CloudFest Americas and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) announced a formal partnership on April 9, making i2Coalition the Official Conference Partner of CloudFest Americas in North America. As part of the arrangement, Christian Dawson, Executive Director of i2Coalition, takes on the title of Chief Evangelist of CloudFest Americas. The event takes place November 11-12, 2026 in Miami, co-located with NamesCon Global. The partnership is described by both organizations as non-exclusive and non-financial.
The significance for hosting executives is not the title or the branding. It is what Dawson’s organization actually does. i2Coalition is the primary industry association representing hosting companies, cloud providers, domain registrars, and registries in Washington DC and in international policy forums. Its members are the companies building the infrastructure the internet runs on, and it advocates on their behalf on issues including copyright safe harbor protections, DNS security policy, GDPR, cybersecurity legislation, and internet governance. Bringing i2Coalition into the programming structure of CloudFest Americas means the November event will now carry regulatory and policy content alongside the deal-making and technology sessions that have defined the CloudFest format.
What Changes at the Event
Under the partnership, i2Coalition will contribute to speaker development, programming content, and executive-level participation at CloudFest Americas. i2Coalition members receive preferential pricing on tickets and sponsorship. Four i2Coalition-affiliated initiatives will have a presence at the event: the Secure Hosting Alliance, the Domain Name Association, the VPN Trust Initiative, and the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative. Each represents a distinct segment of the hosting and internet infrastructure community with its own regulatory exposure.
The practical effect is that CloudFest Americas gains direct access to i2Coalition’s member network for speaker recruitment and audience development. For an event building its Americas audience from scratch, that network matters. i2Coalition’s membership spans the companies that would constitute a meaningful portion of the target attendee list for a hosting industry conference.
Dawson framed the partnership around a specific moment for the industry. “The companies running the infrastructure of the Internet are being asked to navigate technical change, policy pressure, and economic uncertainty all at once,” he said in the announcement. “They need a place to come together, not just to do business, but to make sense of where things are going.”
The Conference Context
CloudFest Americas is the North and South American edition of CloudFest, which runs its main annual event in Europe and positions itself as the largest cloud and hosting event series globally. The Americas edition is newer and has been building its audience and programming identity. Co-location with NamesCon Global in Miami brings the domain name industry into the same venue, which aligns with i2Coalition’s membership profile and the Domain Name Association’s involvement in the partnership.
The November timing places CloudFest Americas seven months after the main European CloudFest and in the same autumn window as several other hosting industry events. For US-based hosting executives who do not regularly travel to Europe for the flagship event, the Miami edition is the more accessible entry point to the CloudFest network.
The addition of formal policy programming is the most substantive change the i2Coalition partnership introduces. Hosting companies are operating in an environment where regulatory decisions, from the EU AI Act to NIS2 to US data privacy legislation to DNS security mandates, directly affect product and compliance requirements. An event that puts those conversations on the same agenda as vendor negotiations and technology sessions serves a different function than a pure trade show. Whether CloudFest Americas can execute that programming at a level that justifies travel for senior executives depends on the quality of the policy speakers and the specificity of what gets discussed. The i2Coalition relationship gives the event the credibility and the network to attempt it. The November program will show whether it works.
Łukasz Nowak
Nearly two decades in IT. A decade in web hosting - and still in the trenches. Writing about the infrastructure that runs the internet from the inside.