The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has revealed a first look at the lineup of speakers and sessions for its Forecast 2014 conference. Now in its third year, Forecast will be held September 22-24 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Forecast aims to bring enterprise data center and cloud services executives to the stage to share best practices and engage directly with event attendees. ODCA board members Reyk Bederke of T-Systems, Hiroshi Honjo of NTT Data, and Correy Voo of UBS will share their insights in building enterprise-class cloud environments. In addition, Shannon Poulin, data center vice president at Intel Corporation, will provide a keynote on his company's vision for acceleration of enterprise cloud services.

For the first time, Forecast will feature a hackathon focused on cloud-aware application development. The event will bring together teams of developers competing to create an application based on ODCA's best practices for cloud application development specifically designed for a nonprofit organization. Sponsored by HP and Intel, teams of developers will be challenged to create an application on-site at Forecast that will help nonprofit organizations match volunteers with their organizational needs. Applications will be judged by an independent panel with an awards ceremony capping the Forecast conference. Representatives from the nonprofit community will be on hand to provide input on usability and participate in the judging process. For information about participating as a hackathon participant or  nonprofit advisor, contact Bette Clem at bette.clem@intel.com.

The Forecast agenda also includes six proof of concept (PoC) sessions and seven ODCA U sessions from companies like Appnomic, Infosys, Moogsoft and National Australia Bank. PoC sessions are technical examinations of solutions delivered to align with ODCA usage model requirements. ODCA U is a series of courses designed to provide a deep dive on ODCA usage model requirements and learn directly from the IT leaders who crafted the organization's publications.

Some of the biggest names in cloud computing have signed on to sponsor Forecast 2014. The newest premium sponsors to join the lineup are Citrix, Dell and Emerson Network Power. Diversity Limited, Mission Critical Magazine, Cloud Strategy, and The WHIR have signed on as media sponsors, while the Asia Cloud Computing Association, Distributed Management Task Force, and Storage Networking Industry Association have joined as collaborative sponsors. Other premium sponsors are Appnomic, Capgemini, Intel, Hitachi, HP, SAP, Verne Global and VMware. For more information about sponsorship, contact Julia Torresan at juliax.torresan@intel.com.