While data centers were taking it on the chin in Tuesday’s midterm elections, the people building them were playing pickleball at a conference in Virginia.
And they weren’t exactly reacting constructively to the news.
“Suddenly we have protesters and people saying four-letter words about us,” Jeff Wabik, the chief technology officer at DC BLOX, a data center developer based in Atlanta, said of common complaints about the centers, like their noise.
“You know, most of that is just straightforward misinformation,” he added. “There have been some bad actors.”
At the conference, held on November 3 and 4 by Data Center Dynamics, a trade publication and the event’s organizer, over 3,000 industry professionals gathered to network, strategize, and share positive thoughts, according to its billing materials.
“The data center industry is set to build at record pace,” the company posted on LinkedIn on Thursday.
The timing of the event and its messaging, though, couldn’t have contrasted more with the nationwide votes taking place.
Data centers took a resolute drubbing the day the conference kicked off. Over 40 ballot propositions around the country during the midterm election supporting the construction of data centers went down in defeat. Only one, in a tiny town in North Dakota, was successful.
Democrats, meanwhile, swept into power by an electorate disgruntled with the Iran war and high prices, and have promised to focus their scrutiny on data centers and the people building them when they take power in January.
“We need real action on data centers,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the democrat septogenerian from New York poised to become majority leader, said in September.
Chip stocks, after soaring on Wednesday, tumbled drastically on Thursday as investors digested the possibility of major AI regulation pushed by democrats.
None of this portends good news for data centers (or, as OpenAI now wants you to call them, “compute campuses“).
That didn’t seem to bother people at the conference, though.
“An exciting time to be in the data center industry,” Beau Couden, a sales manager at Watts Water Technologies, a cooling company, said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday.
Stephen Forgy, an executive at Hyper Solutions, a company that manufactures electrical infrastructure for data centers, said there are “plenty of other variables” that could put a kabash on the data center buildout.
“But it’s still a great time to be in this industry,” he said in an interview with JSA TV, a trade news site. The event holder, Data Center Dynamics, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
While the conference itinerary mostly hinged on working groups, panels, and classes for data center builders to learn the nitty-gritty of running the massive AI-powering factories, there were also some lighter events.
A pickleball tournament, for one, was offered at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, about an hour after polls opened on the East Coast.
At 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, while the polls were closing and millions were tuning in to national news to watch the tally, data center execs enjoyed an “icebreaker party.”
Then, at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, while most Americans were waking up to a stunning blue wave, conference attendees were treated to take a relaxing jog to “experience the serenity of Virginia.”
“Kickstart your day with a 5k networking run or an inspiring 2.5k Walk & Talk,” the schedule read.
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