7x24 Exchange honored the memory of David Schirmacher with a tribute which we can see on a video on this page.
I was lucky to meet David and have many long, long conversations over the years. When David was with FieldView he had a lot more time. When he joined Digital Realty Trust, the times I would connect with him would reduce down to seeing him at 7x24 Exchange. To have quality conversations I started to stay past the last presentations and go to the pool after the conference where David and I would grab a burger and catch up. The nice thing talking to him even though months had gone by we would jump immediately into tough issues.
We covered a wide range of topics. The current state of the data center industry. Various technologies for the data center buildings and the equipment in it. And lots of conversations about the people in the industry. Before David joined Digital Realty Trust he wanted my opinion on the job and what it would be like. David knew I am close to Mike Manos and his time at Digital Realty is a good set of data to work with in making a decision.
One of David’s best insights that gets lots of laughs is when he talked about a given data center executive who spoke about his efforts, his industry initiatives, his team, etc., and etc. Then David said it, “Oh my god, that’s it. He is the Donald Trump of Data Centers. A self-promoter.” David said this over 5 years ago and when ever I tell this story it gets a good laugh.
In our many conversations we came up with idea of taking a group of West Coast data center executives and visiting a group of the financial data center executives in NYC. People who all too often are not at the conferences, but data centers are very much part of their business. Touring data centers for some of the financials and exchanges was a very different world. One of the interesting points is how quiet it was. Quiet in terms of activity, not the noise. In a Cloud data center you would see lots of gear ready to be deployed, repairs and upgrades, and new areas for expansion. At the New York data centers it was clean and low activity. It was a different world and it was good to connect the different perspectives.
As Bob said in the tribute video on this page. David would always be at the conferences with his wife Veronica and both would be all smiles. It is hard to accept David is gone from the 7x24 Exchange events. He touched so many people there and he was always energized. I’ll miss that smile and the laughs.
