Ron Yokubaitis received the Internet Infrastructure Coalition’s (i2Coalition) first award for Internet Community Leadership at the Smarter Internet Forum in Philadelphia, PA today. Ron has been a leader in the Internet sphere since 1994 when he co-founded Texas.net in San Antonio, TX. Since then, he and his wife Carolyn have gone on to establish Data Foundry, Giganews(a Usenet provider) and Golden Frog (Internet security solutions). The fight for Internet privacy, open Internet and laying the groundwork for innovation are important priorities for Ron and for Data Foundry. Because of his leadership and activism to drive change in U. S. Internet policy, the i2Coalition has officially named the award the Ron Yokubaitis Internet Community Leadership Award.
Ron Yokubaitis is a digital pioneer- an entrepreneur that has been fighting since the birth of the commercial Internet to make sure that it stays free and open. When i2Coalition was created to speak for the Internet’s infrastructure, we stepped into a field where on bold, strong voice already existed, and that was Ron’s. I am proud to make him the first recipient of i2Coaltion’s award for Internet Community Leadership.
– Christian Dawson, i2Coalition Founder and Executive Director
About the i2Coalition
The Internet Infrastructure Coalition consists of a diverse group of Internet infrastructure professionals that originally came together in 2011 to fight SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) because of their infringement upon Internet privacy and threat to an open Internet. They support market-driven standards for policy-making and advocate for multi-stakeholder control of the Internet and its policies. The i2Coalition is now the leading voice for hosting companies, data centers, registrars and registries, software services providers, and related tech firms on both the domestic and international stages. Learn more on their website.
About the Smarter Internet Forum
Panels at this year’s Smarter Internet Forum will focus on cloud security, online credit card fraud, increasing diversity in the IT community and how CMS and hosting providers can work together to stop security exploits. Learn more about the forum here, or follow the event on social media with hashtag #SmarterInternet.