Skipping the Green Data Center Conference, May 24 - 26, 2011

I go to a lot of data center conferences - Gartner, Uptime, Data Center Dynamics, Data Center World, SVLG, and many others as a blogger, but one I'll be skipping ironically is the Green Data Center Conference in SF on May 24 - 26, 2011.

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Given I've been blogging on the Green Data Center topic and have 1,700 posts you may think how can I not go to the event.  And, I know my friends would ask me why I didn't go.

Here are a few reasons why.

  1. I know many of the speakers and those I don't know I could get access to if I needed for a blog post, so I don't expect to learn much sitting in the audience.
  2. The conference agenda  for 2 days doesn't excite me.
  3. Most of the sponsors I have access to, so I don't need to travel to talk to the companies as they are usually contacting me.
  4. Uptime Institute's seminar is May 9 - 12 in Santa Clara and will have much better quality content than Green Data Center Conference and a much higher caliber set of attendees.  And, this conference I get to attend with a media pass and plan on meeting a lot of the sponsors/exhibitors to get caught up on the latest green technologies.
  5. There is the opportunity to network, but there are plenty of other networking opportunities.

I'll contact some of the speakers after the event and see what they thought and whether it is worth their time.