CloudFest Americas partners with i2Coalition to bring policy, regulation into its November Miami program

CloudFest Americas and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition announced a formal partnership this week, with i2Coalition taking the title of Official Conference Partner for the North American event scheduled for November 11 and 12 in Miami. The announcement also gives i2Coalition Executive Director Christian Dawson the title of Chief Evangelist of CloudFest Americas, a role that signals something more substantial than a branding arrangement.

i2Coalition represents hosting companies, cloud providers, domain registrars, and registries in Washington DC and in international policy forums. Its members build and run the infrastructure the internet depends on, and the organization advocates on their behalf across issues including copyright safe harbor protections, DNS security policy, cybersecurity legislation, and internet governance. That organizational focus is what makes its involvement in CloudFest Americas programming worth paying attention to.

Under the partnership, i2Coalition contributes to speaker development, session content, and executive participation at the November event. Four affiliated initiatives carry representation through the arrangement: the Secure Hosting Alliance, the Domain Name Association, the VPN Trust Initiative, and the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative. Each covers a segment of the hosting and infrastructure community currently navigating its own regulatory pressures. i2Coalition members also receive preferential pricing on tickets and sponsorship, giving the organization’s network a practical reason to show up beyond the programming itself.

The practical effect of this partnership is that CloudFest Americas gains a policy and regulatory dimension it did not previously carry in a structured way. Regulations including the EU AI Act, NIS2 directives, and US data protection laws now directly shape product requirements and compliance obligations for hosting companies. Putting those conversations on the same agenda as vendor negotiations and technology sessions serves a different purpose than a standard trade show format.

Dawson described the current moment for infrastructure companies as one requiring both business engagement and broader strategic sense-making, noting that technical change, policy pressure, and economic uncertainty are arriving simultaneously rather than in sequence.

CloudFest Americas shares the venue with NamesCon Global in Miami, which brings the domain name community into the same space and aligns well with i2Coalition’s membership base. For US-based hosting executives who do not regularly attend the flagship European CloudFest, the Miami edition offers a more accessible entry point into that network.