[afnog] Introducing Southern Africa Network Operators Group - SAFNOG

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 28 Jan 2014, at 4:43 PM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:57 PM, JP <froztbyte at froztbyte.net> wrote:
> On 28 Jan 2014, at 1:25 PM, Kevin Chege <chege at isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I’ll put this as non-offensively as I can manage, but: why bother?
> Why create a splinter community instead of just growing the afnog one further? I don’t see anything immediately listed on your site which couldn’t form up as a part or chapter of afnog.
> +1 Perhaps It will be good to hear/understand reason behind this initiative(considering that this was sent from isoc.org domain i assume its official from ISOC)

that's a terrible assumption  :-)
(this message is neither an official statement from ieee.org, or controlfreak.co.za, or whatever my MUA sticks in ... )


> One that quickly comes to mind is distance (the cost to travel to afnog training from southern African countries, which ofcourse does not just apply to southern africans alone :)).
> If that was the main reason, I would have thought investing efforts towards setting up "National NOGs", would have been more appropriate. Just like we have GhNOG, NgNOG, TzNOG etc.
> The other point would be to ask about afnog hosting process, i.e is selection on "best host application" OR "better host application" that put region into consideration for fair distribution of the travel cost and other costs including language et all.

seun, you've got it.  well, somewhat...
safnog isn't intended to replace afnog;  nor form a splinter community.  
if anything it's rather to act as a feeder to that larger group.
there have been several efforts to start smaller country NOGs.  they have not always worked.
not all countries are active (yet) or large enough, to be able to support this.
yet it's still useful to have a group that can localise discussions, provide regional training and support...as you highlighted above already.
well, this is just a simple extension of that concept.
there are many instances of smaller, more focused regional *nogs working within the context of a larger one.

afnog is also a lot more than just a week of training and workshops, btw  :-)

--n.