OneWebDay

OneWebDay, held on September 22 every year since 2006, is a global event aimed at giving all participants in this unprecedented turn in human evolution that is the Internet a chance not only to celebrate it, but also to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining the open-networking principles that have made it the success it is.

OneWebDay 2011 will be held on Thursday 22 September 2011. The suggested theme for this year’s events is again to emphasize three important aspects of the Internet’s existence that ensure it’s continuing health and growth as a public resource:

1)  The End-to-End Principle – the principle that allows any application on any user’s machine to directly connect and interact with any application on any other user’s machine, without hindrance.
2)  Open Internetworking – Openness is the overarching principle that has ensured the success and growth of the Internet to date. User access, choice and transparency are critical to the success of the Internet and must be incorporated as central features of current and future policy frameworks for the Internet.
3)  The Internet model -The Internet is successful in large part due to its unique model: shared global ownership, development based on open standards, and freely accessible processes for technology and policy development. The Internet model is open, transparent, and collaborative. The model relies on processes and products that are local, bottom-up, and accessible to users around the world.

Below. see OneWebDay founder Susan Crawford speaking about the importance of OneWebDay!

How can you participate?

1) Quite simply by making sure that you yourself have a clear understanding of those aspects mentioned above, and maintaining vigilance against those that would compromise them.

2) On September 22, celebrate OneWebDay by wishing to your friends and everyone else that we continue to enjoy the benefits of an Open Internet. Use the hashtag #OneWebDay. Add the OneWebDay badge to your website/blog. Check the groups at right for local events, including NYC’s live webcast.

3) Organize and participate in local events. In the brief time that’s left please join the website and form into groups that can make things happen at a local level.

4)  Contribute a story to the OneWebDay stories contest. You can talk about what the Internet means to you, its history, its future, or just a related story that strikes you as interesting. Also, feel free to comment on other people’s stories. Maybe you can sway the judging!

And then what?
There are many avenues Internet citizens can continue, year round, to be involved in helping the Internet thrive and grow – such as:

1) The Internet Society – started in 1992 by the founders of the Internet as an organizational home to the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society now has more than 100 organisational and more than 28,000 individual members in over 80 chapters around the world working to ensure best practices, policies and development.
2) At-Large – the community of individual Internet users who participate in the policy development work of ICANN. Currently, more than 100 groups represent the views of individual Internet users throughout the world, participating in building the future of the worldwide Domain Name System (DNS).
3) Drumbeat – is a new global community dedicated to the cause of keeping the internet open. It’s a chance to for everyone — not just software developers and testers — to get involved. Who? Teachers. Lawyers. Artists. Accountants. Plumbers. Web Developers. Anyone who uses and cares about the internet. On the website you’ll find many many interesting projects.