Past Meetings

A message from Robin Aron, Executive Director, 7x24 Carolinas Chapter

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Over 230 attendees enjoyed the Charleston sunshine at the 7x24 Carolinas and Atlanta Chapters joint event last week in Charleston, South Carolina! Be sure to check out photos from the event here.

Thank you to our sponsors CyrusOne, Whiting-Turner, Commissioning Agents, Inc., Pritchard Brown, Carolina CAT, and Diversified for helping us make a fantastic event for all who attended. 

John Formica, the "Ex-Disney Guy", brought "magical" motivating words and challenged us to be the best leaders we can be by helping our employees and customers see our difference through the time-tested processes that Disney implements.   

We received valuable insight into Data Center Trends from Rhonda Ascierto with Uptime Institute and a unique perspective on Data Center Class from Steve Fairfax of MTechnology. You can check out the presentations and PDH credits via the links below.

The WiMCO event was attended by over 50 members. This Chapter Community is working on STEM engagement. Anyone interested in supporting this initiative should reach out to Ursula Foxworthy.

We hope to see you all at our upcoming BCA/7x24 Technical Summit in Charlotte on October 2nd.  Also, mark your calendar for February 2019.  We will hold our 10th anniversary Winter Meeting in Raleigh, NC.

Presentations:

Disruptive Data Center Technologies
Rhonda Ascierto - VP Research, Uptime Institute
PDH Credit

20 Years of Data Center Reliability Analysis
Steve Fairfax - President, MTechnology
PDH Credit

Event Photos

CHAPTER SPONSOR

EVENT SPONSOR

KEYNOTE SPONSOR	NETWORKING SPONSOR

BREAKFAST SPONSOR	WiMCO SPONSOR

Meeting Partners

                      

               

A message from Sheila Molino, Chapter President

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Thanks to all 250+ people who attended our 2018 Winter Meeting in Raleigh!  This was our highest meeting attendance in our 8 year Chapter history.  I extend a special welcome to all who joined us for their first meeting and a special thank you to the five MCO students from Cleveland CC and Wake Tech who took time from their studies to attend.

The Keynote Speaker, David Sarkus, delivered an inspiring presentation on Safety and Human Error, challenging us to build relationships to create a safety culture where we focus on coaching instead of being a cop.  Wells Fargo Senior Economist, Mark Vitner, shared his economic outlook for the Carolinas and the US.  He also shared a prediction that BitCoin will go to zero so you may want to look into other exchanges for your cryptocurrency portfolio.  Ryan Kennedy with Atom Power gave an enlightening presentation on solid state switching and democratization of power distribution.  Continuing our emerging technologies theme, Ben Jones of Hitzinger shared valuable information on clean conditioned power technology and Carl Cottuli of Bloom Energy presented a case study of fuel cell implementation in a data center.  Finishing out our day, our Thought Leadership Chair, Marcus Hassen, moderated a panel of industry experts:  Matt Baker of CBRE, Ken McAllister of TierPoint and Ray Caponi of T5 Facilities Management, sharing their thoughts on enterprise, colo and edge data centers.

As ever, we are grateful for all our Sponsors who provided the means to bring this event to our membership.

If you attended please take a minute to complete our meeting survey.  Your feedback is valuable to our future planning!

To view photos from the event click here.

I encourage you to contribute to our Chapter success by participating on one of our Committees.  You may contact us via info@7x24carolinas.org to be connected with the Committee Chairs.

I hope to see you May 7^th for our golf event at Cabarrus Country Club.  We’ll announce registration closer to the date.  Changing things up a bit, we will take registrations for a week, then use a blind lottery to fill the 32 team field.

- Sheila

Thank you to our Sponsors

CHAPTER SPONSOR

EVENT SPONSOR

KEYNOTE SPONSOR	NETWORKING SPONSOR

BREAKFAST SPONSOR	LUNCH SPONSOR

WiMCO SPONSOR

MEETING PARTNERS

A message from Robin Aron, Executive Director

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Thanks to all 203 people who attended our 2017 Summer Meeting in Charleston! This represented our 6th sold out joint event with the Atlanta Chapter.

The Keynote Speaker, Heather Dooley, provided an impactful presentation on the industry's "Hidden Risk" and the race for talent and diversity. Professional Speaker Andy Core educated us on how to obtain "Life Balance" through not only changing our lives, but changing our day! James Coe with Syska Hennessy provided valuable and insightful information on "The Future of the Enterprise Data Center."

Along with great content at the meeting, we hope everyone enjoyed some fun networking and fantastic Charleston cuisine!

We are grateful for our Sponsors, who provided the means to bring this event to the membership.

If you attended, please take a minute to complete our meeting survey. Your feedback is valuable to our future planning!

To view photos from the event, click here.

I encourage your further involvement in the Chapter by participating in our active Committees. You may contact us via info@7x24carolinas.org to get connected with the Committee Chairs.

See you on September 28th at the Tech Summit in Charleston! You can register for the event here.

PDH Credits

The Hidden Risk
Heather Dooley, Google

The Future of the Enterprise Data Center
James Coe, Syska Hennessy

Thank you to the Summer Meeting Sponsors

A message from Robin Aron, Executive Director

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Thank you to everyone that worked diligently to make our 7x24 Exchange Carolina’s Chapter Winter Meeting, “Embracing Change,” a great success.   

We are grateful for our Sponsors who provided the means to bring this event to the Membership. The slate of presentations sparked interesting information exchange among our attendees while delivering valuable insight into the NC Economic Outlook and Data Center Industry Trends. 

Please see the presentation links for your reference.

North Carolina Economic Outlook
Christopher Chung, CEO - Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina

Trends for 2017 and Beyond: Our Data Center Industry Survey - PDH Credit
Patrick O’Connor, Director Uptime Institute

Software Defined Networks and the Impact on Data Centers - PDH Credit
Carl Rumbolo, CISSP, CDCDP, CDCEP Principal Engineer, Data Center Planning & Engineering - Wells Fargo

Open Compute - PDH Credit
Shawn Griggs, Manager Technology Construction Services - Holder Construction Company
Tony Dycus, Key Accounts & IT OEM - Rittal Corporation
Caleb Lusk, PMP, HP Program Manager - Rittal Corporation

If you attended, please take 2 minutes to complete our meeting survey.
Your feedback is valuable to our future planning!

To view images from the event, click here.

I encourage your further involvement in the Chapter by participating in our active Committees.  You may contact us via info@7x24carolinas.org to get connected to the Committee Chairman.

See you on the Golf Course April 24^th!

Robin

Thank you to our Sponsors

Jeff Farlow, 7x24 Carolinas Executive Director

If you missed the annual joint 7x24 Carolinas and Atlanta Chapter meeting in Charleston last week, you missed a really impressive show!

Jeff Farlow
Executive Director
7x24 Exchange Carolinas Chapter

7x24 Exchange International Carolina Chapter meetings keep getting better!  Our meeting at the Durham Doubletree by Hilton was a successful result of improving our venue, finding interesting and informative speakers and increasing our level of service to attendees.  Our sold out conference attendees heard presentations from Fidelity on Data Center deployment strategies, our keynote Dr. Suku Nair spoke on Data Center Cyber Security, MCOPS from Clemson University gave a case study on their Data Center Delivery, and we had panel of SME's discuss Alternative Battery Technologies.

The Networking event the night before was well attended and provided the opportunity to catch up with colleagues and new friends to discuss strategies and deliverables through their communities.  Special thanks to our Event Sponsor Envirotrol, LLC, Networking Sponsor United Metal Products, Breakfast Sponsor Sealco, Lunch Sponsor Emerson and WiMCO meeting Sponsor Google.  

Coming up fast is our Annual Golf Event at Palisades Country Club in Charlotte, Tuesday April 26, 2016.  This popular event has historically sold out the day it is announced and this year was no exception.  Our Summer Meeting August 12 will be again held in Charleston, SC and is hosted jointly by both the Carolinas and Atlanta Chapters.  Make sure that you get signed up early as these seats will surely go fast.  

You can keep up on all of our activities and up coming events by checking this website or reading End to End, 7x24 Carolina's informative Industry Newsletter.

Paul has been an active and valuable member of our chapter.  As chair of the education committee, Paul has championed the Mission Criticial Operator (MCO) initiative which has resulted in a $23mm grant to the NC Community College system to create an curriculum and degree for students wishing to get into the MCO field.  In addition to his Education Committee activities, Paul has been wise council to our board and chapter as we have grown.  He is a large part of our success.

Cassliano, on behalf of our chapter presented Paul an Outstanding Service Award.  Paul spoke about his tenure with 7x24 and BB&T as well as gave an executive overview of the new BB&T Data Center he has recently managed the engineering and construction of.  We all wish Paul the best and hope he and his wife 204395ruw3f enjoy their travel and adventures.

In other business, the Executive committee met before the board meeting to provide a recommended 2016 budget which was subsequently approved by the full board.  Each committee chair provided a report on 2015 activities and a look forward for their committee work in 2016.

The board also approved the new slate of officers which include Shelia Molino, President, Jim Larson, Vice President and Raul Peralta Secretary / Treasurer.  We also welcomed 4 new board members.  Ian Miles with Aligned Data Centers, Tim Brooks with Bank of America, James Faccone with Facebook, Bill Roberts with Duke Energy.  Congratulations to these new board members.

We look forward to an actively engaged board this year and executive committee.  I am excited about the coming year of 7x24 Carolina's Chapter activities.

Jeff Farlow
Executive Director, 7x24 Carolinas

Click Here for Photos of the Meeting

Once again the joint meeting of the Atlanta and Carolina's Chapters of 7x24 Exchange sold out quickly and the events garnered much positive feedback.

This year our newest committee, Women In Mission Critical Operations – WIMCO, held our first event on Thursday afternoon.  We were delighted to have 20 women attend to learn more about our mission to strengthen engagement and participation of our female members.  Robin Aron provided an inspiring overview of her career in the mission critical industry followed by networking.  Disney and MGAC provided appetizers.

A large group attended the networking event sponsored by JE Dunn and held at The Harbour Club.  We continue to hear from members that networking is crucial to these events being successful.  I know I’m always amazed at the camaraderie of these events.

We kicked off the Friday meeting with breakfast co-sponsored by Sealco and AHA.  We needed a hearty breakfast for energy to keep up with our speaker Chad Pregracke from Living Lands and Waters.  Chad’s enthusiasm and the magnitude of his accomplishments cleaning up the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois Rivers were inspirational about the impact each of us can achieve.

Mike Connaughton presented a comprehensive overview of the need to keep a long term view as data centers move to higher speed cabling to accommodate ever increasing data loads. 

Terry Rodgers followed with a succinct synopsis of ASHRAE standard 90.1 and proposed 90.4, explaining their potential application and impact.

Many thanks to our Event Sponsor, Berk-Tek Leviton for continued support of our chapter events.

Thanks also to the attendees.  Though it is hard to take time out to attend such events, participation of our end user membership provides lasting value to the entire organization and creates the environment for such activities to occur.

Future events include the 5^th Annual Joint BCA – 7x24 Carolinas Chapter Technical Summit on Sept 3^rd, National 7x24 meeting in San Antonio, TX and our Winter Meeting in February.  I hope to see you there.

EVENT PRESENTATIONS:

Transforming the Network - Mike Connaughton, Berk-Tek  (PDH Credit)

ASHRAE Standard 90.4P - Terry Rodgers, Primary Integration  (PDH Credit)

Click Here for Event Photos

Jeff Farlow, Executive Director

Thanks to all for a successful Carolinas 7x24 Exchange Winter Meeting.  Once again, this sold out event provided the opportunity for exchange, networking and an incredible learning opportunity for attendees.  In case you missed it, important presentation materials on Data Center Commoditization, Electrical Distributed Generation Technologies and Smart Grid Impact on Data Centers can be viewed on our website.  The panel discussion on Facility Operations and Data Center Technology provided insight on the current state and possible direction of Mission Critical Operations.