RE: Can employers forbid you from talking about IETF activities?

[Nicolai Schlenzig (DXD)]

> > The alternative, IMO, is to have IETF participants who are 
> employed by
> > industry companies such as Cisco and Microsoft viewed as official
> > representatives of their companies rather than as 
> individual (and independent)
> > participants.
> 
> would the Cisco rep's opinion count the same as the rep for Bill's
> Bits-to-Go apartment-building-wide ISP?

I don't see why not. If any person can argument for his/she's cause and that is held 
up to actual facts - A's opinion would be as good as B's opinion. You cannot judge a 
persons knowledge on a given subject by simply looking at his workplace.

Of course Cisco or whatever large company probably have chosen their rep. with good 
care and from the first look his opinion would count more. But going into details you 
might be surprised how little a "general" rep. from a large company can know about 
certain topics, but still they have to represent it because it's their job (Who says 
they even have an interest). The little fellow from bits2go... might as well be an 
expert on topic as he/she could have been working on topic for a decades!

Conclusion: John Doe at Big-O-Mighty-World-wide-Company might not know as much as Jack 
Doe from Little-and-Extremely-Competent-Company on a given topic.

My 2 cents

-NS