Click here for HostingCon 2008 Pictures.
DatacenterJunkie is attending LinuxWorld Expo and Next Generation Datacenter at Moscone in San Francisco this week. Most of my coverage should appear late next week, as I'm trying to catch up on HostingCon last week.
HostingCon was fantastic. It had far more of a focus on networking than sessions or announcements, which was really refreshing. Attendance was about 1,100 people ranging from sales staff, mid-level techs, to executives and owners. The attendees were mostly hosting companies, and companies selling services to them.
Imagine this. I was sitting in the lunchroom on the second day, and started doing some mental calculations. I was starting at 1,100 people who represented between $1BN and $2BN in yearly hosting transactions. On top of that, my entirely unscientific guesstimate is that they enable $50BN-$100BN worth of of online transactions.
And they were all cool, approachable, laidback professionals who are a blast to drink scotch with. Sunday night I enjoyed single-malts with the owners of PacificRack, FortressITX, LayeredTech, SoftLayer, nLayer, and a few others.
The first half of Wednesday evening I spent chatting with George Roberts the former owner of HostingCon. Later on we enjoyed a bit too much Macallan and talked trash with Lance from SoftLayer, Jason from FortressITX, Karl from Steadfast, and (let's call him Bob) from PacificRack.
HostingCon's promoters know how to facilitate networking like few others I've experienced. Every evening there were a number of bars that some hosting company had an open tab at. The lunches lasted two hours. There were 1/2 dozen small quiet lounges set up for sitting and talking, and everybody was very approachable.
Most of the sessions were pretty basic, but the M&A sessions with Cheval Capital and DH Capital were eye-opening. One of these was setup like a gameshow, and moderated by David Snead, a well-known attorney who handles telecom and datacenter M&As. Hillary and Frank Stiff from Cheval Capital were especially lively and fun to interact with.
If you find yourself asking the question, "Where do the movers and shakers in the hosting industry go to party" the answer is clearly "Wherever HostingCon is being held".
Much more to come in the next couple of days, stay tuned!
Michael Halligan is a serial entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in IT architecture and operations. His primary role is chief technical officer of BitPusher, LLC, a managed application hosting firm based out of San Francisco and Seattle. He is currently starting up a new Web application providing intelligent services to the convention industry. He previously held architectural and management positions at start-ups MyPoints, Kontiki and Napster.
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