[admin-discuss] NANOG: Tech Mtg Expenses/Attendance

["Livingood, Jason" <[e-mail]>]

I found this discussion interesting in the context of the IETF’s ongoing discussion of meeting costs and post-COVID engagement modes, etc. Edited for length.

From: Members on behalf of Matthew Petach <[e-mail]>
Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2024 at 08:56
Cc: "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>
Subject: 2024.02.13 NANOG 90 Members Meeting unofficial notes



2024 organizational goals

mission

 confirm relevance

  measuured by improved registration numbers

funding: return to break even

 improve meeting profitability

 increase premium sponsorship

operational excellence

 executive director hiring update

 communcations tools revisit



financials, michael costello

income of $3.6M for 2023

most income from meetings

expenses $3.9M, mostly from meetings

net loss of $333,393



compared to last year moving in right

year; previous net loss was -$907K



income and expenses over last 6 years,

by trimesters, we have last 2 trimesters

running at deficit; meeting income is

being outstripped by meeting expenses



looking at meeting profitability,

while meetings are generally profitable,

they don't cover organization overhead



looking at 8 year trend lines, prior to

covid vs after covid, our registration

numbers are trending downward; increasing

registration numbers is our quantifiable

metric.



food and beverage costs and other meeting

expenses, power and space are increasing;

big spike for covid test kits



sponsorships are trending downward but at

a slower rate

we need to win back old sponsorships and

get one ones, and increase our attendance

and reduce our costs.



please send feedback on new format to the

board.



Elizabeth asks: question of 3 variables

location, price, attendance;

charlotte, price location, lower attendance;

if we go to other cities, prices are higher

but attendance is higher; how do we know which

levers to pull in which directions?



Michael notes new ED will take this question

on; we plan 2 years in advance; if we change

our model now, it wouldn't make significant

changes in location until 2026.

There's a whole bunch of interdependecies

betweeen them.



Dave notes there's marketing aspects that

drive registrations up, and price is a lever

that we can use to pull registrations up;

but hotel costs have skyrocketed post covid,

but we haven't raised meeting costs.

Variable registration costs might be something

to think about, it's not something we've talked

about as the board.



Ron Da Silva asks: if cost per participant

is increasing, won't more attendees make it

worse?



Michael notes that desirability to attract

more sponsors may balance that out.

slight majority of meeting income is

sponsorship, but registration is slightly

behind that; if we comp meeting registrations,

that cuts into profitability.



Leslie points out that some of the fixed

costs with scary disconnect after covid

are some that we pay hotel no matter how

many attendees, ie power and AV; those

costs get amortized over smaller number

of attendees, so the math isn't quite

that simple.



Jason Bodie(?), understand decline in

attendence, companies more heistant to

fund t and e; do we have a plan to increase

attendance to get to our magic numbers?

Steve Plote talks about adding in focused

technology areas; in Kansas City, focus

will be on cloud and cloud networking;

we'll still have security, RPKI, but we'll

have strong emphasis on cloud networking,

hybrid enterprise networks, with 4 of

top cloud providers being there to talk

about facilities, services, what they're

doing, to make it for enterprises as well

as service providers to do a better job

of putting their services out in cloud.



Jason asks about larger organizations and

financials, who have more nimbleness for

t and e; making it more targeted for

locations is good.



Steve notes IPv6 is focus in Toronto;

heavy focus to see if that draws in a bigger

set of attendees.



Cat notes the 10 year IPv6 review got us a

bunch of folks who haven't been for a long

time.



Dave notes we aren't intending to become an

enterprise conference; that's counter to our

missions, there are enterprise conferences

with tens of thousands of attendees; this is

more augmentation of our core focus.

There's an explosion of ISPS due to new federal

funding; if we reach them, we can get back to

well over the thousand attendee number.

Ensuring we remain relevant and program material

is in and of itself a draw that they can take

to their boss, and tie them to company objectives,

if we can get alignment with industry, we can

remain relevant.



Michael points out it's not the board's plan; we

work with program committee and incoming ED.



One question is it's supply and demand; what

about reducing the number of meetings down to

2 instead of 3?



so much of budget assumes we get income from

three meetings; a number of parameters are in

play, working with new ED in their first year

is how do we proceed thoughtfully in testing

some of these things without just blowing

things up.

Vincent notes they have looked at it, and they

have fixed overhead costs for staff, so three

meetings helps cover that.

If we went to 2 meetings, we'd have to increase

registration costs and sponsorships to cover those

fixed costs.



jon van oppen, ziply fiber; seems we forgot we're

running a business; 60% of expenses are meeting

related; that's not a good sign for our primary

mission being running meetings; should be 20%

overhead not 40%.

We do places like San Diego with one runway, and

too-small hotel.

If it takes an extra day because it takes 2 flights,

that costs as much as the entire registration for

his employees.  He doesn't care about the registration

cost; we act like it matters.  Having a good conference,

the content really matters.  He's not going to send

based on content, for service providers, it's the

hallway conversations.

He thinks we're discouraging our members from giving

feedback.  The only thing that matters is the meeting;

you get half the value from a 600 person meeting as a

1200 person meeting as a sponsor, so his company

wouldn't sponsor a 600 person confernce.



Leslie daigle notes there IS a contingent of attendees

for whom registration costs DO matter greatly.

Thank you for feedback on less reachable locations

adding costs for travel.  There are a lot of logistics

that go into picking locations.

Jon feels that san diego is an example that we forgot

that the meeting is the most important part of the

organization.

Leslie notes the staff costs are focused on running the

meetings, so those costs could easily be attributed to

the meeting expense category.



Dave Siegel noted it's one of the first NANOGs in 1996

in San Diego, it was where supercomputer center was,

it was nice to go back.

1/3 of participants are newcomers, and they're new

because it's local, the first time it's been in their

city.  Only one a year should be a small city; two of

the meetings should have major airports.

As far as expenses, we used to do more contracting,

overspending on contractors; we brought IT staff and

bookkeepers onboard; the expenses were there before,

but were accounted for differently.



Jon grumbles that variable display of per-attendee

cost; there are fixed costs and variable costs, and

we should identify those seperately, because the

fixed costs matter as attendance go down.

Jon was upset about San Diego; he couldn't send

more people because there was no other hotel within

10 miles because it was on Coronado.  As the customer

producing money for it, if you can't buy more, we

screwed something up; that should be a lesson for us

to learn.



We cut the mike line off as we're running out of time.

Cat points out website was contract work, and we cut

costs by bringing Greg on as staff.



Dinesh notes this is nothing new, other NOGS are

going through same thing; UKNOF was closed down,

not sustainable in current model.

Not clear what you're doing about next generation,

the ones that will move the industry forward.

Doing what we need to do for existing attendees,

versus looking at what comes next; all NOGS seem

to be missing that; can we spend more money for

the future?

Michael notes that takes a long time to answer;

we need to look at new people coming in; new

college grads probably won't come back for a while.

We did scattershot approach before, but we need to

be more focused and intentional about how we focus

on that.



Dinesh notes 30% are new attendees; what is it we

do to make sure that extra 30% come to future

meetings?  Within UKNOF he wasn't good at figuring

that out; hard to keep in touch with newcomers;

depending on who their seniors were as to whether

they could come back.

Controversial question: all NOGs need to look at

what they are, and who they serve, and maybe ripping

them apart and starting again.  Our designs go back

to the 90s; maybe rethink who we are as a NOG, and

what do we do?  The next generation doesn't work

the same way we did.

the existential question is something we continually

ask ourselves, says Michael Costello; suggestions

from the community, grassroots suggestions are

welcome; it's a balancing act we do, the relevancy

aspect is something we wrestle with.

Dave will talk more to Dinesh about it;

2 things we did to attract newcomers; implement

code of conduct and ombuds to make people feel

welcome.

Added affinity groups so that people can make

friends here; if they don't connect, less likely

to come back.



Dinesh looks at school and other industries he's

in, best way to get feedback is to have a student

council type of thing; do the outreach to get

potential newcomers to talk about how it should

evolve.



There is experiment ongoing now to experiment

with discord as communication medium; if it is

successful, we will embrace it; right now, it

is community managed.



Woman at microphone asked if we had tried scheduling

at other times of years to see if conflicts work

better;

what about colocating with other meetings; does ARIN

boost membership, are there other meetings that we

can colocate with that might boost our attendance?



We haven't really looked at that much, but that's

a good suggestion.



Tony Tauber, election report.

election committee

steve feldman, calin miculescu mauricio ridrigues,



board approved single transferrable vote method,

richer way to get voter preferences

simply voting is our vendor for running election;

use defaults they provided.

reproduced results off platform using python code.

6 candidates acpeted

1 withdrew

2 candidates elected in 5 rounds



things that went well

implemented STV

kept members infomred,

candidate forum was a success, nonattending member video

played well,



areas for improvement

proactive candidate development from gap analysis would

improve candidate pool

tweak redistribution so that surplus votes get distributed

to other candidates

as it happened, outcome wouldn't have changed; we checked

that.

considering NDAs for all committees

call for board candidates should note travel isn't covered

improve navigation to the voting page

set candidates expectations for the process



this is one committee people can volunteer for;

there's a number of open seats, please do volunteer;

about a meeting a month until busy time around elections

meet every other week; burden isn't onerous.



Thank you Tony!  Steve Feldman notes the committee

is about the mechanics of the election, not the

nominating process.



Tina Morris, AWS, we had ageed to do a rank choice

for one year to see how it went; is recommendation

that we make it ongoing?



It would be helpful for the election committee to

recommend to the board that we do it again, or

make it a regular thing.  Tina would like a

recommendation to the board for which way to

go forward.



Kay Guerry?  How are committee nominations going?

There are no committees with no volunteers, so

we're going well on that; level of churn on

committees is about normal.



Just because you nominate someone, they have to

fill out the form by tonight to be considered

for tonight's appointments.

Cardinal 1 and 2, meet with board if you have

questions, 3:30 to 4pm during afternoon break.



Steve Feldman notes that bringing new people

in, if you have input, a great way to make that

happen is to volunteer on a committee like the

education committee.



One last question about outreach and diversity;

how do we bring people in?  In colleges, IEEE

would create college chapters, and provide

resources for them to attend.

There is funding that is needed; enterprises

can help; at Amazon, they are big on access,

and would partner to support chapters like

this.

3 way partnership with NANOG, Enterprises, and

Universities to create chapters to make that

happen.