AfNOG is a forum for the exchange of technical information and knowledge between African Operators. The workshops are aimed at offering advanced training to operators of existing African Internet Service providers in order to develop and enhance the national Internet with regional and international connectivity.

Being a new instructor I was priviledged to be given the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge with an excellent group of instructors and facilitators. I was able to observe some of the intricacies that went into making the workshop and conferences successful as well as the challenges that threaten the desired outcomes of the conference.

The initial week was mired with visa issues for our West African counterparts particularly the Ghanaians and Nigerians , who make up a bulk of the workshop and conference attendees, as they could not obtain visas in time for the workshops.Part of the challenge faced in organizing successful African conferences is the sheer difficulty for Africans to travel within the continent.

Difficulty and cost of traveling within Africa then presents the challenge of the quality of candidates that are able to attend the workshops. Some of the preferred candidates cannot attend due to lack of funding.

Feasibility of having multiple parallel workshops also comes into question as this greatly impacts the choice of the conference venue. Facilities that can host numerous parallel classes tend to be expensive though exquisite.

Suitability of the current training format also requires reevaluation as some of the workshop materials can easily be covered in an on-line course. Although on-line course-ware is initially expensive to develop and set-upset up, the cost of training per engineer greatly diminishes over time. More engineers can be trained in this way cheaply and this also aids in bringing up the aptitude and the skills of the participants so that only the very complex concepts are handled in the face-to-face workshop environment.

AfNOG 1.0 has been successfully in spurring the creation of several National NOGs that are successfully localizing training of the network operators in their countries and within their regions such as tzNOG, sdNOG,ghNOG, ngNOG and SafNOG.

The truth is that each region has its own challenges, language barriers, ICT industry maturity, wars and civil unrest resulting low penetration of the Internet etc. These NOGs are better placed to address the issues that are peculiar to those regions and can easily be attended by locals. In general, these NOG meetings are relatively well attended for instance, TzNOG-2015 had 82 participants in 3 workshop tracks, while SdNOG-2015 had 178 participants and SafNOG-2015 had over 120 participants, in comparison to AfNOG's slightly under 200 participants

These developments demonstrate that we do need to rethink and re-imagine the AfNOG workshops. Which then begs the question what does the AfNOG 2.0 look like? Who should be targeted for training and participation? What technologies and skills should the trainings focus on? Is there still a need for 5 days of workshops? Should the workshops take on a trainer of trainers format? These are the questions that we need to ask ourselves as African operators and commit to answering before the next round of workshops in order to ensure that the slogan.. AfNOG.. Success!!! rings true not just in the present but also deep into the future.

Article by Michelle Opiyo