4 years ago thanks to Jim Grice’s sponsorship we had a dinner with some data center thought leaders. The people were some of the top in the industry and any vendor would have paid big money to be at the table, but part of why the people went to the dinner is it was about friends being able to chat and meet new friends without any sales pressure. Vendors were filtered out. There was a bit of an exception for people who worked at companies that are considered vendors. It worked so well, we thought what do we do next year?

In 2012, we decided to have another social, but invite more people and get away from the sit down dinner. Vendors could come if they behaved and were considered thought leaders by others attending. Let people mingle more yet sit down. We took some ideas Steve Manos started with his Lee Tech on Tap events in Chicago and applied some new ones as well.

Above is 2012

Above is the event in 2014

No change in venue. It works well. 7x24 Exchange has been a generous sponsor to host gathering of friends.

2013 we had people fly in from Seattle, Chicago, Texas, North Carolina, New York, Southern Ca, and Georgia to spend 3-4 hours drinking a few beers and talking to people who operate and build data centers.

For 2014 it was a smaller event, but still good. Two people flew in and asked what else was to do. I told them Uptime Symposium was going on and the two registered for the event as first time attendees.

Will there be a Data Center Downtime Social in 2015. Most likely. Especially when I get comments like this.

I wanted to thank you for your hospitality last week. It's always good to get away from the masses and have more intimate dialogue with key people.

There will be data center social at 7x24 Exchange hosted by some friends. There was the big data center social in LV last month. A bunch of people are getting together for their annual fishing social in July.

The idea of a data center social where friends can hang out continues to build.