Can you see the Changes in the Data Center industry? We all suffer from Change Blindness

I was sitting down with a data center executive for lunch yesterday and we chatted about a bunch of different things.  Much of what we shared was observations and perspectives on what is going on in the data center industry.

One of the things we laughed about is the number of people, a very large number of the people who based their perception of what is going based on in the data center industry on what they read.  Whenever we read something that doesn't make sense, we can check with friends, or just know the news doesn't make jive with other data we have.

Part of what contributes to being able to recognize the truth from fiction is whether you understand how we all suffer from Change Blindness.  Change Blindness is many times worse inside a company where people don't get out much, and compare their observations with others.

Change Blindness

• Posted 01.27.11
• NOVA scienceNOW

Psychologists who study the fascinating phenomenon of change blindness know that merely looking at something is not the same as actively paying attention to it. As the demonstration in this video shows, people can be blind to significant changes in a visual scene that are obvious to someone who expects that these changes are going to happen.

LAUNCH VIDEORunning Time: 00:51

 

Where is the data center innovation? Sustainable vs. Disruptive

One of my data center friends after 5 years left one of the big data center operators to join another of the big data center operators.  He is one of the guys who knows how to drive innovation.  One of the reasons why I think I would change if I was in his shoes is whether you want to make the change from an organization that defines innovation as sustainable vs disruptive.

Clayton Christensen is credited with the concept of disruptive innovation. 

The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,^[4] which he co-wrote with Joseph Bower. The article is aimed at managing executives who make the funding/purchasing decisions in companies rather than the research community. He describes the term further in his book The Innovator's Dilemma.^[5] Innovator's Dilemma explored the cases of the disk drive industry (which, with its rapid generational change, is to the study of business what fruit flies are to the study of genetics, as Christensen was advised in the 1990s^[6]) and the excavating equipment industry (where hydraulic actuation slowly displaced cable-actuated movement).

Many people don't understand the two different types of innovation - disruptive vs. sustainable.

 Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets.

The vast majority of people innovate in technology, but sometimes innovation requires a new market.

A common comment from I hear at data center events is this is the same stuff we have heard in the past.  When are we going to hear something new.

The demand for something new in the data center industry is growing.  The smart innovative people are collecting to work on it.  There is a good chance it will be disruptive, not just an update of the existing technology marketed as innovative.

40 Days of Dating goes Viral, Could 40 Weeks of a Data Center work too?

I was reading Om Malik's post on 40 days of dating.

40daysofdating: An awesome new kind of long-form story telling

by Om Malik

AUG. 4, 2013 - 12:16 PM PDT

3 Comments

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SUMMARY:

40daysofdating is a website that combines text, photos and video to tell the story of two friends Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman who after failing at finding love, are dating each other and sharing the experience. It is like reality television, except for the web.

I've been waiting for when someone would have an interesting web site that tells a story.

Needless to say, we have barely scratched the surface. At some level, 40daysofdating is like reality television — reality web if you will — and a good signpost for what could be a more episodic approach to content and story telling. In the past, it was comic books and stories in noir magazines that kept you hooked. So why not web-based episodic story telling?

In the data center world, there could be 40 weeks of a data center.  But, it could be 40 years before the data center world would adopt story telling as a way to share its ideas. :-)

Can you see the Media Bias? Rush Limbaugh says Apple is Republican, Google/Samsung are Democrats

The whole idea of unbiased media works when you want to be the one source of news.  When it comes down to it though very few people want to hear both sides of the story without any bias.  Even when people read both sides, they are looking for information to support their views.  

CNET focuses on the battle between Apple and Google.

Rush Limbaugh: Apple is Republicans, Google is Democrats

In a scholarly analysis of tech blogging, the great Republican commentator offers that 9 out of 10 blogs hate Apple. Because Apple is like the Republican Party. Oddly, though, Limbaugh last year was himself mad at Apple.

Rush Limbaugh blog post focuses Tech Blogs starting to notice media bias.  I agree it is entertaining to watch the bias influence coverage.

It's a teachable moment out there.  Fascinating.  Study of the media is fascinating.  To watch the sports media, folks.  Because they're all liberal, they're all formulaic. They're all liberal by default.  They don't know anything else.  And you can predict, if you become familiar with it, with them, you read their stuff often enough, you can predict when something happens in the NFL, you can predict how 95% of the reporters are gonna take it and how they're gonna report on it.  You can predict, just like you can in news media.  It's incredible.  It's a fascinating study to me. 

What I find interesting is Rush Limbaugh doesn't want to point to who the biased tech blogs are because it would drive more traffic to them.

RUSH: An e-mail: "Rush, why don't you name some of these left-wing tech blogs you're talking about?"  Folks, I've thought about it, and there's nothing to be gained by it.  If I call 'em out, all they're gonna do is get happy that I'm giving them attention and elevating attention.  It's not gonna change them.  If I start naming people, the same thing.  It's one of these unfortunate things.  This program is so big that certain things I can't talk about because, believe me, these people do not need -- I know I'm making this all sound interesting, but they don't need to be bigger.  They don't need more readers.  The more readers they have, the more damage they would do.  And all I would do, if I mention them by name or by name of author is make 'em bigger and it would not accomplish here what I'm -- I know it's frustrating.  If this were just a local show in Podunk state, I could tell you everything, but it's the biggest show in media.  And put these little chumps on the map and they'd never be bigger, but it wouldn't change, just make 'em snarkier and ruder.  Just the way things work.

Aren't you glad you haven't been hit with a 40% Energy Surcharge like Western Texas Industries?

WSJ has an article on the problem the power transmission system in Western Texas being strained by the higher use of Energy drilling and pumping that is increasing the costs for many industries in areas.

While the largely rural region has enough power plants to supply the growing demand for electricity, the high-voltage transmission network hasn't kept pace. Beginning last summer, a shortage of transmission lines in some areas meant that grid operators couldn't automatically send the cheapest power to customers, but had to turn to more expensive power plants elsewhere in the state, where there was enough transmission capacity. Those higher costs were passed on as surcharges to many large customers.

Here are descriptions of some of the pain.

That isn't good news for executives at Tower Extrusions Ltd., which makes aluminum products like stadium seats and storm gutters in Olney, Texas, about 100 miles west of Fort Worth. The company says its power bills climbed 40% last year.

"The congestion charges are putting me at a huge disadvantage, compared to my competitors near Dallas or in other parts of the state," said Mark McClelland, Tower's general manager.

Even oil and gas companies are being hit by the charges. Kinder Morgan Inc.,KMI -0.84% which produces oil in the Permian Basin, said it had to pay as much as $400,000 in congestion costs on a single day in 2012.

Apache Corp., one of the Permian Basin's top oil producers, said its average costs in the area this year are running about 15% higher, largely due to the power-line congestion costs.

Ouch.  Could imagine if you ran a data center in this area?  There are probably some data center operators who are being hit by these costs.