In October 2018, during APNIC’s IPv6 Direct Community Assistance in Ulaanbaatar, Dr. Philip Smith, Tashi Phuntsho and Klee Aiken invited a number of local network operators and engineers to get together. It was anopportunity for us avid networkers to socialize in an environment removed from our day jobs, where many of our employers are in competition with each other.

Tashi shared his personal experience of the beginnings of btNOG in Bhutan. He said that for them it was a challenge just to get everyone in the same room. It took about two years of informal meetups like this one before they could eventually start btNOG. He encouraged the group to continue meeting, and we appointed a few people to help organize future meetups.

Tashi remarked that it was a very positive sign to see the group, with so much local knowledge and technical experience, come together and start sharing experiences and making new connections.

Progress continued quietly until APRICOT 2019, where talks about mnNOG 1 began. After coming back from Daejeon, we started a mnNOG mailing list (which APNIC offered to host) as our official communication platform. This was a great first step forward!