Mike Eruzione's Keynote inspires Data Center Audience at 7x24 Exchange

At this year's 7x24 Exchange in Boca Raton Mike Eruzione gave the opening keynote.

Going for the Gold

Mike Eruzione shares how to overcome any obstacle and go for the gold. When the 1980 US Olympic Men's hockey team, led by Coach Herb Brooks and captained by Mike Eruzione, defeated the mighty USSR team in the semifinals and went on to beat Finland for the gold medal, it truly shocked the world. This stunning achievement, which was captured in the popular 2004 Disney movie Miracle, is considered by many to be the "greatest sports moment of the 20th century." Drawing from his experiences in the 1980 Olympics, Eruzione reveals to audiences how true commitment is at the heart of super achievements

Mike Eruzione
Capitan of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team and Subject of the Hit Film “Miracle”

The stories Mike told where insightful and entertaining.  A big part of the story was how the team was built and developed, the story behind the success.  Something that a data center crowd can relate to.

Mike played a video of the 1980 game winning goal vs. Russia as he admits many times the audience has people who were not born yet in 1980.

 The impact of Mike's presentation was more than many expected.  To give you an idea of how impactful Mike's 1980 game winning goal is consider his 1980 memorabilia sold for $1.3 mil.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The jersey worn by hockey great Mike Eruzione in the U.S. Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics was auctioned for almost $660,000 Saturday, though surprising strong interest in the stick he used to score the winning goal and his gold medal game jersey pushed the overall sale to more than $1.3 million.

Spirited bidding drove the value of the hockey stick to $262,900, more than five times the $50,000 it was expected to go for as a 9-year-old boy and his father outbid others, earning a high-five slap and a hug for the youth from Eruzione himself.

Convention Photography are courtesy of Professional Images Photography Joe Rodriguez 2013. 

Rumor is true, IBM buys Softlayer

There has been a pretty widely discussed rumor than IBM would buy SoftLayer.  And, GigaOm's Barb Darrow reports on the rumor being true.

It’s official: IBM to buy SoftLayer

by Barb Darrow

10 MINS AGO

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SUMMARY:

SoftLayer and IBM’s legacy SmartCloud will form the basis of a new Global Cloud Services division.

In one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets, IBM is buying SoftLayer, a respected cloud services provider.

Google secures Swedish Wind Power for its Hamina Finland Data Center

Google has a blog post on its latest renewable energy agreement in Sweden.  Below is a map of the location of power from origin, where it exists in the grid, and the location of the Hamina Finland data center.

Google bought 100% of the wind power for 10 years.

Here’s how it works: O2, the wind farm developer, has obtained planning approval to build a new 72MW wind farm at Maevaara, in Övertorneå and Pajala municipality in northern Sweden, using highly efficient 3MW wind turbines. We’ve committed to buying the entire output of that wind farm for 10 years so that we can power our Finnish data center with renewable energy. That agreement has helped O2 to secure 100% financing for the construction of the wind farm from the investment arm of German insurance company Allianz, which will assume ownership when the wind farm becomes operational in early 2015.

Commencement Speech Parody by Simpson's Rob LaZebnik executive producer/Writer - You're pampered, privileged, oversexed, with dim job prospects

WSJ publishes a hilarious parody of the commencement speech by Rob LeZebnik.  I've gotten great laughs retelling the story. I won't spoil any of the story by clipping parts.  Enjoy

A Message for the Class of 2013

Dear Graduates: You're pampered, privileged and oversexed—but at least your employment prospects are dim.

The WSJ article is a derivative of this video filmed in 2009.

American humorist Rob LaZebnik delivers a speech to the Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1984 at their 25th Reunion Entertainment Evening, June 5, 2009, Sanders Theatre, Harvard.

Here is an example of how ridiculous things have gotten with the pampered and privileged class.  NBCnews has a post on a high school with 21 valedictorians.

In fact, at South Medford High, all of those 21 valedictorians can tellcolleges they are No. 1 in their class.

This is where “New School” has crushed “Old School.” And this is where college administrators say they are growing increasingly suspicious about the surge in applicants who boast the laurels of “valedictorian” and “head of class.”

“Yes, it has definitely watered things down a little bit,” said Jim Rawlins, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Definitely, the more ultra-selective universities have to be more critical and skeptical of class ranks than before.

Why a choice of no investors can create a better solution, constraints drive tough decisions

GigaOm has a great post to get people thinking that not having investors in your startup is a an option many should consider.

Who needs investors! Why many startups should bootstrap instead

by Andrew Gazdecki, Guest Contributor

MAY. 25, 2013 - 12:00 PM PDT

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photo: docent/Shutterstock

SUMMARY:

Many of today’s startups are obsessed with figuring out the best way to score investors. But for many companies bootstrapping it might result in a better product and a healthier business in the long run.

One of the benefits mentioned in this post is "limits set useful boundaries"

Some of the best data centers embrace their constraints.  Those data centers who spent the most money are rarely the most beautiful.

Many people have an illusion that great design come from no constraints.  Google and Apple have billions of dollars to create new services.  But, think about some of the most innovative ideas are being created by start-ups.  Here is a talk that illustrates the specific point of the beauty of design with constraints. 

Faruk Ateş

Constraints, or “things that limit freedom,” sound like a pretty bad thing. But in this talk I will explain not just that constraints are a good thing, but that they are beautiful—and important for great design, great software, and great products.