Open Compute Summit 2020 is open for registration.
I have gone to every summit and it has always been useful to get a perspective on scale out and open source practices.
Money is the dominant force in Silicon Valley
There are all kinds of articles on how expensive it is to live in the SF Bay Area. Om Malik has a post that discusses the money in the companies and how it drives the way things work. Working in a way of hypocrisy.
In Silicon Valley, Hypocrisy is the new normal
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it is not a company motivated by doing better, but by greed and money.
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Let’s face it: The revolution is over. Money trumps everything — and that is the new reality of Silicon Valley. Next time you hear anyone say that Silicon Valley companies are better than other corporations, just laugh and then walk away. Hypocrisy is the new normal.
Read Om’s full post to get his perspective.
7x24 Exchange Achieves Record Attendance
7x24 Exchange is a conference that I attended after data center friends suggested it is a great conference. I had not gone in the past as I had focused on data centers in the SF Bay Area, Las Vegas, or Seattle. Going to a DC conference that is held twice a year one in Florida (Spring) and the other inPhoenix (Fall) did not intersect with my normal travels. Thanks to the late David Schirmacher giving a personal invitation to myself and another data center executive we attended our first conference and the both of us still make a habit of attending and have witnessed first hand the following.
One of the things that 7x24 Exchange shares openly are its attendance numbers. Below is the latest picture.
OK. looks good. But the numbers displayed do not tell the story that is more interesting.
Let’s graph the data over 5 years. The blue line is spring conference. The orange line is the fall conference which is the one I am right now. The dotted lines are a linear plot, an averaging of the values.
The dotted blue line shows a flat trend for the East Coast Spring event, but the last event went above the trend line. Achieving a record attendance.
The dotted orange line is trending upwards with growth. Good. Well the attendance is above the trend line that is better than good. That is amazing for a data center event.
7x24 had two events back to back breaking attendance records going above the linear trend line.
If you plotted attendance for the other data center conferences they will not look this. But you do not know those numbers as no one wants to share their 5 year trending attendance.
The graphics communicate the value people are finding in attending.
7x24 Exchange Fall 2019 Keynote - Mike Massimino’s Words of Operational Wisdom
Mike Massimino gave the opening keynote at the Fall 2019 7x24 Exchange conference. Who is Mike Massimino? He sent the first tweet from outer space and SNL choose to add it to its routine.
Mike’s talk was entertaining as he used humor to intermix with words of wisdom he wanted to share.
Below Mike shares a picture when he is 8 years old dressed up like astronaut, his hero Neil Armstong.
On a more serious note Mike shared the importance of a diverse team and working together as a team. He shared his experience to pass the swimming tests and the challenges he had to pass the test. The change he shared is having the trainers telling him that the best swimmers should pair with the poor swimmers because no one is going home after the tests until everyone passes. Mike’s emphasis with knowing the team applies well to the data center industry as the best companies have the best teams.
Much of what Mike spoke about is in an article he wrote in Esquire that you can read here. Reading the article nicely added more words of wisdom.
In Mike’s keynote he shared the “oh crap” moment when he has a stripped screw that he cannot remove. His words of wisdom are “30 seconds of regret. Cap it and then move on. Remember you can make it worse. Stay engaged.”
Apple's Lisa Jackson explains the effort tone greener is a never ending story
Some think being carbon neutral for power consumption is the end game. But data centers consume much more resources than power. The IT equipment is refreshed every 3-5 years. Sometimes quicker. How much of that IT gear is recycled? Hard drives are destroyed to protect data.
For a long read the Independent has an interview with Apple’s Lisa Jackson.
That simple, economic argument is cutting through, she says, and Apple’s leadership is also being pushed by those who work for the company. It is not simply good economic sense to be environmentally friendly, she suggests, but a change that is demanded by the young and engaged workers of Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
When you have an executive like Lisa Jackson reporting to the CEO Tim Cook in charge of sustainability the green effort is not simply a marketing message. It is part of who they are.