Dustin’s Internet Community Roadtrip: In the Bay Area, The People Who Make the Internet Ecosystem Thrive

Dustin Phillips, Co-Executive Director of ICANNWiki, is traveling across the United States in his red Toyota Corolla, making connections with the people who are making their communities – and the Internet – a better place. He visited the Bay Area, first making a stop at the Redwood National and State Parks, where he learned about redwood communities and how their survival is dependent on interconnection, a metaphor for the Internet itself.

What is the Internet Ecosystem?

The Internet affects nearly every aspect of society, creating an extremely wide range of stakeholders. There is still a community of stakeholders engaged directly with the Internet’s policymaking processes, but increasingly there are Internet-related discussions occurring at what would traditionally be considered unlikely venues.

CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

Meeting with Dr. Brandie Nonnecke at the University of California, Berkley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute was a fitting way to kick off my time in the Bay Area. We had a great discussion on the important role of civic participation and collaborative processes for informed decision-making in key issue areas.

Like the incredibly diverse plant life that grows in the understory Continue reading

Dustin’s Internet Community Roadtrip: In the Bay Area, What Redwoods Can Teach Us About the Internet

Dustin Phillips, Co-Executive Director of ICANNWiki, is traveling across the United States in his red Toyota Corolla, making connections with the people who are making their communities – and the Internet – a better place. While making his way to the Bay Area from Portland, Oregon, he took a slight detour.

On my way down to the Bay Area from Portland, I made a trip through the Redwood National and State Parks of Northern California. These Coastal Redwoods have existed for over 20 million years and individual trees can live over 2,000 years. What makes these ancient giants so resilient?

They find strength in community.

Redwoods grow in groves, or “communities,” where the roots only go down 10-13 feet (3-4 m) before spreading outward 60-80 feet (20-27 m). In this phenomenon, survival is dependent on interconnection, meaning the roots intertwine and fuse with each other to provide resiliency against the threats of nature and share the resources necessary to thrive.

This lesson from the redwoods is directly applicable to the Internet. The “network of networks” would be nothing without interconnection or the shared resources of open standards and protocols. Expanding wider, not deeper, is essential to the resilience Continue reading

Dustin’s Internet Community Roadtrip: In Portland, Recognizing the Role of Women in Tech

Dustin Phillips, Co-Executive Director of ICANNWiki, is traveling across the United States in his red Toyota Corolla, making connections with the people who are making their communities – and the Internet – a better place. First stop: Portland, Oregon, where attended the ICANNWiki’s Girls in ICT Day Edit-a-thon and met up with Hack Oregon.

On the first day of the Internet Community Roadtrip, I headed down to Portland for ICANNWiki’s Girls in ICT Day Edit-a-thon. Making this my first stop was particularly special for me, because it is where I was introduced to the world of Internet governance three years ago. In my time at ICANNNWiki, I’ve experienced the important role that collaborative resources and tools play in the bottom-up, community-driven processes that keep the Internet free and global. At ICANNWiki, we focus on providing capacity-development, an informative resource and a sense of community. We build community by capturing and promoting the work that is being done, in order to provide well-deserved recognition and increase awareness for what is happening in the Internet governance ecosystem.

The stop in Portland focused on increasing the recognition for the role of women in the Internet’s history as planned, but also included Continue reading