Poor event planning, I can believe. Marketing promotions getting ahead of infrastructure, I've been there.
But I know that a great gaming experience is very, very important to this team...
I wish I could write this without sounding like astro-turfing. The Fest was a horrible failure, burned the goodwill of exactly the fans that Niantic treasured most.
Developers, marketing, executive staff should all be required to use the shitty bandwidth that everyone else has to live with.