I like working in the Data Center Industry because of the people. Throughout my career I have worked in specialized knowledge areas like packaging engineering & logistics, OEM product development, fonts, publishing and many others.
Apple and Microsoft unified efforts to fight Adobe with TrueType in a font wars. Which then led to the font groups in Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe fighting a war, but the industry was suffering. Font wars are stupid as the end user simply wants something to work. So I spent time ending the font wars between Microsoft and Adobe creating OpenType.
Thank god I left fonts behind me in 1994 and have moved on to a bunch of other technologies. But, it does remind that wars are many times destructive to both sides and users can be the casualties of the battles.
Luckily in the data center world companies are not fighting a war of their standards like TrueType vs. Type 1. Well maybe the vendors are fighting battles, but the data center industry is no longer dominated by the vendors. It is dominated by the companies who are designing, building, and running the biggest data center capacities around the world. People who want to do the right thing and get the industry being more efficient, greener in its use of resources and energy.
One year ago we had the idea for a data center social and Mike Manos said Dave take a picture when else are you going to get this group of people together. I didn't take a picture then. Last night we got an even better group of people together. Double the crowd. And, I did take a picture.
Of the venue without the people. :-)
With some of the top data center thought leaders connecting on a regular basis it is much easier for the industry to work together. And not be at war.
The Downtime Data Center Social is in its second year, and a third one is going to be easy to do. Last night we discussed a Fall event possibly in the Pacific Northwest. In the fall of 2011 a group of us went to NYC financials, and these companies are asking when we'll get together again. We'll see if the Fall 2012 social works. At a minimum we'll have a spring 2013 Downtime Data Social.