DataCenter Dynamics Awards

One of the privileges I have that I value highly is once a year overseeing the judging for the DataCenter Dynamics Leadership Awards. I carry out this role with my BCS Data Centre Specialist Group hat on and act as an independent chair on the judging panel to ensure fairness and equality.

With 24 judges and over 90 entries spread over 14 categories it's not for the faint hearted! DCD have a reasonably well oiled machine now that collects the submissions, sets the judging criteria, ensures a good statistical distribution of scoring, checking for conflicts of interest, etc.

My role is to watch the whole process from beginning to end to make sure everything runs as it should in terms of the process. I get full visibility to all steps of the process including all the communication with the judges so nothing untoward can happen without my knowledge.

To be honest the data centre industry is so tight-knit anyway that any kind of skulduggery within an awards programme like this would become obvious to most folks pretty quickly.

The pleasurable part of being involved in this process is that I get to read all the entries and get to read about the amazing things that people are doing out there. The Data centre industry has changed an awful lot over the last 5 years and the drive towards energy efficiency has had a huge impact.

I was very pleasantly surprised to hear most entrants championing the EU Code of Conduct for data centres and a great number of the finalists being participants or endorsers of the code. The innovation being driven by things like the code of conduct is just staggering!

While the winners won't get to find out who they are until the 16th December, irrespective almost all the entrants deserve to give themselves a big pat on the back for delivering another year of progress in an industry that never stands still.