Can't make it to Google Zurich event on May 24, extremely busy and distracted moving into new house

Unfortunately, my long house construction project is conflicting with the date with for the Google Zurich Energy Efficiency summit, and we are in the midst of moving in.  I just couldn't spare the time as my family needs me to do things around the house.  I'll try to blog about the Google event remotely as the Google team shares information from their event.

Many of my data center friends ask about  how my house project is going, I'll share an update.  The move was not far as we move from our Beach House which is 200 steps below our house where we have lived for the past 20 months.

10 years ago, I wanted to build my staycation space, and this month in Aug '08 Sunset Print Magazine our "Backyard Beach House" is featured. The article is not online yet, but here are some images from the article.

Here are some pictures of the house rebuild we did.  Local friends from APC, Microsoft, and Lee Tech have able to drop by, but we have made a lot of progress in the last 2 months.

Here is the front of the house.

A garage bay long enough for a boat trailer with tankless water heaters to the left.

The front door entry.

With a kids organizing area.  Above right you can see the Mitsubishi heat pumps that are scattered around the house for heating.  There are 14 separate units the house to heat/cool specific rooms.

From the open attic you overlook the entry.

When you come down the stairs to the main living area you pass the study and enter the kitchen. Note the ladder in the picture below is a 10 foot ladder.  The ceilings are 12 1/2 feet tall.

Here is a current picture of the 4 french doors to the deck.

And the before picture we used for our Xmas Card.

Looking from the French doors is the entertainment area.

And my Woodstone Pizza oven with handy pizza tools.

From the pizza oven, there is great view of the Lake Sammamish.

Next to the pizza oven is the pantry which we call the "bunker."

Why the bunker?  The room is 12 x 12 x 12 surrounded by concrete and sheer walls.

I have lots of work to do in the wiring closet.  POE intercom, Security Camera PVR, Slingbox configuration, Cable TV, Wireless, VOIP.  I am so glad I have an APC J35 backup solution.

My kid's rooms are in the best shape as they were done a month ago.

Give us another couple of weeks and the master bedroom will get there too.

Which brings me to ultimately one of the reasons why I decided not to go to Zurich.  When I told my kids I might not go to Europe, they both cheered that I wouldn't be gone for another week.  If I am lucky, I'll not get on a plane for a month.

But starting June 12, I'll be at 7x24Exchange in Orlando, then GigaOm Structure, and Data Center Dynamics in less than 2 weeks of travel.

Attending DatacenterDynamics Seattle, May 17, 2011, you can find me in Hall 2

I’ll be at DatacenterDynamics Seattle all day today.

DatacenterDynamics returns to Seattle on 17th May to discuss important issues facing today's data center professionals in the Northwest region.  Our annual conference brings together hundreds of industry professionals for a full day of networking and industry seminars and case study presentations.

This year’s conference programme covers 3 tracks Design, Build and Operate, IT Optimisation, and Decisions Strategy, that focuses in particular on the world of data centre outsourcing. So no matter what their role in the data centre attendees will be able to benefit from the insight of the world’s industry-leading practitioners presenting case studies or technical papers on how to optimise internal and external IT requirements from a facility, IT, and business perspective.

I don’t know if I’ll have much time to live blog as I’ll be staffing Hall 2.  You can’t miss me as I’ll be the one wearing a green shirt.

I am looking forward to catch up with the local Seattle data center scene.

Think about People in the Data Center, A book on people skills in IT

ZDNET has a post on people skill in IT.

If you work in IT, you're in the people and influence business

By John Hazard | May 16, 2011, 2:30am PDT

Summary

The prevailing view is that IT is a business where abilities matter more than presentation skills or personal interactions. Wrong.

Wrong

Your aptitude should speak for itself. You shouldn’t have to dress a certain part or act a certain way to get a job done or advance your career. Your performance should speak for itself and people should trust you to do the job.

That is a prevalent thought in information technology, a business where the promise was that nerds could excel and science geeks could thrive on their abilities not their presentation skills or personal interactions.

Wrong, says Don Crawley. IT is very much a people business and successful IT pros rely on their ability to present themselves and influence those around them as much as any technical skill.

Don Crawley has a book on this subject.  I don’t know anything about the book, but I like there are more people understanding the people issues in IT. 

Data Center Thought Leadership, gathering a dozen people in a private room for good wine and food

Data Center events like Uptime are great to connect with people in the industry, but rarely can you dive into difficult topics in hallway conversations.  People are constantly being interrupted by vendors who are looking to exchange business cards and sell their wares.  It is actually quite funny sometimes when a vendor will start talking to an executive and not know who they are talking to.   "you work for company X (top 5 data center operator WW), what do you do." DC executive responds,  "I work on data center construction (yeh, he runs the whole god damn team)."  Vendor, "oh, here is my card, we do blah, blah, blah."

Recognizing some of the top data center thought leadership was coming into town, some friends and I have spent the last month organizing a data center social to allow a dozen people to spend hours sharing stories, looking for where there is a common ground, and all without vendors.

Who was there? Sorry, no specific names, but trust me any vendor would have dreamed to be in the room.  A couple of the people there are keynote speakers. A good amount have VP titles or should.  The people run tens of thousands of servers for web critical infrastructure.  Many people had worked for each other at previous companies which helps create the glue between the group.  One person who would qualify and be invited is the late Olivier Sanche who we all knew and miss.  At least half the room has had lengthy passionate data center discussions with Olivier and would welcome his presence.  Also, he would have helped us drink the bottles of fine wine served that evening.

What was discussed?  Much of the topics revolved around the reality vs. the myths.  How difficult it was to get the data center industry to move. What are really the issues and how misguided decisions are like bad investments that waste resources.  Many of the conversations revolved around people, not technology.

One of the guys gave me a hard time and said Dave how come you aren't taking pictures this is an awesome crowd of people we have in the room.  It would be great to have some pictures showing the old team back together.  I talked to the friend later, and told him I've learned that taking pictures doesn't help future discussions as what gets discussed in the room, stays in the room.

This was our first data center social in this format and we are working on the next one for 7x24 Exchange in Orlando.    If you see a room of 12 people in a private and you want to exchange a business card, sorry you can't get in, we're too busy, having some good laughs, telling great stories, and enjoying a good glass of wine.  Discussing what the future of data centers should be like.

Many times what is promoted as thought leadership is who has the biggest market budget to sponsor an event and present a keynote.  I think thought leadership comes from people who have the chance to exchange ideas that challenge the norm and break the rules.  Like a Chaos Monkey.  FYI, there were no Donkeys at our event.  (see this post for explanation of Chaos Monkey and Donkeys.)

Eeyore is generally characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy,depressed,anhedonic

Schneider's Modular Data Center Infrastructure, discussed the Emerging Market scenario and Tax impact

Schneider Electric's Neil Rasmussen gave a Keynote talk at Uptime.

Six Reasons Why Modular Power and Cooling Plants Will Make Traditional Data Center Designs Obsolete
Neil Rasmussen
Senior Vice President of Innovation, IT Business, Schneider Electric

The press release is here.

Schneider Electric Advances Data Centers With New Modular Power and Cooling Facility Solutions

New Facility Modules Offer 500kW of Power & Cooling in Four Parking Spots -- 10-20% Less Capital Than Traditional Methods

For more technical details you can check out this pdf.

After Neil's keynote I got a chance to chat with him in more detail.  Two issues I brought up is most people are thinking only in their existing data center space, and not thinking about how to expand capacity in areas like emerging markets where a modular design could be used vs. traditional construction and the size of 500kW is a good starting point.

The other question I asked is what are tax implications and depreciation schedules for a modular design vs. traditional.  Too many people think of cost and don't understand the way things are expensed.  Even Ken Brill at Uptime said the cost of land is an expense.  Land is not an expense!  Land is not  depreciated as an expense.

Land is classified as a separate category for one major reason - land is not a subject to depreciation or depletion. Land is considered to have an infinite life, which makes it impossible to estimate its depreciation or depletion.

Before I decided in degree in Industrial Engineering, I actually thought about accounting, so I took lots of accounting and business classes in high school which reminds why I look at many data centers from a business perspective in addition to the IT technology.

If you are looking at modular data center construction, think about emerging markets and tax implications, and you may be surprised at what you discover.