The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RAJ SINGH: All right, good morning, and welcome to Workshop 223: Communities of Practice NOGs Driving the Local Internet. We have a small gathering here this morning. I guess it's too early, some have started leaving, but that's okay.
Just to give you a quick overview, we're not using any presentations or slide decks. It's all interventions followed by our esteemed speakers. I'm hoping we stick to the time, and I'm also hoping we can get some interaction from the audience, and hopefully, the room fills up a little bit more as the day goes on.
So, first of all, I'm Raj Singh from the APNIC Foundation. Most of our speakers are in the room right now, except for one, Mohibullah, joining us from Afghan Stapp. We have three segments. First, we'll cover the NOG ecosystem. Then we'll go and hear from NOG practitioners who are on the ground setting up NOGs. And then, to wrap it up, we'll talk about sustainability and the future of NOGs.
Now, if you don't know what NOGs are, NOGs are Network Operator Groups. And I thought I'd start a little bit with my own experience with NOGs.
Back in the day, when I was doing start ups, I was asked by one of my team members to go to a meeting in Singapore. I had no idea what it was. Said it's like a NOG meeting. I had no idea what NOG meant.
So, when I arrived at the meeting, he introduced me around to a few people. This was an APNIC meeting, by the way. And my first question was and I started to understand a little bit how NOGs work why is it that people from competing companies are collaborating and discussing and trying to fix problems together? Because from a business perspective, it didn't make sense to me. Why would I collaborate with my competitors, right?
It took me a while to understand why that was the case. And then, today, of course, I'm a big supporter of the NOG ecosystem, as we will allude to.
So, the key thing there is that NOGs, they may come from different companies and different organizations; they may be competing with each other at the business level, but they work together to solve problems, to address issues to ensure that the Internet keeps on operating the way it needs to operate; it's stable, it's secure, it's resilient, it's robust. And therein, it performs a very the NOG groups perform a very important function in the Internet ecosystem.
The problem, however, is that hardly anyone knows about NOGs and us, right. NOGs are basically those that work in the background. They keep things running. They collaborate. They coordinate. But the outside world never really knows you, right? Even when things go wrong, they go to the ISPs, the providers, whoever they may be. There will be lots of Internet chatter that this is not working, Internet is down, speed is slow. But behind the scenes, it's people from NOGs who work in these companies who try and make sure that those things don't happen.
So, I believe this is the first time the Internet Governance Forum has actually had a session on NOGs. That I thought was quite amusing in a manner of speaking, because it's the Internet Governance Forum. The Internet basically depends on NOGs to keep things up and running, and we have never brought up these issues at an IGF, you know, in the, what, nearly 20 years that it's been around. So, I'm glad that we're doing this session, and at least it's on the agenda, you know. We have some online participants and we have some articles out of this which I hope can be shared with the wider community.
So, to start off, we'll talk a little bit about the NOG ecosystem. So, I've asked a couple of my speakers a question each of what their experience has been in setting up NOGs and being involved with them. I will get each speaker, and as I attend to you, please introduce yourself in two sentences. Let's not do long bios. And then, if you could answer the question that I put to you.
So, I'll start off with Rupesh. Rupesh, in many respects, SANOG is one of the most famous NOGs in the Asia Pacific region with more than 20 years of history. Can you share thoughts on that 20 plus industry and how it's contributed to the south Asian technical community, which keeps Internet up and running, not only in the region but outside of it as well?
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: Thank you, Raj. Thank you very much. As you mentioned, this is probably the first time that the NOG has been part of this IGF programme, and I'm really very thankful to APNIC Foundation for facilitating this and bringing us together with the governance side of the Internet.
As Raj mentioned, we, as NOG people, are working in the background to keep the Internet stable, secure, kind of open, but we work in a stealth mode for the governance team, right?
So, SANOG we started in 2003, through an initiative of a few people, like Dr. Phyllis and (?) and a few other people. And later on, people started joining the movement. We started as the knowledge sharing platform initially, as to the conference, aligned with one of the IT conferences that was happening in NIPA, and then we moved on to start make the SANOG as the more training platform as well.
So, over the period I mean, if I have to break down this 23 years of journey of SANOG, basically, on a broader way, we break it down into three different parts. Initial movement was, like, some of the people were very enthusiastic people coming together to share the knowledge, share their experience and get along, and getting that satisfaction and motivation of being with the team of good technical people who are driving to keep Internet secure, as well as getting the knowledge transfer to the new generation.
And I always say during the SANOG events that a lot of people who are trained by SANOG in the earlier days are now in various leadership position and are the key members of this Internet community. And initially it was basically a training programme/workshop that we used to do. Since 2003, we have done we've trained probably around 3,500 people. This is like a hard core training, right, so five days of hands on training on how you should work on the Internet.
And when we started in 2003, it was more of a static routing days, right, so you give a command and router's saying, oh, send this to network, or submit to this network, and more static. And through the SANOG, we started training on the OSB, BGB and things of that sort and gradually moved to security and now more on the automation side of the network as well.
The initial journey was towards like training this, making the SANOG as a workshop, a training platform, where a lot of people were trained. And at the same time, we were providing fellowship to more deserving candidates, and those fellow people who got the fellowship has come back to the SANOG as trainer now, so they're more of the senior trainer for the SANOG community, and it's done through the volunteer way. We don't pay for the trainers. This is all the volunteer trainers that come to the community and share their experiences, share their hand, just as SANOG initially gave them a hand to start their career.
Then, the second phase of SANOG we started to think that, okay, probably the SANOG being a regional network operators group in various countries, we do two events we've been doing two events every year in different cities of South Asia, in (?) Baru, Mumbai or Taka, and various places. So, we realize that, okay, maybe we should not only do this event on an international basis, we should also carry the localized part of the content. And we started to encourage the local content providers, local providers to come up with their challenges, and then we build onto the process and then the thought process of creating these local NOGs, and we started supporting the creation and then handling of the local NOG, where in 2014, the BD NOG started in Bangladesh and in 2016, it started in NIPA, and now that we have all the NOGs in different countries now, so all the south Asian countries have their own local NOGs and it's, like, very, very interesting to see that we've covered SANOG in six different countries. And it's very interesting and I'm very happy to see AFNOG was part of the opening ceremony in AFNOG last week, and I'm happy to see MENOG was coming up.
So, through this initiative, we plan to cover all the regions' countries, and happy to see that the local NOGs are carrying the content and carrying the thought process that SANOG initially covered, and it's more on the localized basis, right? So, SANOG will come as a regional platform, but the local NOGs can, through their local language communication, through their local needs, will come up to address the local challenges.
For example, in NIPNOG, they came up with the optical fiber training, which was the local need at that time. And that curriculum is nowhere found. So, they developed their own curriculum, started the training, and then there was like catered to their own communities' requirement. Similar in Bhutan, similar thing happened. I think in Afghanistan, the last AFNOG was in local language. Very happy to see that. Sri Lanka is doing it in the local language. APINOG did the last event partially hybrid and in Napoli and English language. So, the second part of SANOG's journey over the last 20 plus years, 23 years to be more specific, has been, first base was more of a community building; second phase focused on the local NOG creation; and we are at the brink of starting our third phase, which I'll talk later on, what next for SANOG, now that all the countries have their own local NOGs, that we are going to move to the next phase.
Also, through the SANOG movement, we've been able to do the training or start joining of various Internet exchanges as well. And this movement was contributed by a lot of people. Raj was part of the community which contributed to SANOG. Afta was there, (?) from Bhutan, a lot of people. So, we were a part of this, to make this SANOG, a NOG community, a strong community. And it was completely this is a very selfless job, no? Let's talk about why competing organizations would come together and then showcase their challenges or success stories or difficulties that they're facing in the business. It's more of a family, no? You come to a family environment where you feel free to share your challenges, you feel free to share your successes, so that the bonding becomes bigger for the greater interest of the Internet in overall, right? So, we are more of a SANOG is more, initially as was mentioned, we are like working in the background, like a guardian of south Asian galaxy, but a lot of people do not realize that, and the governance side of that.
Maybe my five minutes is up, so probably I'll continue in the later part. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you, Rupesh. So, guardians of the south Asian galaxy. So, that could stick, eh?
Osama. So, the Middle East NOG has been around for over 15 years, I believe. You have evolved in that time to meet community needs, so that's another important aspect of NOGs, right, you need to meet the community's needs. Could you share some thoughts on the journey and how it has helped contribute to the development in the Middle East, which itself, of course, has been rapid in these 15 odd years?
>> OSAMA AL DOSARY: So (off microphone) I really enjoyed the experience there, and for me, it was a new experience in terms of people came together, for people to help each other, saw how valuable the sessions were, because they were from people that actually have real hands on experience, as opposed to the typical training you may get from vendors, where it's just professional trainers, with all respect to them, but they don't have the operational background to explain the challenges that people may face, or you may face, on a daily basis. And that was very enlightening.
And similar to SANOG, we were founded initially led by Dr. Philip (?). I think this was 2007. And a couple other local members. And I was part of that team, part of the Programme Committee from that initial meeting. And we kept on going, and it was, mostly in the beginning it was mostly a grassroots efforts, and the effort to kind of gain more awareness of MENOG and more awareness of the challenges and the importance of focusing on internal operations to make sure that Internet operates and continues, and trying to reach out to not only the community, but also to the, I'd say executives and telecom operators, and also to reach out to government, the regulators and so forth, to kind of raise their awareness of the different issues and also things similar to, for example, the need to roll out IPv6 or get their support to kind of roll out IPv6. And that was kind of the initial phase that we went through in the beginning.
And part of the success is also, you know, part of the local successes we had in the region were, for example, in Saudi Arabia, the regulator actually took upon themselves to kind of appropriate IPv6, and kind of the adoption of IPv6 in Saudi Arabia was one of the best, not only in the region, but globally, and that was kind of the early phase.
Later on, kind of the we went through some other changes in MENOG, and the RIPE NCC took a bigger role in the leadership of NCC. Dr. Philip Smith had to step away a little bit, and we took it took a kind of different role, not the kind of same level as it did, but it took like a higher role of engaging governments more and trying to raise more awareness on a government level, and also conducting we continue to conduct the trainings that we did. So, we had a similar format in terms of we had hands on workshops, and we were actually modeled after SANOG, so similar in that we had hands on training workshops, whether on IPv6, whether on security. And then, we used to have tutorials, one day full of tutorials, and then we would have another day we would have two days of plenary sessions, where we would accept submissions from region and globally to present in the conference.
And then, after that, we kind of we had to roll back a little bit, so we weren't doing twice a year as we first initially started, but then we started doing once a year, and we've been continuing on the once a year format since then, and I'm happy to say that I think it's going very well.
We had a recent meeting in Oman just a few weeks ago.
>> RAJ SINGH: All right. Thanks, Osama. Thanks for that overview of how you've developed MENOG. And again, the key thing between MENOG and SANOG, it's about community. You're building a community of practice. And people are there to help each other, rather than, you know, compete. The competition comes later.
Okay, if I can turn to Vahan with RIPE NCC, one of the five Internet registries, and the RIPE region itself covers multiple sub regions. You enjoy a high level view of how the internet is developing on the technical level and you work with multiple stakeholders to ensure the Internet remains open, available, and accessible. Could you share some thoughts on what you see from RIR perspective and in particular some of the challenges that the technical community faces?
>> VAHAN HOVSEPYAN: Okay. Good? Nice. So, actually, NOGs are one of the priority groups in RIPE Technical Community, and we do support the creation and the activities of NOGs in our service region with many, many, many instruments sharing, and this is not only financial. We do share in many cases also our personal, let's say appropriation or operation of NOGs. I had the personal experience prior to joining RIPE NCC. I was the creator of Armenian Association of Operators that has initiated first Armenian NOG, and that is why I have my own personal, let's say, history of things happening why and understanding why NOG should happen and what it can bring to the community.
But I can share here some experience we had with many NOGs and what issues they have and what kind of opportunities they have and some uniqueness of work with them and in these regions. So far, I have participated in well, participated in kind of creation and supported them, Georgia and Armenian and Kazakhstan NOG.
And the interesting thing with Kazakhstan NOG is that it is not even an event, but it is a community. So, sometimes we have some similarities with AGIF, you know. We have that as an event, but this is kind of not an event. This is a process, this is a procedure of Internet governance, and this is also a process of network operators to discuss their issues and not to discuss it once a year or twice a year, but also have the platform where they can discuss the current issues and get the current answer.
So, Kazakhstan NOG started from the Telegram chat group. Telegram chat group. And they have decided to go to the NOG kind of year after they have started very proactive communication with Telegram. And not only Kazakhstan network operators collect there, but also operators from neighboring countries, from Russia, from other places itself, and myself as well.
So, what they do? They do this very proactive communication on current issues each day. They have hundreds of messages each day in this Telegram group, and they started communicating at the conference, KZAD cause, with the government itself. And this was already a second step of their development.
Third step of their development was that State has recognised them as an organized group, and they have advised them to come and asked them to come to the advisory group under the Ministry. And they are already one of their initiators, or is already in the public counsel at the ministry. And the third is the creation of the association, the legal body. And they have created now the Association of Legal Bodies that has also an ability to legally support these processes.
What we do with them and how it can be also beneficial for other multistakeholder community to cooperate with them? Okay, we do also this we try to do, at least, these trainings, because there is a gathering of network operators. It's a good place to go and deliver there prior or after the event the trainings that can be beneficial for this technical community.
What is quite interesting, they are not only discussing now the technical questions. They are not now discussing over how they can operate the Internet, but they now also discuss all the questions that can be interested for the operators, should it be commercial, marketing, sales, all these questions. And it was mentioned here, it is not a place for competition there. They are quite free to share their experience. They are quite free to share their advises, how they can deal with this or that product. And it is quite a unique environment where they can openly talk about their problems, even the State that is called to be it goes there and take participation in these discussions.
How it can be also helpful to others? We see a lot of our counterparts also working with the technical community. So, should it be ISOC with their programmes to support community, should it be state or multistakeholder other bodies that we have. For example, the IG also providing some conferences and sites on how they can develop the Internet or support to develop the Internet and standards, et cetera. So, they are also coming sometimes to these meetings.
And this is, as we see for IXPs, for NOGs, for policy players, this can be also a future place for them to grow and represent their questions to the State and have this negotiation with the state immediately and not to wait for four months or a year to have the NOG gathering.
We are closely cooperating with them and supporting them, not only for the organization of the event itself, but also in the development of that. And I guess the brightest example of this combined cooperation or successful cooperation can be MENOG, where my colleague was here, Shapik. You might know him. He is widely engaged, and our manager, Kesham, was playing a significant role. Participated at two MENOGs. They are brilliant, and they are bringing all the questions that are very actual for the community, for the development of community.
And this can be also the place where you can understand these issues of the community and bring it to the upper level, like to the regional level or to the international level. That what is maybe missed sometimes for the discussions at IGF grounds, where we can bring what we discussed at MENOG or SANOG. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you. What we heard from those three speakers is how the NOG ecosystem has been evolving, at least in the wider Asian part of the region, and of course, the European side as well. Needless to say, it plays the NOG community plays a very important role, and I'm hoping in the following segments, in the last segment today, we can talk a little bit about how we can raise that voice in other fora as well.
And one good thing to hear from Vahan and Osama both is the fact that governments are also interested in the work of the NOGs, and I think that's not equal across the world, it depends on the economy or region or subregion, and I think we could do a little bit more work there as well.
So, we're doing very well for time. Thank you to my speakers for listening to me being on time. I absolutely am impressed. Thank you.
I've got a few minutes allocated for some question and answers. I wanted to make this interactive and not just have a series of talks by our speakers. First, let's go to my good friend, Kahul, if we have anyone online with questions or comments? Oh, no comments thus far? Okay, all right, fine. So, we can turn to the room itself. Anyone in the room would like to ask a question, have a comment? Mary, yes, please. Please, take the mic so that... if you could also introduce yourself very quickly. Please. Maybe it's off?
>> MARY: Hello, everyone. I'm Mary from Timor Leste. Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous because this is my first time to attend the discussion, internal discussion like this. I also want to say that Timor Leste also have a NOG this year, so we just start this year, and we get the support from the APNIC and the initiative we start NOG is from the APNIC staff (?).
And this year, we start NOG with three days for workshop for Internet routing basic, and then for conference, conference one day. And we got a sponsor from the international company also and from APNIC. And we got support also from our government that facilitate us with the building to hold the conference, hold the workshop.
So, here, I want to ask to the SANOG what your input for TILNOG, just started. So, maybe SANOG has more experience with NOG, so you can, maybe you can give us an idea or a suggestion so to the TLNOG. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: In fact, the next segment talks about how new NOGs are starting up, so our three colleagues from Maldives, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are going to cover a little bit of that, but Rupesh, maybe you can share brief comments?
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: Thank you, Mary, for the question. Basically, when you start a new NOG, as SANOG, through our experience, what I would like to recommend is focus on two things: One, understand what the local community requires from this community, right? So, local requirement has to be clearly spelled out before you start to listen to the outside world.
Second part of the responsibility for TLNOG would be to get the success stories and the scenarios from the outside world. For example, the vendor IPv6 deployment was required. SANOG was part of it to provide training to its community, and then get the regional people, regional engineers ready to get the deployment of IPv6. When the wave came for Internet exchange and the SANOG was helping then the community to get the knowledge transferred to establishing the Internet exchange, and all these things. The DNS set. So, now the RPKI or implementation and all those things.
So, focus on two things understand what the local community wants or requires, and help facilitate through the outside world or through the local resources itself. Second, whatever is happening worldwide, in terms of making the Internet more secure and resilient and then stable, get those things processed to the community, through whatever APNIC or Internet Foundation or Internet Society, whatever help you can get from the outside world, or SANOG, we would be happy to extend our resources for the upcoming NOGs as well. So, we would be happy to get those things facilitated as well. So, just focus on those two things.
I mean, apart from that, there will be a lot of challenges. Funding will be challenges, and getting the papers presented. There will be so many other challenges, but just try to focus on these two key areas for the success and stability of getting the operations rolling for the benefit of your community.
>> RAJ SINGH: Okay, thanks, Rupesh.
>> OSAMA AL DOSARY: I'd like to add to that. So, it may differ a little bit from my colleague here. I would actually recommend that you start simple and focus on the community, so the people that are involved. Just try to have that in a way that's very simple, that doesn't cost anything. Be very frugal. And maybe start very small, somehow getting together. Maybe it could be just getting together over a meal and then talking about one topic. You don't have to make it very big from the beginning. You can reach the stage where it's big, but initially, you should focus on the community aspect and focus on the technology and the operational aspect.
So, the people that are interested in NOGs, the best people that are interested in NOGs are the people that are very interested in technology and operating technology. So, have that as the core goal of the group. So, when you gather together, you gather in a more social manner and talk about these different issues, and then maybe you can start by having discussions on certain points. You don't have to have something very formal or anything like, you don't have to try to rent out a location to set up something. Just have it as a normal, like a simple discussion. So, you create a very simple structure. We get together once a week, once a month, like that, and, you know, some regular cadence, and then you it could be over a meal, talk, and then you may have something as simple as, okay, for the next 30 minutes, we're going to talk about, or next 20 minutes, we're going to talk about one topic. Or if someone has something to share, please share it.
And then, when you start doing that over time, then you can start doing something a bit more formal. If someone has, let's say a topic they want to present, you know, maybe you get to a point where they actually prepare a presentation. So, very often, people in our communities, the technical people, people that run routers and switches and DNS and so forth, they're very uncomfortable presenting, right? So, if you tell them, you know, can you make a presentation about this and talk to people, that is very scary. It's extremely scary, right? But if you start in a very kind of casual fashion. Okay, please, tell us about this topic, or can you share this experience? Without any presentation. Just have it very informal, very casual, and then over time, you can tart to make it more structured. When the team gets bigger, to the stage where you can't have a normal conversation like this at that point, it becomes obvious that people need to put some slides together, have something more formal to do. But I would recommend avoid cost, avoid incurring additional cost in the beginning, because the more cost you have in the beginning, the more difficult it can be to maintain, right?
So, for example, if you get used to getting funds from SANOG or whatever other organization, or let's say one of the companies come sponsor you, and then you get used to doing that, if that fund is not available, then it becomes difficult to actually manage your group. So, that would be my recommendation, is start small, start casual, social, and then gradually build up the engagement.
>> RAJ SINGH: I think that's some useful advice there. Vahan, come to you.
>> VAHAN HOVSEPYAN: Yeah, a small one. A small one. It is on, yeah. Don't forget about the human basis of all of us. This is about socializing, yes, but this is about fun, and the event should be attractive to everybody. So, if you have a founder, well, it should be interesting. It should be interesting and not very full of technical details, et cetera, but with also human conversation, really fun, attractiveness. Don't think much about money itself. So, either RIPE NCC or APNIC or APNIC Foundation will help you, or ISOC, okay. That is not an issue. But to create a unique environment where they have a fun, where they have an opportunity to talk and express themselves, and if it is interesting, they will come.
>> RAJ SINGH: So, for those who may be unaware, Timor Leste is one of the newest sovereign countries in the world. It's based in Southeast Asia. It's a small country. I know we've been doing a lot of work trying to support them over the last several years.
I had a question at the back there, perhaps, yeah. Can someone run a mic? Thanks.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. Can you hear me? I'm karma from Bhutan. I just have a few comments with regard to the NOG. I'm also one of the co chairs of the Bhutan (?) group, established in 2014. And since then, we have had over 11 (?) events every year for the last 10, 11 years.
My question is on the sustainability part, and just a comment, basically. The NOGs, like the few speakers have already mentioned, drives on the volunteerism, and they're only group of volunteers that come forward, organize these meetings, but also, at the same time, deliver training, help the community with the training specific requirements within the country, within the region. And these volunteers are basically, they're the volunteers. So, we get fund. So, what we do is we heavily rely on the sponsorship, not just from the international, but from the local as well.
And I think we have a great opportunity here right now for all these NOGs, IGF, ISOC country specific chapters to coexist, basically. And each of the players has an opportunity to complement each other to achieve the outcome, the goals of their respective IGF, ISOC, or the NOGs.
And also, with regard to the now with NOGs coming up more prominently for the last five, six years, the regional the way the regional NOGs approach this whole new community building, capacity building, the whole regional NOGs has to change, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing on what will be the next step for the SANOG. That's very important, so there is no duplication in effort, and we grow together. Just a comment. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you. I am a big believer in no duplication, so, indeed, the last segment is about sustainability, so we'll cover that little bit later.
So, we'll go to the next part of the session today, which is actually hearing from NOG practitioners. It just so happens, we have a nice segue, we heard from Timor Leste and Bhutan before we hear from the other three economies or five economies, which is a good thing. Let me first turn to Mohibullah of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is one of the newer NOG efforts in the region and you have had your fair share of challenges in many dimensions. Can you share some insights on what you have had to do to set up a NOG and the challenges you have faced?
>> MOHIBULLAH UTMANKHIL: Thank you, Raj. Am I audible?
>> RAJ SINGH: Yes, yes, you are.
>> MOHIBULLAH UTMANKHIL: Okay, that's good. Good morning, everyone. I'm Mohibullah Utmankhil. I'm the Coordinator of the Afghanistan Network Operators Group, and currently, I'm based in Germany. Just wanted to say that as well. Let me give some context about Afghanistan before addressing your questions.
We are a landlocked country located at a crossroads of the South and Central Asia. And despite the rich history, we have faced challenges in the past 50 years, including political instability, infrastructure gaps, and economic constraints, all of which have impacted the development of the country and also the Internet ecosystem.
So, though the Internet penetration has been improving over the years, from almost no connectivity in early 2000s to having an Internet fibering in the country and five to six national level telecommunication service providers and around 60, 70 network operators all over the country at the moment. Although we don't have direct access to the subsea cables, however, we have fiber connections to almost all of the neighbor countries. And despite all of these, there are still much work to be done, particularly in addressing infrastructure gaps and capacity building and digital divide.
AFNOG was conceptualized as a response to these challenges. So, data for establishing a network operators group in Afghanistan began back in 2018 during discussions with regional leaders, including Dr. Philip Smith and APNIC engineers at the meeting in Calcutta, India, for operators to network and share experiences and learn from global best practices.
One of the tasks back then we wanted to work on was to have an instance of the DNFC root server hosted in Afghanistan. And I had the honour of leading the NOG establishment back then and discussions, and also following the communication about the DNS root server in a sense with the Ministry of Communication and IT those days.
However, turning that vision into reality was not easy. And we were not able to follow up things during COVID pandemic and later the political situation changed in Afghanistan, which made things worse, and we were not able to stick to our plans.
Later in 2022, when I was living in Pakistan, I was also one of the Fellows of the APNIC Foundation's Afghanistan Project, which is a capacity building programme. And now it's extended to digital leaps out and included in other countries. The idea of having NOG in Afghanistan was raised in our meeting by Mr. Omar Ansari and I was happy to follow up with the idea of having a NOG in Afghanistan again.
And from 2023, we officially launched Afghanistan Network Operators Group. We recently had our second AFNOG meeting in December this year, and it was organized remotely for two days, and we had around seven sessions and panel discussions with around 60 participants.
So, of course, we are a young community, and there are still many things that needs to be done to make the community more inclusive and stable. And at the moment, some of the key challenges that we are dealing with is, for example, the community engagement is a challenge for us, bringing together a fragmented community of network professionals and experts is a challenge, sometimes, especially when over the past four years, majority of the experts and leaders left the country. And reaching out to them in different regions with different time zones and bringing them together in discussions with local experts inside Afghanistan is a challenge that we are dealing with, in addition, due to the lack of pre existing collaborative culture, getting stakeholders to actively participate and sharing knowledge has also been a challenge.
So, though we have seen progress through last two years, through consistent outreach and engagement efforts, but still there are other things needs to be done in this specific task.
And added challenge is the political situation in the country. Sometimes, we find it challenging to actively engage local experts who are inside Afghanistan in our community discussions. And since the situation is complicated and they don't want to risk their positions, it's understandable for us. And as a community, we also prefer sometimes to be adaptive. They do join our webinars and communications, but they prefer to have their cooperations in the background and not actively.
And another challenge is the capacity building. We also have training and a skill development programme to address the technical expertise gap within the local community. We organize monthly webinars and discussions, while our priority is to have local presenters and panelists, which is sometimes a challenge to have their engagement.
Despite all of these challenges, so far, the journey has been rewarding. We have learned that collaboration is key, not just within the country, but regionally and also globally. And organizations like APNIC Foundation, APNIC, RIPE, and south Asian network operators group have been invaluable partners so far and I am thankful to them. Thank you so much.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you, Mohibullah, and thank you for plugging the APNIC Foundation and building capacity. Of course, Afghanistan has its own challenges and Mohibullah sitting in Germany trying to coordinate in Afghanistan. We have some of our colleagues from Afghanistan in the room here as well. And in another session, I mentioned that whenever conflict or political issues happen, media and the world pays attention for a little bit of a while, and then they move on to something else. The problems still remain in Afghanistan, though, so I think there's still a lot more to be done.
Okay, I'll turn to harissa now from Pakistan. Harisa, Pakistan has a vibrant community and I've been a frequent visitor, but the NOG group has also had challenges through the years. However, in more recent times, there's been a flurry of activity locally. As part of the newer generation in the industry, how do you see what NOGs do and what has your experience been? So, Harisa is one of our next generation leaders, I can say, so I'm always keen to hear what she would contribute to this discussion, and the voice of the next generation I think is equally important, not just the old timers like myself and Rupesh and Osama and Vahan. So, Harisa, please.
>> HARISA SHAHID: Thank you so much. Am I audible? Okay, great. First of all, thank you so so much for bringing this up and having this discussion. As you said, indeed, Pakistan is a community of multi talented people and has a huge technical spectrum. But the weakest challenge in this dream has been observed interorganizational collaboration.
As you said that I have been part of the next generation, like I was not involved as much in the previous years, but from the time since I have been involved in the Pakistan NOG and have discussion with the people there, so I have, like, come to know that the organizational collaboration has been the main challenge, and it starts from the ISPs, but the large (?) so it needs the discussion. It needs the people like us to come and discuss these issues.
If I talk about the earlier times, I believe the earlier times, the medias were being organized by like the government entities or the government technical (?) to bring up the stakeholders and interested parties to collaborate and gather and discuss the issues. But the organizational interaction or collaboration has been (audio breaking up) because maybe they weren't were not being able as the technical people are very shy to come up and discuss the issues, so maybe that could be the reason, or maybe they don't want to, like, to share their hidden trade secrets, which can be understandable.
But in those events, now, if I talk about recent times, with the help of organizations like APNIC and other organizations, newer ways of engaging these technical experts or these organizations have been put into play. And talking about nowadays industry has a positive outlook towards these and isn't shy to discuss the technology or present any issues.
And Vahan said, the events, we should start from the smaller steps. And for the technical experts to discuss and engage freely, it should be like, it should have something fun. So, social events have been observed to have more attendance and we utilize those events to come up and discuss the technological aspects of the issues. And in these special events, the people gather and discuss these technical expertise, any technological issues. And if the discussion is not more (audio breaking up) it can continue later on to have the troubleshooting, knowledge sharing, and technological discussions.
And if I talk particularly, if I talk about the Pakistan NOG, Pakistan NOG is not like running in the way like typical NOGs are right now, but baby steps are being taken to have a strong base before it is launched nationwide and becomes one stop for collaboration and knowledge sharing expertise. So, yeah, that's all I think. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: One key message I'm getting here is, you know, first, let's learn how to crawl, then walk, then we run, right. And after we start running, we can start to sprint, yeah?
The other bit, of course, that resonated for me in just a few contributions, including what Vahan said earlier was that, you know, we are building network connections, but it's humans doing, right? So, with eneed that human connection to make those network connections work as well, so that social interaction. Human beings by nature, they like interaction and socializing.
Right, so, let's go to Niuma from the Maldives. I had a very interesting chat with her earlier in the week, so I'm keen to hear what other insights she will share with the wider group. The Maldives NOG is also in early stages, Niuma. You have recently held a number of local activities, including a local IGF. How difficult or easy, for that matter, has it been to bring the community together and what are the challenges moving forward? And of course, some of you may be aware, the Maldives has also had political challenges in recent times. So, Niuma, thanks.
>> NIUMA FAIZ: Thank you. Thank you, APNIC, for this opportunity. As Raj mentioned, we just had this year's IGF in Maldives, on October. And the initial NOG discussions were kick started during the IGF this year with the assistance from APNIC as well. We brought together people from ISPs, public private sector, and network operators, as well, to come up. And we organized with the help of APNIC. We organized an introductory session to this community, technical people, just to introduce what NOG is. Because when we reached out to the community, what we found out was most of them are not too familiar with the concept of NOG itself.
First of all, we are taking very baby steps just to let them know what NOG is about and what kind of support (audio breaking up) is in community and what is a community (audio breaking up). So, we start formation of MPNOG, and I would say just that we have (no audio)
Okay. Am I audible now? Okay. So, okay. So, we have identified that in Maldives, there is a skill gap, especially we have a huge need of building capacity within the country, in terms of network security or even in network operators as well. So, in order to build the capacity, we need resources to conduct professional trainings as well. So, in order to build the capacity, we need human resources, as educators.
So, to fill in that gap, I think organizations such as APNIC, SANOG, and as we have received comments from most of the NOG operators in the community, I think we need to work together and collaborate to fill in these resource gaps.
And the other approach that we are looking in with MANOG establishment is we have established local community organization, such as Women in Tech, who are very actively engaged in the community, who are working with network operators and government and public sectors, who have a very good connection with the local community, technical sector, as well as the government and public sectors. So, organizations such as Women in Tech, civil society organizations, and MBIs, we will be a very good hub to bring this multisectoral communities together and start this conversation.
So, we are trying to as Osama also mentioned, we are trying to start the discussions and works of MANOG in a very small scale, because as we all know, the technical communities are not very open. They like to have closed group discussions, in order to come up with a very comfort discussion and to start with the initial discussions, we need to have fun activities, closed group discussions, maybe just a coffee meet up will help, because they need to come together and work as start to work as a community to bring in these benefits.
And also, I think the other challenge that in a country like Maldives would have is, because we are scattered in different events, the resources if we need to conduct workshops or trainings, the logistics and the cost would be a bit expensive. We have to bring in people from different islands. The travel expenses, these kinds of things is going to be there. So, I think an approach that we think is very effective in Maldives, as our friend from Bhutan also mentioned, to partner with the local ISPs and partner organizations who can support as sponsors, to support these kinds of initiatives within the Maldives.
So, I think with the formation of NOG, it will bring in a lot of new discussions and positive aspects in the technical community and Internet provision, because currently, we do not have such an ecosystem in the Maldives. So, if you bring them all together to bring about a change, not only in the capacity building aspect, in terms of policy formulation, regulatory aspects, and to push the government to establish and provide more capacity building, because we are going to move towards a more digital future and new or emerging technologies are going to come. So, if you want to catch up with the technological advancement, we need to be ready to work together and collaborate. This is not going to happen with a single body working towards we need to work towards a common goal to address the challenges that we all face together. So, I think the NOG formulation would be a very positive thing for Maldives, and we look forward to work together with APNIC, APNIC Foundation, and SANOG, and all the NOG communities in the region. Thank you so much.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you, Niuma. So, what we've heard in the past two segments is, of course, what NOGs are, how they have evolved over time, and we've heard from some of the newest NOGs that are trying to establish themselves in the region and in some countries which have also gone through some upheavals recently, so it's not an easy task. And I think any support we can provide. So, I appreciate Rupesh saying even though Timor Leste is not in South Asia, they are happy to provide whatever support they can and I imagine other NOGs have a similar view to this.,all about helping others to ensure the global Internet keeps functioning like it should. What we are here for is open, global Internet, right, and one that is interoperable.
Okay, we have just under half an hour left. The third segment is Sustainability and the Future for NOGs. Some of the questions have actually already been raised and some slightly have been answered, some slightly haven't been. I know we've get a few comments online as well. But I'll just first go to Rupesh, Osama, and Vahan with a couple of questions and after that, we'll check out the online comments and go to the floor for a discussion. So, if I can ask, whatever interventions you make now, if you can make it short so we can have a wider discussion with people in the room and online.
Rupesh, most NOGs are volunteer driven, as we heard, yet have an important role to ensure Internet infrastructure keeps running. You have been look at our your own future and we have had discussions on that in the past. Can you share thoughts on the challenges in the future and maybe address some things our friend from Bhutan brought up?
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: Thank you, Raj. Hello again. Yes, we have had a fair bit of challenges over the period. And as was said, the SANOG's journey, we've tried to divide into phases, a phase manner. The initial phase was successfully executed and we have a good community of people, with trained people attending the SANOG, and as Omar said and he is part of SANOG, and a lot of other people were part of SANOG and got some background to start this thing.
Then second part, local NOGs have already driven, started now.
The third part, I'll come to that as well. The third phase, we had a long discussion, long meeting regarding what SANOG should be doing. And I thank you for bringing that as well. So, we'll talk about that. We are yet to come up with the formal report for that, but probably this would be the platform that I'll be sharing some of the information, outcome of that meeting.
Just before I start that part, let me also add a small thing about how SANOG is helping. I think last October, we did SANOG in Pakistan. And Peking NOG was co honest and a lot of that was part of SANOG and the Peking NOG event. And that gave them kind of an initiative to come to the floor. And I agree with Osama and Vahan as well, the NOG begins on the tea table or the coffee top, right, or online. You don't need to have that expensive thing to start with, and that's how the journey starts.
And one of the initiatives that, for SANOG, we are also trying to do is we are trying to reduce the cost of trying to help the NOGs to reduce their cost with, like, facilitating the different NOGs in South Asia with the streaming devices, so they don't have to, like, pay for the expensive video system, the streaming system, including camera, streaming mixer and everything. So, we're going to give that away to all the NOGs so that they can reduce their cost in terms of their operation. So, that's basically what we are planning to start.
Now, the future of SANOG. I have put a few points because I have not prepared the report for that. Over the period, as I said, we've been doing two events every year. Now, with all at the local NOGs coming up, and we're covering in the different countries of South Asia, we have decided we will just do one event every year and we will be more focusing on the conference and tutorial part only. We'll be more supporting as an umbrella organization for all the local NOGs, for the workshop part of it, wherein we will not be conducting the workshop, but we will be doing the Train the Trainer programme for all the trainers who will be training in the local NOGs. So, the SANOG will be doing the training programme for the trainers of the local NOGs so that we can add the value to their own skill part of it. So, that's one thing that we've decided to do.
Also, on the second part of it, through SANOG, I mean, we will be more focusing on the challenge that one of the challenges that it's getting more difficult to organize SANOG as an event, right? So, I know I can understand the challenges of the local NOG, but the SANOG being the regional platform, a lot of funding and support is needed. The sponsorships in the past has been more of the technical people from the different organizations would contribute to this towards the sponsorship, but nowadays, the thing's becoming more and more tighter for the organizations. They want more visibility on their branding, sales, and all these things. So, we are kind of like very volunteer driven, very open platform kind of an organization, not supporting any vendor based presentations or vendor based system. It's very difficult for us to organize that.
So, in view of that, we are going to do a couple of other things as well. So, we are going to improve our branding. We are going to improve our outreach, as Vahan said. In South Asia, it is a very sensitive issue to reach out to the government. Maybe country wise, you can do that, but as a regional organization, you cannot intervene and influence or communicate to the government of every country. So, maybe indirectly we have some strategies around that, so we will reach out to different media, government, and then we'll build our branding and marketing activities. That's something that we will be, again, working on.
So, we are also exchanging on the organization structures, right? So, we had a lot of advisors, core committee was there from different parts. So, our core money now onwards from 2025 would be institutes a representative from all the NOGs, one individual from all the NOGs. So, that will form a core committee of SANOG, and they determine how the SANOG should be moving forward, right? So, based on the regional requirements. So, that's basically how we are going to provide further.
The next event, we are finalizing the debate, which the team in BTNOG will also be working on. So, we'll be doing one event in Bhutan, the next one. It will mostly be a conference and tutorial event, whereby the workshop will be by the BTNOG team and we'll be facilitating on that.
So, the SANOG's role as a regional going forward, at least for the next five years, will be more towards even further strengthening and empowering the local NOGs, helping them to grow, even to the higher level, and also, like, building the brand of SANOG as more of a regional conference, similar to like ETC or Apricot or ANOG, of that sort. We are aiming for a higher branding platform, branding visibility, but that is the something that we are doing to help the local NOGs, okay?
So, the whole strategy that we built we had a meeting last month, thanks to APNIC Foundation for supporting us to have that meeting successfully conducted. And we did that and had very, very good feedbacks. I cannot go through all the pointers, but some of the major bulleted pointers, in terms of organizing structures and in terms of, like, branding, in terms of how we are still being part of the SANOG and how SANOG will be structured going forward is something that I just wanted to give as a highlighted point for the future of SANOG. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thanks, Rupesh. I'm glad to hear the progress that's been made. Of course, I have been constantly asking, what next, what next, where to next? And I'm glad to hear that you've actually addressed some of the issues that have been existing. So, I just want to point out something here. Just because you've done something for 20 odd years doesn't mean you keep on doing it. And the Internet itself has evolved. And I'm really glad to hear that SANOG is now going to evolve itself. It's going to see how it can better serve the wider community.
And if an organization doesn't do that, then I think there's something really wrong. You haven't moved the needle. You haven't really made the impact. What I'm hearing from SANOG is I think they've made the impact and now they are going to see what is the next part in the evolution and how they can continue supporting Internet in the region.
How are we doing for time? Okay, 20 minutes. Osama, some thoughts for you, from MENOG. What are the key factors for sustaining the NOG or if you want to comment on other comments you have heard, feel free to do so.
>> OSAMA AL DOSARY: In terms of sustainability talking about NOGs, I think a regional NOG is very different. Regional NOGs are very different than local NOGs. And I think the real value comes from local NOGs. It's more important than regional NOGs, in my opinion. And sustainability is a challenging question. It's not something that can easily, you know, be maintained.
Very often, NOGs fail. Very often NOGs fail, meaning they disappear and dissipate over time. And the key thing is that or the reason is, very often, NOGs are dependent on volunteers. And when volunteers, for some reason, they change roles, they progress, they go somewhere else, or, you know, it can be for many reasons, they move away, then that kind of weakens the NOG and causes it to kind of dissipate.
So, what I would recommend in terms of sustainability, if we're talking about the local NOGs, is that I think the ones that are leading right now, they need to kind of keep that sustainability in mind, and that sustainability can be achieved, I think, in a couple of ways.
One, what we discussed about earlier, which is trying to be as frugal as possible and not to be very dependent on sponsorships or enormous kind of funding needed. But the other aspect is trying to develop the people that are joining the NOGs and participating, to play a greater role over time.
So, very often, NOGs are led by one person. So, the one person is active. They set up the meetings, and people come, and they're happy to come and join. But in terms of participating and organizing or leading, sometimes people are shy to do that, right? So, over time, once you've established level of rapport with your people, with the community that you have, you need to reach out to them and say, I need help. I need more people to step up and take a more active role in their organizing. And that's, I think, very important, that you need to create once you have that rapport and that comfort with your community, you need to start to kind of ask for more commitment to the group, and always maintaining fun, obviously. Not making it something that's unenjoyable. But you need to kind of create that community.
And it can be something simple, right? So, one person is responsible for finding the location where we meet. The other person is responsible for, let's say, finding, you know, reaching out to the different members to find out who's going to talk about a topic or managing the topics. The other person is responsible for the scheduling and coordination. Simple things like that. So, once you start to create that kind of team level commitment, over time, that helps maintain that sustainability, because if one person, for some reason, can't the initial leader that started in driving the meetings, for some reason needs to step away or needs to move on or anything like that happens, then over time, you have others that can step forward. So, you need to always be aware of the people that seem very eager to help, very eager to participate, to always encourage them, encourage their participation, encourage their help. So, if you see someone always attending an always eager, ask them if they can actually do more, "Can you help me with that?"
And then also, over time, once you get bigger, once you get more active, volunteering is always, you know, challenging and can also always be challenging to manage. So, if you're leading and you find that you're doing most of the work, right, and yet, you still have a large activity going on, but you're doing most of the work, don't be afraid to say, "Guys, I'm a bit overloaded. Can someone help me with this?" Right?
Or during the meetings that you have, ask, okay, "So, this is a great suggestion. Who can do this?" Right? Don't take everything on yourself. Try to find people that will help out. And you'll find people that will help out, but you need to speak out. You need to encourage that, encourage that participation. And once you get to a stage where, let's say there's a committee for that NOG and the committee, each one has work to do, has roles, whether it's reviewing programmes, whether it's finding people to speak or finding sponsors, you need to, you know, kind of, a little bit although they're volunteers, you need to a little bit point out, okay, I really need your commitment. We're suffering here. Maybe not in a group setting, but maybe on an individual level, saying, "Hey, I really need your help. We're kind of slow. Can you guys step up a little bit?" So, that would be my two cents on this topic, in terms of sustainability.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thanks, Osama. Vahan, one thing, I guess, I think it's been alluded to, but we haven't discussed yet, and I think we should do it now. There is a disconnect between the work of network operators and policy and regulatory intervention as a government may make. Often, interventions do not consider wider implications. Can you share your thinking around that? What would be a key consideration you would ask policy makers to take into account? And of course, an added question there and I've noticed a few comments online as well is about, you know, how do we contribute to discussions like this? At IGF, this is the first time an IGF has talked about NOGs, which is bizarre. And then WSIS+20 and others as well.
>> Exactly, and I wanted to talk about why we are here. We want to know how to initiate or stimulate people to come to the NOGs, but we don't talk about how NOGs can be engaged, how their work can be casted in similar events, in WSIS+20, Global Compact, IGF, et cetera. And here is a really huge gap, because they have their own problems. They have their issues of interconnection, of peering, of working with this or that stage regulatory of getting the access and all these. But they think that this WSIS+20 or Global Compact is very far away in Saudi Arabia, somewhere that we have never visited or never heard, maybe.
But no! We should be very detailed with them so they can understand, if they don't participate, if they don't cross their worlds, if they don't think about that, this might be very painful for them, not only fruitful for the future development of Internet, but if they don't participate, if they don't share their concerns for many, many things, it can be also painful for Internet, it can be painful for them. Because when you don't participate in the policy, the policy is still participating with you. So, that is the main idea. And what we are going to do with that, we are already organizing the NOG sessions at RIPE meetings. We are going there and trying to discuss with them these global policy issues. Because they know quite well, much better than we, how to get engaged with their local regulator or ministry itself. But we know better how to deal with these global issues, but we need also their words, we need also their concerns. So, this mechanism should work through both phase.
We should, and we are requested to provide this information to them so they can understand what is this global development, and they should tell us what they are thinking. And maybe we should think now how to enable their voices to come there and to represent it there. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you, Vahan. Osama, yes, please.
>> OSAMA AL DOSARY: I'd like to add to that. I think that's very important what Vahan said. Also, I think sometimes the idea of, if you talk to an engineer, NOG engineer, and say, "I need you to help in policy development," that sounds scary. That sounds like, okay, that's really too high level, right? So, it may not be something that they're motivated to do because they don't really feel the impact, but we need to kind of simplify the concept. When we're talking about policy development, we're not talking necessarily yeah, it could be something legislative, but we're really talking about something simpler that may affect you, and we need to also encourage the awareness.
So, these engineers or the NOG members may not necessarily be the people that will develop the policy, but they are the people that need to educate the people that will develop the policy. So, the people that might be involved in developing a policy, right, they need to listen to the NOGs and these technical people.
And the other side of it, the technical people need to be a bit more open and reach out and try to educate those that are involved so that they have a full awareness of the challenges and issues that we face.
>> RAJ SINGH: I think that's a good point. Rupesh, just a quick one.
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: A small addition. There are two approaches to sell some product. One is just to make this very attractive so a person can go and wants to go and buy it. Second approach is to show the person that without this product, it will be very painful for him to leave. So, in that case, he will buy this product with any price.
>> RAJ SINGH: Rupesh. And the product is the NOG community, right?
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: Thank you for bringing up this issue. Yes, I mean, right now, the IGF or the governance team is looking at this zero degree, and then the technical team is looking at the 180 degrees. So there is not coming together. There has to be a bridge between these two, kind of interpretation of what technology can impact the policy and what policy can impact. These people do not understand each other. So, again, thank you very much to Raj and the APNIC Foundation for having the NOG session in this IGF. I believe we need to have some outcome out of that, in terms of how we can cooperate with each other. And then just as Vahan said, we need an interpreter. And I believe over here is the right person, a lawyer by person and a very good advocate in the governance side and somebody who understands the technology. And whenever we had some issues in Nepal, in terms of a technology or any kind of an IT deal that comes across, he's the person who facilitates the meeting, and all of us give in the technical input in part of that. So, maybe people like him could also bridge this kind of a gap, between what the technical people is looking for and what the governance people are looking for.
Just to give you a brief difference of this thing. First time I attended APRICOT, I was also did like this, right? A tie, sorry, with tie and everything. Then, once I entered the APRICOT venue, everyone was wearing like short, torn jeans and like the T shirts. I was kind of a different person in a different universe. And had I come over here with a T shirt and half short, I would have been a different person in a different universe. So, this is a kind of a difference we have in two different universes, and there has to be an interpreter who
I was the most ugliest guy there, somebody who was like really forumal and it's, like, different. I'm very smart over here with the suit and all, but not in that community probably. But things are changing, but this is just an outlook I just wanted to bring.
Also, one more thing I forgot
>> RAJ SINGH: Quickly, I need to go.
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: SANOG has provided fellowship for a long time. We've given around 400 fellowships so far. And recently, last five, ten years, we've started to focus on more gender equality as well and giving like 40% to 50% fellowship to female participants also. So, that's something that I forgot to mention earlier, and that's, thanks, Raj, for mentioning that. Thank you.
>> RAJ SINGH: So, you talk about zero and 180 degrees. The problem is, if someone's at 90 degrees, both fall off, right? Any online comments that we need to I know we've got just five minutes left, so anything that strikes, that catches your attention there?
>> There are two questions, but one comment. So, do you want to take the questions one by one or read all of them? Last one is a comment.
>> RAJ SINGH: Maybe read the comment.
>> Okay. First, we will go with the comment.
>> RAJ SINGH: I think the policy one we've already covered.
>> Okay, sure, yes. From APNOG, being the lead volunteer for the PKNOG, the takeaway for me for the session, especially pinpointing of keeping the meet ups/online sessions simple and less dependent on financial factors by Osama. Another one is to keep it humane and fun as much as possible. Thanks to Vahan for this. Hopeful, PKNOG will flourish with our contributions in the future.
>> RAJ SINGH: That was Fahad. He's done my job, so we have one takeaway from the session already. Thank you, Fahad.
>> How we can ensure more passionate and strike the engagement of NOGs to the public policy discussions in IGF?
>> RAJ SINGH: Okay, so, maybe that's the one we can end with. We have just a few minutes left. So, I think so, this is my suggestion to people in the room and people online. You know, I think we have to elevate the status of NOGs and what they actually mean. But I think, you know, we've been evolving, working in the background, behind the scenes, but we also see that there are potential things happening on the Internet which have implications on your work, right, which makes your work much more difficult.
Maybe this was a good first step, you know. Maybe we should make this a regular thing at the regional IGFs as well. But I think it's not just the IGFs, right? There are other policy fora where NOGs need to have a voice, right, some in the UN system, some in the ITU system, and some are completely outside of our typical Internet technical community ecosystem, right, where these discussions need to be raised as well. So, maybe that's something we could consider as we, you know, see what the outcomes of this session are.
We've got like three minutes left. Can I ask all my speakers for just a one sentence round off, what is your key takeaway and/or key suggestion for the future? Where do we go from here? Can I start with you, Vahan?
>> VAHAN HOVSEPYAN: I think in the nearest future, in one or two years, we'll have a lot of challenges, a lot, for the Internet, for the development of new digital society. And we need to have the consolidation. We need to have the consolidation of all our counterparts, from technical community, but we also need an understanding from other counterparts coming from other parties. And that is what we should work. That is why we should empower NOGs, IXPs, other units of technical, let's say unions and associations, and that is why we should find the ways to bring them the information about current processes and find the ways to get their feedbacks and cast their words towards these instances, let's say.
>> RAJ SINGH: Thank you. Osama?
>> OSAMA AL DOSARY: I would say the key takeaway from my perspective is, it's important to talk to people and understand their experiences and try to put yourself in their shoes. And this could be whether we're talking on a NOG level, where one engineer is talking to another engineer, trying to understand their perspective and challenges, or it could be on a different level, when we're talking policy maker, needs to put themselves in the shoes of someone else, an engineer or people running the Internet, and they need to talk to them, they need to reach out to them. And vice versa. They need to reach out to others. So, I think that's my key takeaway, simply put: Talk to people, try to understand them and understand what they're going through.
>> RAJ SINGH: Rupesh?
>> RUPESH SHRESTHA: Yeah. I think it's been a very fruitful discussion today. Something that I wanted to say, that the SANOG being a regional platform NOG, so we need to help, we need to go deep down to the local NOGs and then maybe further down from there to help the root, people in the rural area, to help themselves to build that strong and stable Internet across the Internet. The Internet is not just run by one country or one person, but just it has to be stable across the region or across the globe to make it work, and that's what SANOG is doing, and I think MENOG and other partners across the world are doing. We're going in the right direction.
The good takeaway from this is the helping the local NOGs as well as having the more closer relationship with the governance and government people, as maybe not only like having this NOG meeting in every regional, as well as Internet governance meetings, but also, like, how the governance, IGF and other, UN or any donor agencies can help NOGs, regional as well as local NOGs, in terms of having their voices heard and how the technology should evolve and how the policies what kind of a policy should be shaped up for the betterment of the Internet. Thank you very much.
>> RAJ SINGH: Okay, thanks, Rupesh. I'll give the last thought to Harisa as the next generation. What is your key takeaway and vision for the future?
>> HARISA SHAHID: I believe the key takeaway for me being the next generation is the next generation should really come up. Because if I see, in the NOG especially, there are more professional, and there are professionals who are experienced. So, I believe that the next generation who is struggling, who is the early career professionals, should really come up and get the advantage of having a discussion with those professionals and have their place where they can be the leaders of the model.
>> RAJ SINGH: Okay. Thank you! Well, I think we're just on time. I'm being told that we need to basically shut this session down. So, thank you to all my speakers. Thank you for all of you being here. Thank you for the audience participation and the support team who helped us. Thank you.
As the way forward, and one thing very clear for me as a message was that, you know, we need to bring the unsung heroes of the Internet are the NOGs, right, and I think we need to elevate their status, see how we can do that going forward. We need to be a part of those policy discussions. But I do agree with Rupesh, there are two ends of the spectrum, and he's given a very visual description of how things are. So, I think we need to find that bridge in the middle somehow, and APNIC Foundation is here to help and facilitate, but we can't do it alone. You know, we will be looking to our colleagues across the regions, and maybe we'll make something out of it going forward. So, once again, thank you very much for being here with us. Stay connected and our organizational slogan these days is, action, not words, and that's what we did here today. Thank you.
Yeah, can we have a quick picture of the speakers in the front, please?