What Data Center Conferences do I go to? 7x24 Exchange. Why that one?

My son Wyatt asked me what is a data center conference? It is a place where people in the industry get together to share their ideas about building and running data centers. Which ones do I go to? The one that I get the most out of.

I've gone to most of the data center conferences over the years. My favorite is 7x24 Exchange which occurs twice a year and the next one is on Oct 23-26, 2016 in Phoenix.

Below are some of the reasons why I am going. I doubt my son Wyatt will read this, but for those of you who live in the data center industry check it out.

This next one has a great lineup. Opening Keynote is former CEO of Travelocity Terry Jones. Don Beaty has a panel discussion

MODERATOR
Don Beaty (bio)
President
DLB Associates Consulting Engineers, PC

PANELISTS:
Nicholas Franzoni (bio)
EP Supply Chain Performance Manager
Caterpillar

Diraj Bamola (bio)
Vice President, Global Design & Construction
Equinix

Joe Kava (bio)
VP of Data Centers
Google

Daren Matthews (bio)
VP Supply Chain Planning
Schneider Electric

Jack Pouchet (bio)
VP Market Development
Emerson Network Power

2nd day keynote is with Chris Crosby

Keynote: Twin Sons of Different Mothers: Legacy and Bandwidth and Why

IDC estimates that 50% of existing data center networks cannot support IoT applications. Data center operators need to be developing and implementing their strategies to reduce latency and bandwidth to ensure they can support the escalating requirements driven by more attached devices and the volume and variety of packet sizes that characterize IoT and new large, rich packet applications. This presentation will explore the nature of latency and bandwidth issues, the shortcomings of today’s existing networks, and the solutions and equipment that data center operators need to incorporate into their network plans.

Chris Crosby (bio)
CEO
Compass Datacenters

And after that is another great panel hosted by Google's Heather Dooley.

Panel: Data Center Delivery & Operations

Organized by the 7x24 Exchange Women in Mission Critical Operations Committee (WiMCO)
Panelists will deliver a dynamic discussion sharing real work examples on how to be successful in your career while delivering on your core professional objectives. This panel will provide views from construction, operations and health and safety on current technical and business trends.

MODERATOR
Heather Dooley (bio)
Data Center Business Operations
Google Data Centers
and
Member,
7x24 Exchange Women in Mission Critical Operations Committee (WiMCO)

PANELISTS:
Jenna Dumke (bio)
Project Manager, Critical Environment
Mark G. Anderson Consultants (MGAC)

Cindy Joos (bio)
Senior Director Global Operations
CenturyLink

Marisa McGough (bio)
Estimator
DPR Construction

Anita Tarab (bio)
Director of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability
Google

7x24 Exchange Keynote lesson - Networking is Everything

One of the highlights of the 7x24 Exchange conference is the opening keynote. This year it was Alison Levine, the leader of the 1st all women's expedition to climb Everest.

Alison covered many topics and if you want an overview of the concepts you can read her book "On the Edge." If you want a shorter version here is a Forbes article.

The #1 thing I enjoyed from Alison's talk is her emphasis on networking. My notes from her talk.

“Networking: build relationships - networking can save your life. Who can you work with outside your team. This is why the smart people go to a DC conference like 7x24 Exchange.”

Instead of writing a long post on all the things I liked I am going to through up short words. Blog posts. :-)

Attending 7x24 Exchange Spring 2016 Conference, Are you?

In 58 days 7x24 Exchange Spring Conference will start.  Why do I go?  Because I have more friends there than anywhere else.

Merriam-Webster definition of friend: a person who you like and enjoy being with

I can go to any data center conference and I'll run into friends and make new ones.  But when it comes to where do I have the most amount of friends and make the most new ones 7x24 Exchange Conferences is at the top of the list.

http://conferences.7x24exchange.org/spring2016/

And in this large group of people are even the organizations who run other DC competing conferences so I can see those friends too.

The Missed Opportunity for Open Compute Summit - Business Focus on Scale Out

I have gone to every Open Compute Summit since they have started.  I've met many of the founders of the effort and watched over the years as OCP has developed.  OCP has grown beyond what I thought it could be when I went to the first event in Palo Alto.

A friend asked what is my biggest take away from OCP Summit 2016?

My biggest take away is the OCP is not marketing themselves correctly.  They should be focusing on this is the conference for “scale out.”  They have all the pieces.  The OCP staff are not focused on the business.   The vendors are screaming for more business focus.  And the customers want it too.

I want to give credit to one of OCP founders who is ex-Facebook and ex-Google who said, "OCP is the one scale-out conference."  OMG you are right.  This is the one scale out conference where data centers, racks, compute, storage, and network are all considered for scale-out infrastructure.

BTW, I think the OCP staff do a great job running the event which is a type business focus.  The above business I mention is the focus on the issues to run a scale-out infrastructure.

We'll see if OCP Summit 2017 focuses on the theme of scale-out and the sponsors who are interested in this theme.

Uptime Symposium exits USA in 2016, says they will return in 2017

The data center events have peaked and there are changes being made in most of the companies.  Uptime Symposium has announced that there will not be an Uptime Symposium in the US in 2016.

After 10 successful years of Uptime Institute Symposium in the US, we are proud to announce that we are taking Symposium to the world. Going forward, we will host Symposia in multiple locations, such as Symposium: China and Symposium: Middle East. In-region events will better respond to both market-level and global industry challenges, as well as ensure broader participation.

...

We look forward to returning the Symposium to the US in 2017, with familiar and favorite components, as well as enhancements.