Best Part for a Data Center Geek's ride of Harry Potter Dragon Challenge - View of Cooling Towers

7x24 Exchange in Orlando just finished and I have a bunch of posts queued in my head.  One is on the party on Tues night.

“An Evening at Universal Orlando®”

Get ready for an incredible event with 7x24 Exchange—a special event that fills three different venues at Universal CityWalk® in Universal Orlando® Resort. Take a side trip to New Orleans at Pat O’Brien’s®, explore the home of the king of reggae at Bob Marley–A Tribute to FreedomSM, and take the stage atCityWalk’s Rising Star nightclub.

Immediately following, you’ll enjoy desserts, rides and entertainment in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™. In addition to taking in the sights and sounds of the incredible Hogsmeade™ village, you’ll also have access to thrilling attractions like Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey™, Dragon Challenge™and Flight of the Hippogriff™!

It’s an entire evening of magic and excitement—and it’s all yours!

Now, you can argue that this type of event is not needed at a Data Center conference.  There are plenty events that you pay more for and don't have theme park parties. One of the benefits of a good party though is people share their experiences.

The gang I hang out got the first ride on Harry Potter Dragon Challenge.  Skip the alcohol go straight to the best ride.  No lines.  Well there was a line of 8 people in front on us for the front row.  We rode the third row which was fortunate because the third row has the seat for "big shoulder guys" which meant we could accomdate the big shoulder guy in our group, not me.  The ride was awesome.  We then went for beers, wandered around.  We went back later and rode it again, but waited the extra 5 minutes to get in the front.  The front row is way better than the back seats!

How much better is the front?  You can see the cooling towers!!!  And, the experience is much better being thrown out in the front.

Later we were chatting with a water treatment systems sales person, chatting about the Dragon Challenge.  She told us how great the ride was and the ride operator said the best seat was in the back.  We laughed.  No way.  The best seat is in the front.  And, you can see the cooling towers.  We went back for one more ride.  She saw the cooling towers, and agreed she was oversold by the ride operator that the back was the best.  

How much better the front vs. back seat is a common debate amongst roller coaster fanatics.  

For data center geeks though, a view of the cooling towers clearly makes the front better than any of the seats to the back.

If you go to Harry Potter Dragon Challenge, sit in the front, see the cooling towers.  oh, that may be hard and painful waiting an hour or more.  You should have joined us at 7x24 Exchange.  We rode Dragon's Challenge 4 times, including the last ride of the night at 11:30, sat in the front three times and got multiple views of the cooling towers.

And, we have told this story many times to friends we ran into who were at the park as well.  A good party supports the sharing of the experience.

Captain Jim Lovell's 7x24 Exchange Keynote: a successful failure from the crew's view

I was lucky to sit down at the breakfast table with Captain Jim Lovell this morning at 7x24 Exchange, so i got a bit more time to think about what Captain James Lovell's presentation as I heard him tell stories.

What has Captain Lovell been doing since retirement from Nasa?

In 1973, Lovell left the space program to join the Bay-Houston Towing Company.  He became President and CEO of Bay-Houston Towing in 1975 and then furthered his corporate experience by joining Fisk Telephone Systems, again as company president.  The Centel Corporation acquired the company in 1980 and Lovell became executive vice president.   Today, Lovell is president of Lovell Communications; a business devoted to disseminating information about the United States Space Program.  He serves on the Board of the following companies:  Federal Signal Corporation, GCCUS, and Surgi-Vision.  He also serves on the following philanthropic boards:  Chairman - Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, United States Naval Academy Foundation; Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International Board and the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.

The presentation was inspiring and a good story, but there are no slides to share.

The Apollo 13 movie of course has made this story famous and Captain Lovell told the story after 11 drafts, the story eventually reached a story he felt good about.

Here is an interview by Reuters of Captain Lovell.

"A 'successful failure' describes exactly what 13 was - because it was a failure in its initial mission -- nothing had really been accomplished," Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, now 82, told Reuters Television in an exclusive interview.

But he hailed the nerve-racking mission, which had gripped the world in April 1970, as "a great success in the ability of people to take an almost certain catastrophe and turn it into a successful recovery."

In researching Captain Jim Lovell, I actually found a presentation by someone else who applied the Apollo 13 lessons to IT, and dedicated his presentation to his Dad who worked on Apollo missions.

The presentation that I'll embed at the end does a pretty good job of using the lessons of Apollo 13 and applying it to Apollo 13.

Captain Jim Lovell's quote is to "Always prepare for the Unexpected".

"We always were able to solve a crisis as it came up some way, jury-rigging, or doing something to keep our spacecraft going, and finally for a safe landing," Lovell said.

The CO2 scrubbers demonstrate improvisation.

Here is the presentation that used the Apollo 13 story to tell an IT Story.  But, some of the best stories i heard were at Bfast that are good stories for the bar.

Apollo13

View more PowerPoint from pmayhew1958

Lobster on the menu at 7x24 Exchange, do you get this kind of food at your data center conference?

The folks at 7x24 Exchange have learned the lesson that good food keeps the attendees happy.

The conference has a record attendance this year.  A good test of how a conference treats its attendees is the food served.

Sunday's Welcome Reception had lobster.

I wrote about this same topic last year and 7x24 Exchange is consistent.

Why is good food important?  How many parties have you been to that are a great experience with mediocre food?

Data Center staff vs IT Pros, 7x24 Exchange vs. TechEd

This is my 2nd time visiting 7x24 Exchange in Orlando.  Last year, I sat next to two friends who just happened to be on the flight from SEA to MCO.  One was going to a Gartner IT conference another who is ex-Microsoft was on his way for a summer vacation with his daughter.

This year I noticed the plane flights were booked and expensive to go from SEA to MCO, then I found Microsoft's TechEd conference is in Orlando the same time as 7x24 Exchange.  I used to go to Microsoft TechEd for years and years.  What is TechEd?  It is Microsoft's premier IT Pro event and is sold out.

• Windows 8: Learn how Windows 8 will deliver a no-compromise experience for your business, helping you deliver the experiences people will love and the enterprise grade capabilities that IT departments require.
• Microsoft cloud solutions: Find out how Microsoft private cloud, built with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center, puts your applications first. It offers you deep application insight, a comprehensive cross platform approach, best-in-class performance, and the power to run, migrate, or extend your applications and workloads between Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud environments.

I am here in Orlando for 7x24 Exchange.

I have spoken at both conferences and spent hours and hours engaged with staff, logistics, and getting to know the attendees.

Bottom line: I look forward to going to 7x24 Exchange to see great people and discuss new ideas.  And, I have no desire to go to another Microsoft TechEd conference.  I have so much more fun in the data center world than IT Pro world.

Bridging the gap between the Data Center Staff and IT Pros is a common topic that consultants, analysts, and media bring up, but I don't get too excited with what I have seen most write.

The World's are very different and it will be interesting to maybe write on more on the Data Center World vs. IT Pro World.

On Thurs when I go back from MCO to SEA, the flight will be packed with Microsoft's heading home.  We'll see how many smiles I see.  i have no doubt that 7x24 Exchange will be a good experience for me, and I'll have a smile.

Heading to GigaOm Structure, some of the Data Center Related topics

I went to GigaOm Structure for the first time last year as a blogger.  I am attending again this year as a GigaOm Pro Analyst.

Here are a few of the companies that look interesting from a data center perspective.

• Atlantis Computing goes beyond the VDI market and makes it possible to leverage commodity servers for storage-intensive virtualized applications in cloud environments. 
• Cluttr focuses on helping companies manage their data centers more efficiently and responsibly, with a smaller environmental footprint.
• ComputeNext is a transparent marketplace for consumers and providers of cloud services that empowers choice and enables the search, purchase, and utilization of compute resources.     
• Garantia Data is a fully automated cloud service for reliable memcached and infinitely-scalable redis, requiring zero management and guaranteeing absolutely no data loss.            
• Keen provides analytics infrastructure as a service for mobile applications.
• MLstate is the provider of Opa, a new open source cloud development language designed to accelerate time-to-market for high-performance, massively scalable, exceptionally secure services and applications on any connected device.        
• OneOps enables organizations to design cloud-based applications that align software requirements with business goals, automating the transition to agile operations.    
• Tempo is the data layer for the measured world, purpose-built to store and analyze massive streams of time-series data generated by sensors and connected devices.

I'll be there for both days. I know DatacenterKnowledge's Rich Miller attends and DatacenterDynamics's Yevgeniy usually attend.  It's a great event to learn something new.