AnnouncementsWatch: The 2021 i2Coalition Community Awards Ceremony
Every year, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (“i2Coalition”) honors people who have made outstanding contributions to the Internet ecosystem. This year, we celebrated the achievements of Ben Butler and Karl Zimmerman posthumously. This took place over Zoom on Wednesday, Jun 30, 2021 from 1pm to 2:30pm EDT / 5pm to 6:30pm UTC.
Ben Butler, who was Director, Network Abuse & Digital Crimes at GoDaddy.com, was given the Ron Yokubaitis Internet Community Leadership Award which is for the i2Coalition member who best advances the mission of the i2Coalition, to help make the Internet a better, safer place.
The inaugural Karl Zimmerman Internet Entrepreneur Award was given to Karl Zimmerman and is in recognition of the i2Coalition member who is helping drive innovation and improvement in the Internet’s infrastructure.
Karl Zimmerman founded Steadfast and former CEO, Karl Zimmerman, was a pillar within the Chicago IT community for more than 20 years. He started his web hosting company in 1998 at the age of 14 years old in his bedroom in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin as a hobby. While attending Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, that company evolved from a hobby to a multi-million dollar IT company that today provides thousands of clients with flexible cloud environments, infrastructure hosting, and a full suite of reliable managed and security services. Through it all, Karl aimed to make the most of the Internet’s transformative.
The event featured commentary from friends and family, as well as colleagues who can speak to their legacies of Internet stewardship and where their work can be continued.