Events

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, governments, businesses, and other organizations are increasingly considering sanctions that would irreversibly disrupt the Internet we know today. Countries are considering sanctions and other politicized actions that could inadvertently impact the Internet’s infrastructure. This could set a dangerous precedent for similar actions around the world, leading us […]

Please join the Internet Society – San Francisco Bay Area Chapter on 16 August 2021 for a tech policy webinar with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Technology and Civil Liberties Director Nicole A. Ozer. RSVP here.

Update: Video Recording   The US Supreme Court set an important legal precedent regarding copyright law and computer code in it’s April 2021 landmark legal ruling (Google, LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.) when it ruled that Google’s use of Java Application Programming Interface (API) codes is lawful fair use. The decade-long litigation stems from Google’s […]

Update: Video Recording Please join the San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society chapter for a tech policy webinar on the topic of artificial intelligence on 3 May 2021 from 3-4pm PDT. The event will feature a presentation by Dr. Mark Nitzberg, (Executive Director of UC Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, Head of Strategic Outreach at […]

  UPDATE: Webinar recording   On Monday, April 5, 2021 at 3PM PDT, the San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society (ISOC) chapter will host a tech policy webinar on the topic of “The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch”.  Moderated by the chapter’s Policy Chair, Robin Gross, webinar attendees will […]

California Native American Nations of the Month One of our big projects in 2020 was securing the $30,000 Beyond the Net Grant from the Internet Society Foundation to help get better internet access for 9,000+ California Native American people living on tribal land in eastern San Diego County. We’re working with a partner organization, the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Alliance which serves 20+ tribes in that area. For the next […]

The 26 Words that Built the Internet: Section 230 The Future of Section 230 and its Impact on Innovation, Free Speech, and Democracy UPDATE: Webinar recording Please join the SF Bay Area Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) on Monday 8 March 2021 for a tech policy webinar on the topic of Section 230 of […]

California Native American Nations of the Month One of our big projects in 2020 was securing the $30,000 Beyond the Net Grant from the Internet Society Foundation to help get better internet access for 9,000+ California Native American people living on tribal land in eastern San Diego County. We’re working with a partner organization, the […]

A few months ago, the Internet Society Foundation reached out to all of the Internet Society chapters, seeking applications for the Beyond the Net Grant. We reached out to our members about this opportunity and our board went out into the community seeking project proposals. After a competitive process, we chose one focused on increasing […]

Bio – Natalya Tyudina is a global citizen: was born and raised in Tajikistan, studied in Russia, and now lives in Germany. XR enthusiast and Technology Developer at Ericsson. TechWomen Fellow 2019, hosted at Twitter. (LinkedIn | Twitter | Email)   Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea on the West to the Chinese border. […]

As a teenager becoming tech savvy, my first perception of open sources was “free software or tools.” I did not understand the whole process behind it. Until I wanted to do more than use technology, I wanted to create solutions with tech, then I realized Open Source is for more than free tools, software or […]

In the final part of this three-part series, Don Hollander, Secretary General Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), highlights why developers need to update their code to accommodate this growing number of domain names and email addresses.    Universal Acceptance is the simple concept that all domain names and all email addresses work across all applications. […]

In the second of a three-part series, Don Hollander, Secretary General Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), highlights why all organizations need to be Universal-Acceptance Ready.     Email connects the globe with a click. And it is critical for more than just sending messages; we use email addresses to log in to social networks, identify […]

In the first of a three-part series, Don Hollander, Secretary General Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), highlights why all organizations need to be Universal-Acceptance Ready.     Since 2006 the Domain Name System (DNS) has expanded dramatically, not only fueling competition, choice and innovation, but truly enabling a multi-lingual Internet. There are now more than […]

The SF Bay Area Internet Society Chapter’s Board Member, Ken Krechmer, wrote about the new waves of change made possible by creation of standards in 1996. It is a fascinating read after all these years to see how technology standards have influenced the modern information society. “The next wave is emerging: the adaptive information wave. […]

The ICANN 63 Readout webinar took place on 29 December, 2018. ICANN’s Chris Mondini, Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement, and Joe Catapano, Stakeholder Engagement Program Manager, North America, gave a high level overview of the key policy discussions and community activities that took place at the recent ICANN 63 Community Forum Meeting (Barcelona, October 20-25, 2018). The lively […]

The SF Bay Area Internet Society Chapter’s Board Secretary/Director of Policy spoke during the recent Decentralized Web Summit in San Francisco. An abridged version of his remarks are available in below.

Take a look at the SF Bay Area ISOC Chapter Annual Report 2017 for a brief overview of the year’s achievements.

At the beginning of 2017, the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter teamed up with the Geographical Information Center (GIC), California State University, Chico to carry out a research project, “Bridging California’s Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband”. The project was funded by the generous support of the SF Bay Area ISOC Chapter through the Internet […]

Anna Loup is a Fellow for the SF Bay ISOC’s Working Group on Internet Governance. She is a doctoral student at Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, researching the social, political, and economic implications of the Internet’s policy and technical structures. Here she writes a how-to guide to participating remotely in the IGF 2017 conference in Geneva […]

Nicolas Seidler is Senior Policy Advisor at the Internet Society. He joined the organization in February 2010 and currently leads ISOC’s work on Internet and Human Rights issues. He also engages in key global Internet governance issues and processes. Here he writes about the Freedom of the Net Report released on November 14, 2017.  As more […]

Brandie M. Nonnecke is the Working Group Chair for the SF-Bay ISOC’s Working Group on Internet Governance. She is a postdoc at CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UC Berkeley. Here she writes an opinion post on the risks of lowering the barriers on quality of service in rural areas, and highlights feasible strategies for quality digital inclusion.  Broadband […]

Representatives from the SF Bay Area Chapter Board attended the ARIN 40 Meeting, which took place on 6 October 2017 in San Jose, California. Held twice a year throughout the American Registry for Internet Numbers’ (ARIN) service region, ARIN Meetings offer an opportunity for anyone in the Internet community to engage in policy discussions, network with colleagues, […]

Mischa Spiegelmock, Chair of the SF-Bay ISOC Chapter’s Working Group on IoT, Internet Technologies and Access, attended the recent Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 99 Meeting in Prague, Czech Republic. Find out about his experience as a first-timer in his comprehensive report below.   The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an organization dedicated to stewardship of […]

Leah Symekher, Project Leader and Advisor to the Board, and Susannah Gray, Chapter President & Chair, spent two days in Sacramento, California, in August to meet with farmers, AgTech and rural infrastructure experts and the “Bridging California’s Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband” project team members from the Geographical Information Center (GIC), California State University […]

Too often, people consider themselves passive consumers of the Internet. The apps and websites we visit are made by people with technical expertise using languages we don’t understand. It’s hard to know how to plug in, even if you have a great idea to contribute. One solution for this problem is the hackathon. Entering the […]

Recently, California farmer Craig Thompson got a pretty nifty upgrade for his irrigation: a broadband-connected Hydrawise control system that would automatically manage and monitor the irrigation of his olive and grape fields and collect data to alert him if there was a problem. He woke up the next morning to fields he could have assumed […]

  Fatema Kothari is the Vice President for San Francisco Bay Area ISOC organization. Here she writes about a recent industry event she spoke at, emphasizing the need to build people-centric connectivity solutions.   Last week, I had the honor of moderating an engaging panel discussion at Mozilla on the need for community networks and […]

Imagine that Ford was held responsible every time one of its Mustangs broke the speed limit. Imagine that the company responded by limiting the speed of its vehicles to 65 MPH, or that the company was required by the government to report every speeding car to highway patrol. It sounds far-fetched, but is actually a […]

Mischa Spiegelmock is the Working Group Chair for the SF-Bay ISOC’s Working Group on IoT, Internet Technologies and Access. He gives an overview of why we need to take security for IoT seriously and the need for open certification.        The more jaded nerds who’ve been around the block a few times here in San […]

And the winner is… Deema Tamimi had one plan for the 2016 California Apps for Ag hackathon: get in and get out. She thought the weekend-long event would be a good opportunity to meet people, but she didn’t feel ready to launch a new app, and so she planned on stealing away soon after the […]

One thing was clear from a recent presentation by the new leaders of the SF-Bay Internet Society (ISOC) Chapter Working Groups, inclusion and collaboration will be the key to these groups’ success. As Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, the Internet Governance Working Group (WG) Chair said, “We haven’t yet cracked the code on what ‘multistakeholder’ means.” But […]

  California was recently reminded that rain can be very dangerous. In February, the nation’s tallest dam, the Oroville dam in northern California, became so overloaded with rain that over a 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Many of them ended up at the fairgrounds, a common place for rural communities to gather in […]

Agriculture At High-Speed When farms are connected to the Internet, we all benefit. Agriculture that gains real-time information about plants, soil, atmosphere, and irrigation, dubbed “precision agriculture”, can save farmers 20-30% of their water consumption while increasing productivity by 20-70%, according to Valley Vision. The San Francisco-Bay Area Internet Society Chapter is pleased to announce […]

At the end of the 2016, the SF-Bay Area Chapter learned that it had been successful in securing funding from the Internet Society’s Beyond the Net program for the “Bridging California’s Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband” project. The Chapter will be working together with California State University (CSU) Geographical Information Center (GIC), Chico and Valley […]

Shadow Regulations and You: One More Way The Internet’s Integrity Can Be Won Even those who care about net neutrality might not have heard of the aptly-called Shadow Regulations. These back-room agreements among companies regulate Internet content for a number of legitimate issues, including curbing hate speech, terrorism, and protecting intellectual property and the safety […]

The SF-Bay Area ISOC Chapter team was lucky enough to catch Vint Cerf‘s Keynote presentation during the NANOG68 Meeting in Dallas this week. Vint’s presentation on Cyber-Physical Systems focused on the reliability, ease of use, safety, security, privacy, autonomy and interoperability of the IoT. Abstract: “Users will expect reliability, safety, privacy, ease of use, scalability, […]

18 August 2016 – On 16 August 2016, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to allow the IANA Functions Contract to expire, representing the final step in an almost 20 year process to transition the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) to the private sector. ICANN has informed NTIA that it has […]