[afrigeek] AIS 2020 : AfNOG '20 - TIMELINE

[Noah Sematimba]

Hi Nishal, 

I am crawling out of the woodwork on this one :-)

> On Dec 10, 2019, at 4:43 AM, Nishal Goburdhan <nishal at controlfreak.co.za> wrote:
> 
> 
> of course, i have also said that courses like SI-E, should be retired [1].  there are sufficiently enough individuals that have been trained through the years to be able to run and hold this sort of class, in their own domestic environment, and, it does *not* scale anymore to (as an example) fly someone form gambia to uganda to learn relatively simple BGP.  go to gmNOG, instead!  and maybe more support for the people at gmNOG to make a localised SI-E, possible.    (search and replace GM with appropriate country/nog .. )

I am not sure I would agree with this argument given how many times I have seen providers struggling to find even basic NOC engineers. One would indeed assume that there now enough individuals trained to do so but that does not factor in the rather rapid population explosion in most of Africa, the exponential growth of most networks and access to the internet as a result, and brain drain as many of those trained have migrated to other locales, been promoted, or otherwise ceased to be hands on techs for one reason or another. 

That said, maybe the regional NOGS make more sense but they would require a lot more support to really have that kind of impact. AfNOG is more than the technical skills taught in class. For some of us it was also the change in mindset that came with interacting with vastly more exposed and experienced individuals from around the world. 

Noah.