1. Liz Stevens – Programme Committee Member
Points of View 2016
At the end of every meeting we ask you to fill out a survey but have you ever wondered what we do with the information or if we even look at it at all?
Well we do look at it and we use the information to improve what we do.
Liz Stevens – Programme Committee Member

2. Venue You said: “Always the same venues” UKNOF response:
Balance of locations
Known venues create less issues
Ease of travel for attendees
Builds local knowledge
Growing numbers provide challenges in picking venues
Donated venues can cause issues
We commit to 1 London 1 Manchester and 1 other per year, have to try to move around to keep things fair.
New venues put strain on organisers, power/wifi setup, unforeseen issues, new negotiations
Try to find venues with easy public transport.
Regular attendees get comfortable with surroundings and hotels etc.
Donated venues can cause issues with catering, accomoation, public transport, connectivity and they often want to heavily promote their brand.

3. Catering – Marmite topic!
We get lots of varying feedback, some people love it and other hate it. It can be very hard for us to balance everyones preferences – we cant please everyone.

4. Catering
You said:
“No fizzy drinks, what if we don’t like fruit juice, tea, coffee or water?”
UKNOF response:
Some venues don’t allow fizzy drinks
Costly premium
Venues charge a large markup and we have limited funds to begin with.
We try to get sponsorship for extras such as the coffee stand at Glasgow which seemed to go down well.

5. Catering You said: “Food wasn’t up to scratch” UKNOF response:
Can be very individual
Try to balance needs
Budget limitations
All dietary needs catered for

6. Catering
You said:
“(Glasgow) Was frustrating to have a venue where drinks (and food) could not be taken into the venue. I had the tail end of a cold and a very sore throat so was suffering without hot liquids. The refreshments were all fine, but only available outside.”
UKNOF response:
We agree
Venue hadn’t made us aware before the meeting
We always try to avoid this and will continue to avoid this in the future as we like to provide a comfortable environment.

7. Organisation

8. Organisation You said:
“I think the outcome of the meeting depends on who you know. If you know people there, you can go off and it is more fun. If you come alone you don’t really know anybody, then I think an intimidating bunch of people. I always try to say hello to a few people who look a bit lost – I think collectively, more people could do this.”

9. Organisation UKNOF response: Extroverts – do just fine
Introverts – might have to step out of comfort zone
We now have first timer welcomers
We let you know who can help (red lanyards)
You can approach the first timers to make them feel welcome (yellow lanyards)
Volunteers needed to help
We want to help first timers but as the same time we don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable or segregate them.  
We do believe there is room for improvement, similar to a welcome team as per RIPE meetings, however without additional volunteers we do not currently have the resource to facilitate this.
We welcome suggestions on how we can improve.

10. Social Activities You said:
“ Don’t hold another evening social at the meeting venue.”
“A better range of beer would be nice – perhaps get a local brewery to contribute?”
“Shameful “beer” selection at Pints ‘n Packets, and not even available in pint form! Some decent ales next time maybe”
“Drink supply on venue and if that can’t be arranged perhaps coordinate a trip to a nearby bar.”
“Organised social events as a group would be great, not a weakness, but perhaps a group aligned to different interests could go to a certain place such as booking a local curry house.”

11. Social Activities UKNOF response: Socials need to be open to all
Outside socials are hard to organise due to number of attendees 200+
Beverages are limited by venues and budget
Venue based socials have advantages to attendees
Self organisation and volunteers to do this very welcome
We are grateful to our Pints & Packets sponsors
Ultimately UKNOF is centered around the organisation and logistics of a UKNOF meeting, rather than social events. We try and run a social activity where we can but this is dependent heavily on sponsorship and with limited volunteers we can only do so much.
It’s great when attendees organise a get together the night before and or after Pints & Packets – We just don’t have the time and resources to organise as well. - Thank you to those who have.

12. Content – How do we decide?
Call for presentations – we need you
Request specific talks based on your survey feedback
Chase, chase and chase some more
PC review and rate abstracts
Range of PC member backgrounds
We may ask for slides
Assign a “Shepherd” to help the speaker
Sponsors talks get rated and reviewed too!
We can and do reject talks
No preference based on gender, age, company etc
Call starts just after the last meeting and normally closes about 1 month before the next meeting.
PC members sometimes recommend talks we have heard at other events.
15 members discuss content monthly in a conference call. We are unpaid and spend hours per meeting.
A Pc Charter is currently being written to formalise the PC member expectations.
Sometimes things come together at the last min and we need back up plans as people can have to pull out at the last me. We also try to accommodate last min requests
PC members work in the industry, attend events, have awareness of the industry, interpersonal skills and willingness to work hard.
Submissions are rated on content, relevance, presenter style (if known, and how it might be interpenetrated by the community.

13. 33 – 11 presentations, PC were within 20% of survey for all, 10% for 9 and 6% for 7
35 – 12 presentations, PC were withing 20% of survey for all, 11% for 7
We might rate something higher or lower based on previous scores ie how well we think it will go down based on how well the subject was received at a previous meeting.
We try new things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
We think we are working well overall.

14. Content
You said:
“Datacentre networking stories seem to be thin on the ground”
“More NFV and SDN in industry”
“Variety of open source OSS tools”
UKNOF response:
We ask, we didn’t get any response (list, groups and individuals were approached)
We can’t force people to present

15. Content
You said:
“A lot of the same people give talks and ask questions, even though there are many new members always joining. It would be nice to get more new faces giving talks. Otherwise it seems like a bit of an old boys club, which I don’t believe it is”
UKNOF response:
No preference given any presenters
We try to avoid repetition but we can’t force new speakers
Speakers who got good feedback get requested by you to come back sometimes

16. Content
You said:
“Sometimes the presenters don’t have good presentation skills”
UKNOF response:
We can’t tell from abstracts
Content can be useful even with a dry delivery
Auditions might put people off
‘Shepherding’ should help

17. Content
You said:
“Too much from 1 incumbent, need more from the big operators with infrastructure in the ground and wholesale products (TalkTalk, Sky, Virgin/Liberty, Vodafone, EE etc)”
“How much of the UK’s internet traffic is carried by the companies represented (and speaking) at UKNOF? Probably a small percentage only. Would be nice to see more of the larger providers.”
UKNOF response:
Encourage large telcos to submit but many don’t
Good that the 1 incumbent is available to talk and come forward with content
In the last year we have had BT, Facebook, Google, BBC and Sky presenting.
We often get attendees from lots of the big providers and we publish the list of attendees so you can say hi to them if you want to – BT, 3, EE, Sky, Virgin Janet, NTT, Level 3, Daisy, Akamai, Facebook, Cloud Flare, BBC, Microsoft and Vodafone.
Some don’t allow their staff to come, make it hard for them to get permission or they are just too busy. Sometimes they are not allowed to talk about what they are doing so presenting is hard.
Our team has members from BT, EE, Janet, BBC and Netflix.

18. Content
You said:
“The lack of visibility of the schedule in advance of the free tickets stopping is a slight annoyance, but I can appreciate why is it that way.”
UKNOF response:
Agenda out 3 weeks before for the last 3 meetings
Sometimes we get cancelations
Relies on submissions and our input
We had a cancellation for today on the 22nd December. We always have a plan B ready in case this happens, often PC members or presentations that didn’t quite make the cut.
We had a last min request for a presentation slot on Monday which we worked hard to accommodate.

20. Sponsors
You said:
“Necessary evil I am sure but sponsor call outs are a pain. We can see who they are, do we need to be reminded of their names over and over again? (ahem Keith)”
“I wonder if giving the sponsors some advice and training on how to give a UKNOF talk would be a good idea e.g. instead of ‘here’s a hand-wavy pile of stuff we’re trying to sell’ asking them to present ‘here’s a problem we solved’ might be better. This would make the conference better and make the sponsorship reflect much better on the sponsoring organisations.”
Keith mentions verbally for people watching online via the webcast.

21. Sponsors The sponsors said:
“Greater appreciation of sponsors by attendees, after all without sponsors delegates would have to pay”
“The unwillingness of some participants to engage with sponsors. This may risk future sponsorship”
“Not enough delegate interaction with sponsors, this wasn’t a great session for sponsors to get face time with delegates, which is a potential issue for future sponsorship opportunities”

22. Sponsors UKNOF response: We now ‘shepherd’ sponsor talks
We do reject talks if appropriate
Ratings have improved
Encourage them not to focus too much on products
We can’t run UKNOF without our sponsors and their talks – please talk to them and even thank them! You wouldn’t be here without them.
Keith mentions verbally for people watching online via the webcast.

23. Diversity
You said:
“One of the big issues at UKNOF35 was the lack of women speaking. There was one woman in an excellent shared presentation While there can be arguments made about this being an industry issue, I believe that any programme committee should work harder to increase the diversity of their programme, People do what they see and a larger number of women presenting will, hopefully, lead to even more women presenting!”
“Can we get more diversity? 0.5 female speakers.”
“Too many old farts (including me)”
“Lack of younger people”

24. Diversity UKNOF response: We don’t want to work on quotas
We have women on the committees
Industry wide issue
We have a student grant scheme
Perhaps education of bosses needed?
You can help by encouraging colleagues
Do you have ideas for how to improve things?

25. Our Challenges We face new challenges as we get bigger
We often see a 20% non attendance rate
Raising sponsorship for increasing costs so we can keep the event free:
£135 per head for Manchester:
34.6% venue rental
28.8% food and drinks
19.6% AV
13.2% Pints & Packets
3.8% misc (badges, lanyards etc)
Extra costs of hosting services, meeting equipment, insurance, admin etc brings the costs up to…..

26. £200 per attendee
Individuals or organisations can become ‘Patron’ sponsors if you want to help us with costs
Thanks to BT and ADVA for helping us by being Patron sponsors in 2017

27. WE NEED YOU! Volunteer to help at meetings Submit presentations
Encourage colleagues to come or submit
Contact us with suggestions
Interact with sponsors
Tell suppliers about us so they can sponsor
Let us know if you can’t come
Encourage us when you think it’s working
Fill out our surveys
Keep attending – we like you….most of you :)

28. Questions? Contact us: Programme Committee pc@uknof.org.uk
Sponsors or general enquiries