Having spent the fall of 2008 attending Data Center World and both Datacenter Dynamics events in Chicago and Miami, I find myself looking forward to the 7x24Exchange event November 13-16th in California and Datacenter Dynamics third Dallas, TX, event in December.

I find myself wondering why, as traveling to California and Texas necessitates long flights from my office. Good programming is the answer. My recent experiences with data center events leads me to believe that industry event organizers, bloggers, publications, and webinar organizers are increasingly benefiting from the willingness of high-profile data center builders, managers, and manufacturers to provide good information to anyone willing to learn.

At times, thanks to the public-spirited many, selecting articles for each issue ofMission Criticalseems like an embarrassment of riches.

For instance, when preparing for 7x24Exchange, I noticed that Mike Manos and Christian Belady of Microsoft will give a talk entitled “The Changing Landscape of Mission Critical Environments.” That talk will cover topics like container data centers, increased focus and emphasis on energy consumption and efficiency, rising energy prices, paradigm shifts in operating costs, increasing power densities, IT carbon footprint reporting, virtualization, and a host of others challenges to the landscape of the modern facilities. Dean Nelson of Sun, Vali Sorell of Syska Hennessy Group, Carlos Herrera of Morgan Stanley are all scheduled to speak on the first day alone. These names are familiar to anyone who readsMission Criticalregularly or attends our webinars. Belady is on our editorial board.

But 7x24Exchange andMission Critical are not the only beneficiaries. In September I saw Mike Manos lead a jam-packed double session at Datacenter Dynamics in Chicago. His presentation was the talk of the conference. I wrote about the effectiveness of this presentation in myMission Criticalblog. But it is not just Microsoft or 7x24Exchange. My friend Dave Ohara has done marvelous work sharing information about Google’s use of energy in its data centers and Sun’s too in his Green Data Center blog. Groves Green IT blog has been similarly active. I’m looking forward to publishing an article that Deb is writing on the mechanism that animates innovation in data center research in the Silicon Valley.

No one makes better use of the resources than my friends at Datacenter Dynamics. Dan Scarbrough, George Rockett, and Steve Worn consistently bring together solid programs, calling on a broad range of speakers. For instance, the forthcoming Dallas event will be entirely new, as is their custom. A look at the sessions from that event should impress anyone looking for information on current practice, government programs, and metrics, and automation.

Sure this will be a fabulous program (visitwww.datacenterdynamics.com/dallas). Just make sure to remember that the speakers and organizers share credit for these events: the speakers for sharing the information, and the organizers for making coherent programs and providing venues to help get the message out.

See you in the field.

Kevin Heslin
Editor