Above Photo: Participants in iMasons End User Summit, plus iMasons Board of Directors, Partners, D&I Committee, IMWomen, and Education Champions.

The exclusive, invitation-only, Infrastructure Masons End User Summit was held on October 2, 2019. Senior-level end user leaders from across the globe convened in San Jose, CA, to connect, grow and give back. In parallel, iMasons also convened Foundation Partner executives, and held the first in-person meeting of iMason’s Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Committee. Following their sessions, all three groups reconvened to share insights with the larger group. The event wrapped up with the iMasons D&I Fundraiser reception and dinner which raised over $100,000 for iMasons Scholarship fund which 50/50 scholarships. It was an incredible day of deep discussions, insights, new connections, and giving back!

Download the event brochure

End User Summit

Senior-level End Users from hyperscalers, digital-age data tech firms, and major enterprises were grouped into 4 tracks focused on the foundational infrastructure disciplines of Data Center, Hardware, Network, and Infrastructure Management.  Each track was asked a simple question: What’s top-of-mind for you? The discussions that followed were recorded and will be reported later in follow-up blogs using Chatham House rules in which no comment will be attributed to an individual or company. No media representatives were present for the discussions. These insights into the very core of our industry will be made available to iMasons members in upcoming blog posts.

Check out the event summary video below, which includes thoughts from several End User Summit participants.

Data  Center Track

The Data Center track was led by Heather Dooley and Spas Lazarov with a readout by Spas Lazarov.

Hardware Track

Curt Belusar led the Hardware track discussion with a read out from Yuval Bachar.

Network Track

The Network track was led by Andrea Garrison and Jason Black with a report out by Andrea Garrison.

Infrastructure Management Track

Infrastructure is where the technology layers converge with business processes. The Infrastructure Management track was led by Christina Abraham with a report out by Christian Belady.

iMasons Partners

In a separate room, iMasons Foundation Partner executives met to discuss their top-of-mind. This group of competitors were able to leave their companies at the door and come together for a very open and frank discussion about the challenges they face meeting the demands of constantly accelerating schedules and increasing forecasts.

Joint Report Out

Following each of these separate meetings, all the participants got back together for a combined report-out from each of their meetings, making the insights from the end user tracks available to iMasons Partners first.

Diversity and Inclusion Fundraiser

The evening ended with a Diversity and Inclusion Fundraiser reception and dinner to raise funds for the iMasons Scholarship Program, 50% awarded to women.  The reception and dinner included over 40 invited female leaders from across our industry.  Many thanks to the companies and individuals who helped us raise over $100,000 for this worthy cause!  The donors received gold Education Champions medals for each $5000 contribution.

D&I Education Champions:

Hannah Ormondroyd (CBRE), Todd Boyd (Tacit), Raymond Tong (Sunevision), Jeff Dorr (EdgeCore), Jim Smith (Equinix), Martin Murphy (CBRE), Suzie Gleeson (Digital Realty), Doris Yeh (Mirapath), Peter Jones (Yondr), Steve Houck (Virtual Power Systems), Oliver Jones (Chayora), Michael Lahoud (Stream Data Centers), Laurie Oswald, (Vertiv) and Jason Carolan (Flexential).

Many thanks to Equinix for their sponsorship of the End User Summit and their commitment to championing Diversity & Inclusion in our Industry.

We would also like to recognize our amazing Foundation partners who make the Infrastructure Masons community possible.