardware : 2.6 9 15 UltraWideband : 2.6 9 15 LAMP : 2.6 6 12 INOC-DBA : 2.6 5 14 DNSSEC : 2.5 8 7 PGP Key Signing party : 2.5 8 20 Other Talk topics suggested: DNS (general) Clustering/Redundant Network Design Latest Internet practices (shaping etc) "things with cool factor For example unique and clever solutions to difficult problems. I think the conference should continue to aim not at a demographic (large ISP or small ISP), but just encouraging people to think up really just, I dunno *struggles trying not to use a buzz word* clever, outside the box solutions to hard problems. " 5. Are you interested in giving a talk? [ Around 1/3 the people who replied to the survey indicated interest in giving a talk. Some of these will be approached. ] 6. Other stuff. [ further quotes from people ] Fix the catering. - I thought the lightening talks were interesting, but maybe just a couple of minutes too short to be cover a complete topic, maybe 10 mins not 5 ? - Would be nice to see the program go up a little earlier to allow staff to plan to go (ie: not adding tutorials after people had booked) I don't recall having any linux/unix specific material at NOG '05, which is a fundamental part of most ISP networks in NZ. While it's a huge topic I'd have liked to hear some linux/Unix/Solaris specific content (not installfests) Perhaps some discussions of the future of Internet in NZ, and some predictions on where the Internet is heading based on current trends. I believe you touched on a couple of these areas briefly, which was nice. Not Hamilton, and a different time in the year. While publishing the programme early is good perhaps not having the exact timetable up will discourage managers from only assigning time for people to go to specific events. Perhaps an official wiki for people to post stuff or Blog aggregator. Small prizes ( USB fobs) for each speaker to give away per talk might encouraged people to ask good questions. Some howto guides for using network tools like nagios would be cool. A talk or two about how people see the Internet going. People I'd like to see: Somebody from Southern Cross talking about the cables. Somebody from Weta talking about the server or storage farm. Somebody from a large ISP talking about traffic shaping People talking about large storage Area networks People from some large sites ( Xtra, stuff, herald) talking about how they look after the network, servers, site, etc. Some practical VOIP stuff. I like Tshirts better than those with collars. If its in Wellington make some plan for flying people in and out of Palmerston and bus transit between. I have a hobbyist interest in community and non-profit networking; I don't know how that subject could be integrated though.