Capacity Planning and Asset Management Panel Discussion at 7x24 Exchange, data center executives from Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Facebook

I am pleased to moderate a thought leadership panel at 7x24 Exchange Orlando on June 12. 2012.

10:30 A.M.
PANEL: Capacity Planning and Asset Management

Data Centers exist to provide the environment for IT assets to support the current and future needs of the business. This panel featuring capacity planning & asset management executives from Facebook, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft will discuss a range of topics from asset life cycle management, how the groups work with their data center teams for internal and external requirements to run their IT services, and best practices to consider adopting. Collaboration and knowledge sharing is required in companies to manage capacity, and this is a unique opportunity to hear from three innovators on a topic you’re all familiar with and is  essential for future data center services.

Moderator:

Dave Ohara
Data Center Meme
Green M3

Panelists:

Tamara Budec
Goldman Sachs

Amaya Souarez
Microsoft

Heather Marquez
Facebook

If you'll notice one of the things we were able to do is get executives from Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Facebook to discuss an important topic.  It just so happens all the panel members are women.  Women who own the issue of asset management in their data center operations.  I've had the pleasure of having conversations with each of these people and knew when we nominated the talk, who were the people working on innovative ideas.

I am looking forward to moderate a thought provoking session that will discuss an important topic that rarely gets discussed.

If you have specific questions you think the panel should address you can drop me a line at dave(at)greenm3(dot)com

Open Compute Summit, May 2-3 2012, Rackspace HQ, San Antonio, TX

The next Open Compute Summit will be in San Antonio, Tx at Rackspace HQ on May 2-3, 2012.

A few friends have already reached out to see if I'll be there, and yes I will.

You can register here.

Location

Rackspace Headquarters

5000 Walzem Road
San Antonio, TX

Here is the agenda.

May 2, 2012

8:00am - 9:00am

Registration

9:00am - 12:00pm

Keynote presentations from Frank Frankovsky and others from the Open Compute Project community

12:00pm - 2:00pm

Lunch and Exhibit Floor

2:00pm - 5:00pm

Technical workshops (round 1), open sessions, and educational sessions

5:00pm - 6:00pm

Travel to party venue

6:00pm - 10:00pm

Open Compute Party

May 3, 2012

9:00am - 12:00pm

Technical workshops (round 2) and open sessions

12:00pm - 2:00pm

Lunch and Exhibit Floor

2:00pm - 3:00pm

Plenary: a synthesis of each workshop and next steps

Dyn throws a great party at SXSW, another example where the key are good people

Part of going to SXSW is going to the parties.  After going to four different tech parties, one thing was clear the most important part for putting together a good party is the people you work with.  I am amazed at how many times people think of picking companies to do the work, and miss the point that is all about what people specific get assigned to the project.  A good or bad project manager can make all the difference in your schedule, budget and performance in a data center.  The same idea applies to many other complex things, like throwing a popular party.

One of the funnest parties was the Dyn party on Tues night at Cedar Street Courtyard.

The venue was the location for GroupMe and FourSquare as well, and my vote goes to the Dyn party with 11 live bands and an in crowd of tech and music people.

This party had lots of people.

Same venue opposite angle.

Which party would you like to be at? The first one or the Dyn one?

The Dyn party above had 11 live bands vs. the 1st one had a DJ with dancing audience.  The 2nd one had a bunch of the musicians hanging around to watch the headline act, Dawes.

Talking to some of the event people it was interesting to see how much work Dyn spent thinking about how to throw a good party at SXSW.  Here is a blog post from last year.

Last year, I flew to SXSW Interactive on a mission. I hit Austin, TX, to take it all in and see what campaign slogan of ours had more legs: ‘Tweet Nerdy To Me’ versus ‘DNS Is Sexy’.

I was also super excited to check out trailblazing people and brands from the Web congregate for five days of networking events, parties, schmoozing, boondoggling, drinking, BBq’ing and concert going. The truth is that it was an epic week of hanging with clients and partners like SimpleGeo, Twitter, Media Temple, Mashable and Revision3.

It was the center of the Internet universe and we were right in the middle of it. Well, almost…

The only problem? I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, hustling but alone, rogue and tired with no event or home base of our own. I traveled with two great friends and Dyn supporters, who both agreed that our disruptive and unique company could make great noise at an event like this.

What became clear as I listened to the 11 live band line-up and chatting with the folks there, there was a lot of time spent to make sure the right people worked on the event.  A typical approach would be to pick a budget, pick a venue, and allocate the money to support the event.  A smarter approach is to find the people who have hosted many events at the venue and at SXSW and ask "what works?"  What does it take to pull off an awesome event that people will twitter about?  Then, you look at your budget and see if there is good value.  If it is a good event, it is much easier to get sponsors to support the event.

One recurring theme even in data center discussions is getting the right people. People who understand how important people are to the solution are much easier to work with.

Are Data Centers relevant at SXSW? I'll be in Austin Mar 9 - 14, 2012

SXSW interactive is Mar 9-13 and I"ll be in Austin, TX http://sxsw.com/interactive

One of the questions some of us have is "Are data centers relevant at SXSW?"

Given the amount of high technology companies you would assume so.

I'll see how much I learn and what i can blog about.

A new way to regulate who you talk to at a Data Center event, Yellow and Red Cards flag fouls

I was at a the Open Compute Summit that Facebook hosted in NYC, and one of the data center executives was sucked into a sales conversation and sold quite flagrantly, interrupting our group's conversation.  At an industry event where people have paid admission fees and/or exhibit fees many sales people think it is their right to sell the attendees.  You have little hope of doing anything to get an aggressive salesman to leave you alone.

Then it hit me after the salesman left.  We should have yellow and red cards for attendees to flag fragrant behavior.  I've order a few of these for a group of us to use in a week.

We are hosting our own event, so we can create our own rules.  We'll have fun with this idea.

Here is the record for yellow and red cards in a soccer match.