I wasn't planning on being at Uptime Symposium this year, but it turned out I had some other business in San Jose this past week and I wanted to catch up with some data center friends. So we met at the Hyatt Regency hotel bar. It was well worth my time to be at the bar so I went back the next night.

The bar crowd was a bit light, but I still had good conversations. Helped out a power company guy who was going to have a media event with an environmental person. Chatted about design ideas. Who is where and what they are doing.

One of the little known facts is Uptime Symposium is planning on being in Dallas in 2016. This could change as any event planning can do, but they usually plan this stuff well over a year out. The staff friend also said this is part of a plan to take Uptime on the road. People from East Coast will travel to Santa Clara given the density of users. The West Coast people are there. Will these two crowds travel to Dallas or other locations? What other cities have the density of users in the SF Bay Area?

I have gone to Uptime Symposium in Orlando, NYC, and Santa Clara. Now I just go to the hotel bar where the conference is. Next year I extremely doubt I will be in the Dallas area to go to the bar. So this is my last Uptime Symposium.

The data center events aren't what they used to be. In April 2016 is Data Center World in LV. In May Uptime will be in Dallas. In May 7x24 will be in FL. And in July DatacenterDynamics is in SF.

7x24 Exchange Conferences have turned into my preferred data center conference. Why? Because more of my friends are there. And every event I make a few more. I learn a lot too. You can argue what event has better presentations which depends on your experience. Where I learn the most is chatting with some of the smartest people in the industry. Which is usually at the hotel bar. :-)

PS, in the picture above you can see three of smartest DC people in the industry. I left the image a bit dark and low resolution to make it harder to recognize, but if you know them you'll recognize them right away. And all three will be at 7x24 Exchange Orlando.