Not long after arriving in the SF Bay Area in the early 2000s, I found myself in need of a datacenter to house a basic rack-mount server. One of my colleagues at the time put me in touch with the California Community Colocation Project, which offered donation-based colocation services to individuals and nonprofits.

Over time, the donation-based business model of CCCP would prove to be financially unsustainable and would ultimately doom the endeavor. For a time, the remains of the group operated under a loosely organized association calling itself Cernio, but without an established structure, this too failed.

I co-founded IO Coöperative in 2012 with members of this community, forming a California consumer coöperative to govern our affairs, and serving as the Board Chair and Secretary for three years. The coöperative is still going strong, and I continue to volunteer to both governance and operations efforts.