HostingCon 10 Year Club

I went to HostingCon last week which took place in Miami Beach, Florida. I picked up my badge and found this yellow tag on it.

Turns out it’s HostingCon’s 10th year anniversary and I’ve been going to this event every year since it started. I was honored and felt like an old geek at the same time! I saw a handful of like geeks walking around and commiserated with some of them.

So why do I travel all the way across the U.S. to hang out with hosting competitors? It may sound strange but I like going to this event just because it’s great to check in with all the other hosting companies.

While we are all in the same hosting business, there are many different technology niches and customer segments, so all of us approach hosting at different angles. There is plenty of room for everyone and we can all learn from each other.

But what’s more important is that we all share the same issues too – be it dealing with spam, software licensing, hardware, DDoS attacks, abuse issues, and regulatory issues. Many of these issues are bigger than one host and it takes many hosts working together with other vendors to help improve things for the entire hosting segment – which also translates to making hosting work better for all customers.

In fact, HostingCon was the place that the i2Coalition first started – as an idea during a lunchtime gathering of like-minded hosting professionals a couple of years ago – at first to deal with the SOPA act in a collective way.

We decided to participate as a founding member and the organization is now helping educate our elected officials on what we do as hosting providers and how we contribute to the economy and jobs and is helping guide federal policies that affect all hosts and their customers.

Luckily, next year the event will be in San Diego which will make traveling a little easier.