2024 Strategic Goals

In December 2023, the NANOG board continued to discuss long term goals to guide the organization back to sustainable footing in the post-pandemic reality.

The NANOG board approved the following items as its view of the direction of the organization for 2024. 


goals

2024 Goals

The following NANOG organizational goals were drafted in December 2023, refined through January 2024, and agreed upon by the board in February 2024.

Mission

  • Ensure continued relevance
    • Improving Registration numbers
      • Average 1,000 in-person attendees per meeting
    • Building the plan (part of marketing plan)
      • Messaging
      • Advertising
  • Program Content
    • PC supported in thematic programs for June and October meetings
    • Review and proposal for different program material in 2024 and beyond
      • BCOPs, tutorials, etc

Funding: Return to break-even

  • Target meeting profitability – location, size (attracting attendees), sponsorship-appeal, local costs
    • Develop a NANOG-profit-model parameters for meetings, looking at where we meet (for 2026 meeting planning)
    • Maximize sponsorship for 2024 & 2025 meetings
      • Inventory - extract maximum possible inventory from each location
  • Regain level of 7 premium sponsors – relationships
  • Flesh out and implement a coherent marketing plan to increase attendance and meet sponsorship goals
    • Messaging - create materials for Business Development teams to use with sponsors
  • Product
    • Is the value of a sponsorship offered aligning to what we charge for it?
    • Badge scanning - additional value - additional revenue source?
    • Have an expo room for the full meeting duration?
  • Engaging with Prospects - maintain regular communication with top current and former sponsors

Operational excellence

  • Successfully onboard a new executive director
  • Identify and implement community communications tool(s) relevant to current day members
    • With appropriate moderation and management tools
    • Clear relationship to existing tools, purposes and expectations
    • Manageable costs (dollars and personnel resources)


future

NANOG in 2028 (Four Years)

The board recognizes that NANOG needs to diversify its activity beyond being an in-person meetings-only organization. In focusing on NANOG as an organization that delivers quality information on networking-related topics that are new, and tools and approaches that are appropriate for networks of all sizes to deploy (focusing primarily on small to medium networks, but not excluding large, global networks), the following key requirements were identified:

For (in-person) plenary meetings

  • Virtual participation (including presentation) is important
  • Access to content/presentation videos (in a timely fashion) is important to support peoples’ time-shifting approach to consuming content
  • Global participation (and content presentation) is important
  • Appropriate support of business (B2B) activities that are a draw for some participants (without subjecting all participants to unwanted sales solicitation in the hallway)

Alongside and outside of plenary meetings

  • Other types of content engagement
    • (Re-)packaging and presentation of existing content
  • Active learning offerings
    • Tutorials (active, hands-on learning)
    • Hackathon
    • Incubation of emerging technologies and skills for network operators (e.g.,  incubating network automation (analogous to the sysadmin to devops transition))
  • Structurally, having an integrated platform to support all aspects of continuous engagement with our audience – plenary meeting attendees, accessing content, communications, etc.
    • Exploring the viability of sharing NANOG’s information platform with other NOGs
      • A platform that is usable by other  NOGs and including a knowledge base that is usable and monetized
      • Being a leader in the NOG software space, and determining how we can help other North American NOGs in ways that are mutually beneficial


Previous Years

2023 Strategic Goals

2022 Strategic Goals