There are several national conferences within the data center industry that generate the same topics over and over again. Nothing new, nothing informative. The worst conferences are the “pay to play” panel discussions that generate the same panelists from one show to the next, all of which have nothing new to say. A few of the conferences, such as AFCOM and 7x24, have intelligent speakers and are created to be in an educational format. However, for the most part, the “pay to play” data center experts are running out of things to talk about.
Until the CIO Summit came along. In August I was fortunate to speak at the CIO Summit in Chicago. I have been invited to several of the CIO Summits to speak either as a panelist or as an individual speaker. As with a majority of my presentations, the topics are educational and based on recent and past trends. With the CIO Summit crowd, I find myself getting feedback at an extremely high level. It is the accumulation of this knowledge that I want to pass on, combined with other CIO discussions over the last year.