You already know that today’s data center is a much more complex place, with blade servers, virtualization and racks of clustered systems. Understanding the power requirements for all this gear along with how to cool this equipment isn’t easy. Corporations that are looking to save money on their power bills have to do more than just purchase the most energy-efficient processors. It is important to examine all of the components, as well as where the racks of servers are placed on the floor and how they can be effectively cooled.

This webcast will take a look at what our industry is doing to help create a more efficient server environment and ways to balance energy loads with computing requirements. I will moderate a panel of  leading experts at Dell on these issues next Thursday. You can register at this link.

I’ve known Sam Whitmore for as long as I have been a computer journalist: he was running PC Week when I got my start there in the mid-1980s and we have kept in touch over the years. Sam runs his own shop called MediaSurvey.com and offers a variety of services to public relations pros tracking what the tech media is doing. I’ll be speaking with him on a live Webcast next Tuesday 12/19. He asked me to come up wth some provocative topics and I’d thought I would put out a few links for people to examine prior to my presentation. (You have to be a paid subscriber to hear the broadcast.) While there have been many stories about Web 2.0 tools, what I am interested in is the notion that PR pros actually use the stuff to get their jobs done. The evidence so far is … Well, you’ll have to listen in.

• Paul Gillin (formerly of Computerworld and Tech Target) has written a book called The New Influencers. This chapter on tools is very instructive.
• Suzanne Stefanac has written another book called Dispatches from Blogostan. Here is a chapter on blog design, although there are others (not online) that have moretechnical information about Web 2.0.
• Digg Labs has two visualization tools (Swarm and Stack) worth a look that show where all those links go.
• Michelle Leder, a blogger for footnoted.org, uses SEC and other public documents to research what is going on inside many companies. A story here on the AlbanyTimes-Union talks about her discoveries.
• Contantin Basturea’s list of all PR bloggers here and also has another list of more than 250 CEO bloggers (as of October).
• Debbie Weil has written the Corporate Blogging Book and has plenty of great advice and case studies too about corporate and CEO bloggers.
• Then there is the hubbub guys, who are using Wikis and blogs to build their own PR business.
• Auburn professor Robert French has a blog on new media topics for his students here
• The folks at SocialMedia Club is focused on identifying best practices in the social networking space that seems geared towards PR people, including a template for new media press releases that they developed last year
• Jen McClure’s Society for New Communications Research (where I am one of their fellows) has conferences and a journal to identify trends and issues
• Steve Outing’s The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism is a great starting point from the journalist perspective
• So is Dan Gimor’s Center for Citizen Media project
• Finally, you’ll have to listen to the broadcast to hear what I have to say about the continued lack of follow-up with my own PR contacts.

I give lots of speeches for groups large and small. One year I had the opportunity to go around the world for the Interop show teaching engineers about eCommerce. I also have done small roundtable discussion groups, most recently for Oracle and Information Week. Currently, I am represented by the Convention Connection speaker’s bureau

Here is a selection of the slides to many of my previous engagements. If you are interested in having me come talk to your group, contact my bureau at the link above.

And if you are interested in hearing me speak, I also have a site of podcasts for small business owners that I call Your Personal Geek.

Now is the time to get your entry together. I will be one of the contest judges, along with some of the fine folks from CMP. It is a great way to get some attention for your product, so don’t delay!

What does it take to make an application mobile? This session will examine possible strategic directions for remote access and distributed applications in a mobile and wireless environment. We will also look at available tools to implement mobile applications, common design and deployment pitfalls and the network and subscriber-unit requirements. I will be moderating this panel, along with participating in the Best of Interop judging. This session will be held in Vegas on Tuesday, 2 May from 3:30-4:30pm.

I will be moderating a panel session at the Palo Alto Sheraton on March 2 with this title. You can go here and find out more about the conference.

We will look at various trends in the search area, including what is going on with searching blogs and podcasts, search engine optimization, the recent deal between BearingPoint and Google, and integrating search into the desktop. Here are the powerpoint slides for the session.

It should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to the conference.

My panel will include:

• John Cass is director of blogging strategies for Backbone Media (john@backbonemedia.com), a 10 year old search engine optimization company. His blog is called Blog Survey.
• Rob Key is CEO of Converseon (rkey@converseon.com), a search and communications management company.
• Stephan Spencer is the founder and president of Netconcepts, a search engine optimization agency.
• Ross Weinstein is Director of Business Development at Ingenio (ross@ingenio.com), a pay-per-call Web to phone vendor.