Demi Getschko
termISP & telecomops culture
The engineer on the team that made Brazil's first internet connection, at FAPESP in São Paulo, and the person most associated with the country's naming and governance ever since - administrative contact for the .br domain since 1989, member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee since its creation in 1995, later an ICANN board member and chief executive of NIC.br.
He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014, the first of seven Brazilians so far. His durable contribution is structural rather than technical: he helped define the shape of the .br name tree and the rules of the registry, and then stayed for three decades to operate them. When people ask why Brazil's internet governance looks unusual - multi-stakeholder, with the registry, the incident response team and the exchange points under one civil body - the answer runs through the choices this generation made and defended.
Also known as: getschko, primeira conexão internet brasil, nic.br