NANOG67 - Tipping point of community and sponsor bashing?

Tue Jun 14 15:12:10 UTC 2016

This week at NANOG67, a presentation was given early on that did not
reflect well for our community at large. Regardless of the content or
accuracy of the data presented (not the intention of this thread), specific
members of the community (some of which are sponsors) were clearly targeted
in a hurtful manner. The delivery of the content did not seem within the
spirit of NANOG, but instead a personal opinion piece. While no specific
rules of the speaking guidelines
<https://www.nanog.org/meetings/presentation/guidelines> were likely
broken, this does bring up a point of where the acceptable threshold exists
(if at all). To be abundantly clear - I have nothing against the content
itself, the presenter, the PC's choice of allowing this talk, etc. - I only
wish to clarify if our guidelines need modernization.

As a community, how do we provide constructive criticism to industry
suppliers (that may also be fellow competitors, members, and/or suppliers)?
For example, router vendors are routinely compared without specific names
mentioned (say in the case of a unpublished vulnerability) - how is a
service provider any different?

--Matt