ONS 2012: What worked and what didn't?

Here is a quick summary on what I think worked well, what didn't work, and some thoughts on improving ONS next year.

What worked?

• Getting everyone together that has an interest in OpenFlow/SDN.  It was great to collaborate and talk with like minded individuals even though we, as an industry, are probably still on the incline of the hype cycle.
• Google, Yahoo, etc.  Anything these hyper scale companies talk about is damn interesting
• Exhibits – these are great for any conference and will only improve at ONS as more products are further developed and created.
• VC presentation by Lightspeed.  Great presentation here and I’m sure it got the wheels spinning for anyone with an entrepreneurial mind since they are still looking to invest and also believe it’s early in the life of SDN.
• Nick McKewon – see my next blog post.  This was the best presentation of the week.  Wish I could have seen Nick present all day.
• Pragmatic view by mostly all admitting there is still a way to go in this shift to SDN.
• Logistics, overall schedule, multiple projector screens, and the like. 
• There were many more presentation that were also intriguing, but those listed above were the ones top of mind right now.
• Overall, extremely glad I had the opportunity to attend ONS 2012.

What didn’t work?

• Outdated material.  I’m paying for a tech tutorial.  No reason to show YouTube videos from well over a year ago.  Those videos got me hooked on OpenFlow then, but aren’t enough to keep me hooked.  Same for hands-on sessions.  This has been on the web for awhile – could have been updated with screen shots on what to expect at each step or even hand out documents for the lab portion.
  
•  Cutting off questions from being asked b/c we were out of time.  There is no reason to be on schedule down to the minute.  It would have only been an extra few mins for a few sessions if all questions could have been asked and answered.
  
•  NEC & NTT Key notes. They are each pioneers and innovators in this industry, but I believe they had the wrong people presenting the content they presented.  They had what seemed to be non technical board members and executives of their respective companies read from paper presenting a technical presentation.  NEC seemed to have run before any questions could have been asked.  Nothing wrong with their exec's presenting, but they should have removed the lower level parts from their talk.
  
•  Not enough new substance.  We need more real product presentations on stage especially by those vendors that are shipping product.  Be proud.

Ways to improve as ONS grows:

• Breakouts.  Think about dividing SP, Enterprise, and anything geared towards the developer community.  They have different audiences and if it will all be recorded, then others can watch the video later for breakouts they can’t attend in person.
  
• Further breakouts and sessions on product and architecture deep dives.   Several companies with exhibits have shipping products. Wouldn’t they want to address the audience for an hour or more in depth on how their product works or why it’s the bomb diggity?  
  
• Fewer high level presentations
  
• If someone is presenting a technical presentation, they should be technical