[156475] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Big Temporary Networks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jo Rhett)
Tue Sep 18 18:44:52 2012
From: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAP-guGUnYkb45fDgk=oMeA_O8324QV20QJ=inMjFsPay_5dUgw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:44:08 -0700
To: William Herrin <bill@herrin.us>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Sep 18, 2012, at 2:38 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> IIRC when the Democatic National Convention was held in Denver in
> 2008, they had to strike a special deal with the venue to bring in
> union labor instead of the normal workers because they couldn't find a
> suitable place that was already union.
I can provide people who can refute that, but I don't have (or care =
about) the details enough to bother quoting them. I can say that =
Worldcon was in Denver the proceeding week, and we could only get one =
hotel about a half mile from the convention center to allow us to serve =
drinks in our own rooms without a union person there to serve them. So I =
have personal experience to doubt your story.
> Conversely, when I went to IETF in Minneapolis a few years ago the
> networking folks simply took over the hotel network for the week. IETF
> attendee or not, you got wired Internet in your room courtesy of the
> conference. As I understand it, they convinced the hotel with the
> simple expedient of paying what they would ordinarily earn from a
> week's Internet charges.
IETF is considerably smaller event that Worldcon, and as such can play =
ball with smaller hotels. Worldcons haven't fit into hotels in more =
than 20 years*, and must negotiate with the convention centers -- and =
are not able to leverage room nights in the balance.
* They tried with the large Hyatt in Chicago this year and got the worst =
of both worlds. The rooms were overfull far beyond standing room only, =
and they still couldn't get a hotel contract with good internet, =
accessibility or issue handling.
> My point is that blaming union contracts or union anything for being
> unable to find a place to hold a convention where you can implement
> the network you want to implement is nonsense. NANOG, ARIN and IETF
> conferences have all somehow managed to implement their own effective
> networks. Even in union towns. If Worldcon's site selection committee
> can't find a suitable host, that's their deficiency.
Money speaks here. The budgets for NANOG conferences are posted, as are =
some of the worldcon committee budgets. RTFM. And again, even though =
Worldcons have significantly less money, the largest Nanog ever was =
still smaller than the smallest worldcon in the last 20 years. Smaller =
=3D=3D more choices of hotels =3D=3D negotiating ability.
Please stop trying to be a smartass about something you could research, =
but haven't bothered to do so.
--=20
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet =
projects.
