It's a two way street; vendors need to listen to the ops folks. because they want to sell their equipment and software to the operators? yes, including improving (in various ways) their existing equipment and software to make the customer happier.
somehow, the vendors hear from their customers. the problem is that isp operators are a small portion of the market. so having enterprise, r&e, gummint, ... at nanog is good as it impacts a larger target area in the vendors. when we all agree and mount max pressure, we maybe have a 50% success ratio.
Ops folks need to participate in the IETF. because they want to sell what? clue? seems unmarketable. So that they can affect the protocols that are going to be implemented at a stage where they can still be modified to suit their needs, scenarios, requirements, etc.
and what success ratio have we had with this? 10%? look at the poster child for operator success at the ietf, ipv6. it took seven years to get rid of tla/nla etc. it took eight+ to get rid of site-local, yet it keeps rearing its head. and we still don't have squat for routing. randy