NANOG67 - Tipping point of community and sponsor bashing?

Tue Jun 14 17:30:39 UTC 2016

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 11:18 AM, Daniel Golding <dgolding at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't see any violation of the presentation guidelines. Also, the day we
> decide to censor ourselves to avoid offending vendors is the end of my
> involvement in NANOG - and I suspect that is the case for many others.
>

Censorship is a strong word and one I would also not be in favor of too (in
the generic sense). What is concerning is when bashing is framed as
personal attack. A possible PC revision could have been 1) add more flavor
of dominate US IXP's (of all organization structures) - as that
geographical focus makes more sense for NANOG 2) don't list specific
organizations by name, but instead just list their organization structure
and a random identifier.

> Matt is being coy, for some reason. He didn't like Dave Temkin's talk about
> IXP costs. I listened very carefully and did not hear any specific members
> or people targeted - only organizations and companies.
>

As noted earlier in the thread, the specific presentation isn't my interest
here - I actually enjoyed the talk and agree with many of the points
stated. What made me uncomfortable was peer IXP's feeling uncomfortable and
even a college immersion participant asking "is NANOG always such a
threatening environment?".

Organizations and companies are members of our greater community, even if
they don't technically have a membership role. At this morning's membership
meeting - it was restated that NANOG is highly dependent on sponsorships
(rarely do we see such financial contributions from individuals that would
be enough to support NANOG). It would be a shame to loose that income
source when only minor content guidelines could be made.

> NANOG is not and has never been a "safe space" for sponsors or
> organizations that exist in the network space. It never should be. If LINX
> or AMSIX or anyone else didn't like what was said, they should have rocked
> the mic (which they did!) and they should come to the next NANOG and
> present a counterpoint.

I'm sorry Dan, but this sort of "old boys network" attitude has gone on for
way too long in NANOG. I've already received 13 off list responses "well
said", "nicely done", "finally a reality check", etc. I'm not at all
suggesting bashing should go away, as you note - that is a paramount
feature of NANOG. Instead the question is when is it appropriate to shame
members of the industry and how do we frame that in an professional manner
(I realize you may have challenges in such a demonstration) .

Clearly a disconnect exists between some members and some board / PC
members. As a board member, it would be nice to see a commitment to
improving this situation. Thank you.