[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
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