IM Leadership Summit

Updated Dec 16, 2016 | Update Posted by Mark Monroe | Events

On November 16, 2016 Infrastructure Masons held our first Leadership Summit with over 100 of our most senior End User and Partner members. We convened this group of industry leaders to work with IM Board and Advisory Council Members to finalize the strategy and next steps for Infrastructure Masons. Our most senior members average 20 years of industry experience and are responsible for over $100Bn of infrastructure projects in 139 countries.

Rich Miller, Founder of Data Center Knowledge, attended the event and wrote a great followup article – Data Centers Can Be Faster, Sexier.

Outcomes of the meeting

The agenda of the meeting is below. Each section of the meeting provided the opportunity to connect and grow. Attendees were assigned seats at the 15 round tables in the room. All tables were assigned to insure a mix of End User and Partner members, giving everyone the opportunity to mix and meet new contacts, new experts, and new friends.

Keynote: Arista Networks

Arista Networks founder Andy Bechtolsheim and CTO Ken Duda presented on the state of the art in networking technologies. Leading up to the meeting, Andy said,

“The single most important lesson I have learned in my career is that you have to pick the right technology at the right time to change the world. This is why meetings like this, where people can get together in an open forum and exchange knowledge and what will happen next are so valuable.”

Andy and Ken made compelling arguments for adopting 40G network technology asap in data centers, and to look ahead to 100G “this year,” and 400G silicon showing up in 2018. The emerging standards that support these higher speeds. Their fast-paced discussion gave many of the attending End Users valuable information, and something to think about in their network architecture designs. Andy spent a bit of time on form factors and capabilities, and announced that 49 companies had “just this morning” agreed to the emerging OSFP form factor for 400G networks.

Workshop 1: Infrastructure Masons Vision Statement

We believe in putting our members to work during meetings, and the first order of business was to gather input on the deeper meaning of the iMasons mission statement, “Where infrastructure professionals connect, learn and give back.”

103 high-powered members put their minds to the task, working on a single worksheet displayed on the big screens, collaborating with their own tables and others in the room. For each part of the mission (connect, grow, give back) members were asked to “flesh out” the idea with phrases and descriptions.

A Word Cloud displays the main ideas: most frequently mentioned ideas are largest.

Connect / Communicate

The key themes for Communicate and Connect were: stronger industry partnerships, open collaboration, expert community, and networking for development. Infrastructure Masons is about working to solve common problems, about identifying commonality and the ability to connect people and our expert community to solve them. The key to growth is connection and communication. It’s about what the individual can bring to the conversation and what they can take away.

Education, Growth and Mentoring:

The key themes for growth were: Key-Skills Development, Mentoring, Talent Pipeline and Talent Pool Development, and Certification/Qualification Requirements for future Masons. Infrastructure Masons can establish the personal connections for career opportunity and growth by leverage experience and expertise in different areas. Mentoring and Education are about our commitment to the common good, sustainable growth of the industry, and engaging the next generation of leaders.

Key Actions: Education Team: Develop a mentoring program to connect senior leaders with developing Infrastructure Masons.

Education Team: Drive toward standards and focused degree programs. “Industry is complex, and themes are intertwined, so you may see one action address more than one focus area”

Give Back

Themes were focused philanthropy with focus on education and scholarship. Ideas around creating community and social responsibility of running efficient data centers were discussed. Currently schools don’t address a lot of our needs, we need high school level focus on broadening diversity. Key Actions: Diversity Team needs to develop a plan to influence early education exposure to Masons’ career options.

Metrics

The iMasons attendees also considered industry metrics as a topic. Their conclusion was we need a standard way to measure utility for the industry that reflects both economic impact and quantified value for this “third wave” of the technology revolution. Key actions: Metrics Committee: Use iMasons Foundry to evaluate and standardize generic industry performance metrics. Executive Director: Outreach to Uptime, IDCA, and Green Grid about updating and standardizing data center classification leveraging experience of iMasons.

Workshop 2: Where will IM organization focus its efforts?

The second workshop of the day focused on what issues the newly formed iMasons organization would focus. From all the possible focus areas, the Board of Directors selected a few key words to inspire the discussion: Education, Metrics, Communications, Standard Endorsement, and Awareness. The groups dove into the discussions, using their on-screen spreadsheet to track and exchange ideas.

Working with the keywords, and capturing ideas in 140-character tweet-like descriptions, the group floated several ideas to the top of the stack, as seen in the second Word Cloud.  Some relevant tweets:

• “Create awareness of significance of a DC. All the worlds knowledge lives in a DC, and we are the stewards. Communications (blog channel, youtube channel) interactive dialog – connectivity to the access layer”
• “Drive professionalization (maturity?) of the datacenter industry (education, experience, ethics, professional standards) e.g. like accounting (CPA’s, GAAP, etc.)”
• “Promoting community involvement in our industry. Let’s get a video game made about data centers.”
• “Branding – demonstrate the very real value of our industry and what it powers for young professionals (potential labor pool) — make it attractive!”
• “Education – Create Workshops, Qualifications, Certifications, Level 3, Programs, Value to invest in people.”

Networking

A wonderful networking session followed the workshops. Thanks to Google, Joe Kava, and all his staff that hosted the reception, beverages, food, and space for the iMasons!

Video

A video of Dean’s welcome address and Andy Bechtolsheim’s presentation is located here. Feel free to access it and listen to the discussions that took place

Agenda.