Each year, starting in 2009, the Internet Society will present the Itojun Service Award to an individual or a group who has made outstanding contributions in service to the IPv6 community and this year the deadline for nominations is 13 July 2009. The first award will be made at the 76th meeting of the IETF to be held in November 2009 in Hiroshima, Japan.
About the Award
The Itojun Service Award was established by the friends of Itojun and administered by the Internet Society (ISOC), recognises and commemorates the extraordinary dedication exercised by Itojun over the course of IPv6 development. The award includes a presentation crystal, a US$3,000 honorarium, and a travel grant.
The award is focused on pragmatic technical contributions, especially through development or operation, with the spirit of servicing the Internet. With respect to the spirit, the selection committee seeks contributors to the Internet as a whole; open source developers are a common example of such contributors, although this is not a requirement for expected nominees. While the committee primarily considers practical contributions such as software development or network operation, higher level efforts that help those direct contributions will also be appreciated in this regard. The contribution should be substantial, but could be at an immature stage or be ongoing; this award aims to encourage the contributor to continue their efforts, rather than just recognizing well established work. Finally, contributions of a group of individuals will be accepted, as deployment work is often done by a large project, not just a single outstanding individual.
The award is named after Dr. Jun-ichiro “Itojun” Hagino, who passed away in 2007, aged just 37. Itojun worked as a Senior Researcher at Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ), was a member of the board of the Widely Integrated Distributed Environment (WIDE) project, and from 1998 to 2006 served on the groundbreaking KAME project in Japan as the “IPv6 samurai”. He was also a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from 2003 to 2005.
Award nomination procedures are available here.