[afrigeek] AIS 2020 : AfNOG '20 - TIMELINE

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 10 Dec 2019, at 23:42, Noah Sematimba wrote:

> Hi Nishal,
>
> I am crawling out of the woodwork on this one :-)

noah!  :-D


>> 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.

all your point are valid.
and yet, we did the same with E0/intro to unix, a while ago.

[snip the obvious parallels to struggling *nix admins who still need 
help]


> 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.

.. and a big problem in the operator space now, is that afnog’s 
curriculum has not evolved to include more “advanced” material.  
which, for budget, and, frankly, practical space purposes (the given 
number of workshop rooms available at a venue) means that you sometimes 
*do* need to retire the old to bring in the new.

frankly, there are *always* going to be struggling operators.  my point 
was not that we are anywhere near “fixing” that.  but that there are 
other ways to fix that - like localised NOGs, which, if well done, will, 
quite frankly, be far more efficient.

i especially like your closing sentence;  but are we doing enough to 
bring in not just the entry-level engineers, but the more experienced 
ones, who have been sitting at their job doing this (for say 5+ years) 
and may not have gone through the *nog space, and are now happily 
content that _their_ way is the _right_ or best way!  it is my 
experience that *these* are actually the problems;  dinosaurs that 
won’t change.  you’re only going to engage them by putting out new 
and interesting;  something they don’t know.  and route reflectors 
ain’t necessarily that ..

my 5c,
—n.