Hi all First of all, the important stuff... We're proud to announce that we're holding our 2010 conference at Waikato University, Hamilton hosted by the WAND group. The conference tutorial day will be held on Wednesday 27 January and the main conference will be held from Thursday 28 January to Friday 29 January. NZNOG 2010 : Jan 27 - Jan 29 Hamilton, New Zealand We're currently working on having an additional co-host who will provide some other useful services. In the near future we should have a CFP and further announcements regarding the conference. Expect conference fees to be similar to last year with slightly cheaper accommodation. Read on for some more information regarding how NZNOG conferences ran/run... I'm a very infrequent poster to the main NZNOG list, but as many of you know I've been fairly involved in the running of the NZNOG conferences for the past 4 years. Our conferences have always been successful, if anything too successful. NZNOG has ended up with some assets, which is a bit of a problem for an organisation that doesn't actually exist. The decision was made to establish an entity that holds NZNOG assets and makes sure that a conference happens regularly. At any time in the past, our various hosts could have walked away with a reasonable amount of money, or could have made a financial loss. What we have done is to create a structure to stop that potential disaster from happening anytime in the foreseeable future. With some generous support and legal assistance from InternetNZ we deemed that forming a Trust seemed right for our various reasons. We then briefly ran this by the attendees of NZNOG 09 on Friday afternoon. There were no serious objections raised so it has been done. So, we now have a NZNOG Trust. The initial Trustees are: Joe Abley Donald Neal Andy Linton We have collectively selected trustees that are well established and trusted in the NZNOG community but aren't the actual "do-ers" when it comes to the conferences. Their role is that of oversight. If you want any further official information on this trust then I'm sure many of you are capable of finding this online. Then each year the NZNOG Trust will appoint the org team to actually run the conference. This year an eight man team has been appointed. The org team was somewhat unilaterally selected in consultation with the Trustees based on the core of previous years to allow for a smooth transition into the new structure. From next year onwards a call for volunteers will go out before selection with the intention of much wider participation. As always, there will be additional help required closer to the conference. The NZNOG 10 org team is: Dave Mill Dean Pemberton Sam Sargeant Gerard Creamer Alastair Johnson Neil Fenemor Jonny Martin Richard Nelson - representing WAND The Trust oversees the budget, whilst the org team have the delegated authority to spend the Trust's money and to ensure that the conference happens and is well run. I hope all of this makes sense and that people agree that what we've done is a move in the right direction for the NZNOG community. I'm happy to answer questions off-list, or will answer questions on-list if I believe they're appropriate for an on-list reply. Cheers Dave For the NZNOG10 Org Team