Looking to create awareness for your business or a specific project? Looking for circles of influence in the Internet business and quality contacts in Germany and Europe, then eco is a very good place to start.

We have a very senior level community of members and many influential people within eco who lobby on behalf of our members at political levels in Europe as well as internationally. We are also expanding our international work to better reflect the expectations of our community, as we welcome more and more international companies onboard. So join us! we're shaping the Internet, are you?

A little more about why you should join eco...

eco, the Association of the German Internet Industry, was founded in 1995 and is the largest Internet association in Europe today. We currently provide services for over 550 member organisations from around the globe, including some from the Global Fortune 500 list, such as: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon and AT&T. Our members are ISPs, cloud-service providers, hardware and software developers, telecommunication carriers, a great number of data centres, as well as start-ups and freelancers: everybody who lives and breathes the Internet is right at home at eco.

Our members meet at more than 80 eco events yearly: technical events on IT-Security, VoIP, Peering, Cloud-Computing, TLDs and ICANN, as well as political activities in Berlin and Brussels such as successfully lobbying for net-neutrality, freedom of information or against data retention. Our largest events are the eco Congress, eco Gala, the German Anti-Spam Summit (now re-named Internet Security Days) and the Web Content Forum, combined accommodating more than 2,000 participants.

We are a founding member of the world's largest ISP association, EuroISPA (http://www.euroispa.org/) as well as a founding member and host organisation for the Pan-European Cloud-Computing initiative, EuroCloud (http://www.eurocloud.de/). We also run the world's largest Internet Exchange under the DE-CIX brand, providing direct and settlement-free carrier neutral IP interconnection infrastructure to over 400 major Internet Providers from 50 countries.

To help create transparency for users looking to employ services in the industry, we have introduced a number of quality audits and certifications: the Datacenter Star Audit (http://www.dcaudit.de/) and several Cloud-Computing certifications under our EuroCloud brand: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS as well as a SaaS Ready Audit for Datacenters (http://www.saas-audit.de/).

We continue to operate initiatives for a better Internet: The Anti-Botnet Advisory Center, the Certified Senders Alliance - providing mass-mail whitelisting for ISPs and recipients, the Internet Complaints Hotline - enabling users to report harmful content online, eco Internet law and regulations consultancy, as well as the Internet Governance Forum. We also hold a seat at all ICANN sessions.

Summar of Benefits of eco membership:

• Free admission to all eco events
• Legal advice on e-business topics from eco lawyers
• Access to an extensive network in the industry, with more than 15,000 contacts and 550 member companies with 8,000 contacts
• Professional exchange with representatives of other companies in thematic working groups (total 20)
• Supervision by an eco-employee to optimise your membership with the association, who will look after your best interests, advise on what events to attend and help you make the contacts you're looking for within the network
• Organisation of joint road shows and trade fairs on a cost basis
• Free use of conference rooms in Cologne, Frankfurt and Berlin
• Distribution of your appointments via our newsletter
• Publicity through interview opportunities in our podcast, video interviews and newsletter
• Massive reductions in the use of services and attendance at eventf from our partners
• Exclusive information about activities in the ICT industry
• Political Representation (interest group) in Berlin and Europe