I've been trying to avoid this topic, though as one of few participants familiar with MediaMelon's account of what happened (we've been looking at their product, independently of this all), I feel obligated to offer my two cents...
The underlying facts are not in dispute -- Kumar from MediaMelon *did* meet Bill Norton for lunch in San Francisco. Following Bill's advice, Kumar entered the plenary, in search of some Netflix staffers to pitch his product to. In hindsight, Kumar regrets deeply having done this. As a relative newcomer to the community, he looked to Bill for leadership, and was unfortunately offered bad advice on acceptable standards of conduct and engagment. The sliver lining in this incident is that I've gotten a commitment from Kumar and crew to donate to NewNog. I get the feeling they'd compensate Merit for a lost registration in San Francisco, too, if requested. The important thing to keep in mind is that we're dealing with a fundamentally good bunch of folk, though newcomers, who had fallen victim to bad advice. With that said, and given what transpired, I think the responsible course of action is for us to all pressure Bill for the funds, falling back to MediaMelon's generous offer as a last resort. He's obviously trying to downplay the importance of this, though with some polite-but-persistent reminders (in response to posted diatribes, in person, ...), he's sure to cave eventually. I'll be sure to keep the community apprised of any movement on this front. -a _______________________________________________ Nanog-futures mailing list Nanog-futures@nanog.org https://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures
