Increase in NANOG Meeting Attendance Fees

[Joe Abley <jabley () ca afilias info>]

[sent to nanog-futures@, bcc'ing nanog-announce@, apologies for  
duplicates]

During the past several community meetings, Merit have presented  
accounts for NANOG which show that revenue from membership fees and  
sponsorship are not sufficient to cover costs, despite substantial  
measures taken by Merit over the past several meetings to reduce the  
overhead involved in NANOG activities.

Recent efforts to plan ahead and arrange meeting venues up to 18  
months in the future have provided additional financial pressure,  
since hotels require substantial deposits. Extending the length of  
the meeting from Sunday-Tuesday to Sunday-Wednesday has also  
contributed to increased costs, as have the improvements in network  
infrastructure which have been evident at recent meetings. Revenue  
has not increased to offset these additional costs.

Merit and the SC are together working on changes to the sponsorship  
structure at NANOG meetings in order to increase the value to  
sponsors from participating with the goal of increasing meeting  
revenue. Changes will take some time to implement, however, and are  
by their nature somewhat speculative since the benefits of the  
changes will not be really apparent until they have been implemented.

At past community meetings, people have clearly expressed that modest  
increases in meeting fees would not present significant barriers to  
meeting attendance, so long as the other costs of attending (hotel  
block rates, travel, etc) were maintained at current levels. NANOG  
meeting fees are low when compared to other, similar events. The  
current meeting fee of $350 has been in place since NANOG 28 in June  
2003.

Both Merit and the SC are committed to finding a sustainable funding  
model which will ensure that NANOG continues to be a viable community  
resource for many years to come, and is predictably and reliably self- 
sustaining for the benefit of all participants.

In their meeting on Wednesday 2006-11-22 the Steering Committee  
approved an increase of NANOG meeting attendance fees from $350 to  
$450. This will be implemented for NANOG 39 in Toronto.

Further discussion of funding models and related topics is  
encouraged, and should take place on the nanog-futures mailing list.  
Please see <http://www.nanog.org/email.html> for subscription  
instructions.


Joe Abley
for the SC