It’s going to take me a while to get my thoughts and words in order on this subject. It is one which is quite emotive for me, for reasons which will become clear. I don’t think I can get this all out, organised in a single post either. So this may be the first of several things I write on the subject.
UKIF has left the building. <thud>
The organisation that ran UKNOF events – UKIF Ltd – has stated they will no longer run the events, and will be winding the company up in 2024.
They state a number of reasons for this, including declining sponsorship in the present macro-economic climate, reduced attendance, and the costs of continuing through Covid. All of these have served to deplete the organisation’s reserves, because while the events did not cover their costs the long term commitments to venues, some made before Covid, had to be kept – UKIF would have had to pay something whether or not the events in 2023 went ahead.
Another reason is the forthcoming retirement of Keith Mitchell, the principal in UKIF Ltd and the founding convener of the UKNOF meetings, without any obvious route for succession.
Fiduciary Duty
The UKIF Ltd directors have acted responsibly in the eyes of UK Company law. If they had attempted to run events, there was a high risk of ending 2024 in a state of insolvent trading. The reserves were insufficient to run another loss-making event. Not good.
They have therefore made the decision that they will use the remaining reserves to wind UKIF Ltd up gracefully this year – ensuring the interim security of the intrinsic value in UKNOF as an organisation, which is the archive of talks and other material, and keeping the lights on with respect to domains, website, online archives, etc.
I personally can’t argue or fault that decision.
What might the future bring?
When it was announced at the last UKNOF meeting proper that it would probably be the last one in that format, it seems a group has been hastily assembled to try and fill the void.
This group presented itself to interested community members at a Zoom meeting convened by UKIF Ltd last week.
Backed by two of the UK’s Internet Exchanges – LINX and LONAP – plus Nominet (the .uk domain registry) they are calling themselves “UKNOG/netUK” – name still STC, but not UKNOF.
At the moment it’s early days for the organisation, so things might yet change, however they say they think it is necessary to “rebrand/relaunch” and not use the existing UKNOF brand, and right now it feels like the whole thing has evolved within an “echo chamber” of a subset of “Internet Meeting circuit” people – presently seeming distant from the grass-roots of the community it seeks to serve.
That’s just my opinion. I’m entitled to it. Even if you think it wrong.
I’ll tell you why I hold this opinion.I used to be one of those “meeting circuit” people.
It is very easy to become insular in your own travelling circus of expense account enabled professional meeting goers, and lose touch.
My own history with UKNOF
I have a long and deep history with UKNOF, and for a significant period of time was involved in organising the meetings – I served on the Programme Committee (finding the content presented at the meetings), I was a technical advisor to the production of the meetings – especially on things such as suitability of the venues, and served as a Director of UKIF Ltd for several years.
I was involved during the period when UKNOF’s success meant that it outgrew donated venues, and was involved in the decision to try and scale up to a more professionally staged event, but stay backed by sponsorship. We ran events for a number of years, very successfully, in professional venues and covered our expenses from sponsorship.
We reached so many people and hopefully enriched their skills and careers.
We had a laugh along the way – sometimes even at ourselves – and hopefully many new friendships were made in the hallways, over lunches, and at our social events.
The joy for me in being involved in running UKNOF was seeing the good things that other people got out of it.
Having put so much work in to UKNOF over the years, I therefore find it very difficult to conceal my complete and utter disappointment with how things have turned out.
You can leave your affiliation at the door, if you wish…
One of the strengths I felt early days UKNOF had is that you were attending as an individual – there was no attendance fee levied, and you didn’t have to declare an affiliation if you didn’t want to.
Before UKNOF, the only other places in the UK for Internet Network Engineering and Operations folks to meet was at meetings for IXPs or other smaller groups (e.g. R&E network operators) – all of them in some way closed meetings – limited to individuals from certain groups of companies – affiliation mattered.
UKNOF seemed to want to do it differently – it was meant to be about the people, the individuals. Their badges of office were secondary.
I know that UKNOF was invaluable to me after I left LINX after 11 years in 2010.
I could continue to be engaged in a community, and had somewhere I felt that I belonged, even though I didn’t come with an affiliation.
In the wake of the recent developments in UKNOF, I reminisced with someone about what UKNOF meant to us, and about where I’d probably be if it wasn’t for UKNOF. I paraphrased one of the Jason Bourne films… “Dead in a ditch. Drunk in a bar in Mogadishu.” I then realised I hadn’t used that flippantly at all.
I meant it.
Who knows where I’d be today without UKNOF doing what it was doing at the time.
Doing what it was doing for individuals. Not organisations.
“Nobody wants to know about Treadstone?”
Does nobody want to know about UKNOF either?
Bury it and move along?
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