Upcoming Industry Events

Keynote: Ensuring Operational Readiness for Demands of AI Workloads

Date: September 1, 2026 | 10:00-10:20 AM

Speaker: Philip Hu, Managing Director, Uptime Institute

AI is reshaping data center operations, with extreme power densities, liquid cooling, and rapid hardware refresh cycles creating new operational challenges. This keynote explores how organizations can build an effective operations strategy from day one—from staffing and training to IT–facilities alignment and standardized procedures. Drawing on Uptime Institute’s global experience and vendor-neutral expertise, discover practical approaches to reducing operational risk and delivering resilient, efficient, and scalable AI infrastructure.

Seminar: From Cost Centre to Control Function: The Role of Corporate L&D in Managing Operational Risk

Date: September 9, 2026 | 9:10 AM

Speaker: Matt Hawkins, Vice President of Sales, Global Communication, Uptime Institute

The reframing of learning and development as a frontline risk-control function rather than a compliance exercise, reducing competence gaps, accelerating time-to-shift-ready, and strengthening operational reliability in mission-critical environments. Tackling the human factors behind incidents and downtime, including fatigue, complacency, unclear procedures, and inconsistent standards, while clarifying the role HR, L&D, operations, and frontline leaders play in building human reliability. Human Factor Risk and their role in incidents and downtime, and clarifying the role HR, L&D and operations play in building human reliability. Preparing the workforce for a rapidly changing operating environment shaped by AI-enabled operations, hyperscale expansion, and evolving critical infrastructure requirements by building scalable training pathways, future-ready capability, and long-term retention strategies.

Seminar: Develop: What Does It Take to Create New Talent Supply Rather Than Compete for Existing Talent?

Date: September 9, 2026 | 9:30 AM

Speakers: Matt Hawkins, Vice President of Sales, Global Communication, Uptime Institute; Martin Smith, VP Education Program Management, Uptime Education

This interactive Q&A explores how organizations are moving beyond traditional hiring approaches to address the structural workforce constraints limiting data center growth. The discussion examines how community partnerships, workforce development initiatives, education pathways, and capability-building programs can work together to expand the talent pool, accelerate readiness, and reduce dependence on increasingly scarce experienced hires. Participants will compare how leading organizations are creating scalable, repeatable workforce ecosystems that support both immediate hiring needs and long-term industry growth.

Panel: Enterprise AI Capacity Planning: Procurement, Platform Choices, and Operational Reality

Date: September 16, 2026, 11:20 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker: Naveed Saeed, Vice President, Global Technical Management

Debate: Are our sustainability frameworks delivering real progress, or masking true the impact?

Date: September 16, 2026, 10:00-10:45 AM

Speaker: Andy Lawrence, Executive Director of Research, Uptime Institute

Infrastructure expansion is exposing the limits of established sustainability systems. Operators can secure strong results under LEED, BREEAM, and Scope 3 reporting while still missing the full environmental burden of rapid, large‑scale development. With Scope 3 now representing the majority of total emissions and tenant data is often estimated or unavailable, the reliability of these frameworks is increasingly questioned. The central issue is whether current standards still capture real‑world impact, or whether they have evolved into score‑optimisation mechanisms in a sector growing faster than its oversight tools.

This session will examine:

• Whether frameworks measure real environmental impact
• The limits of using generic building standards for data center design and operations
• How viable Scope 3 reporting is when colocation tenant data is opaque
• The need to include embodied carbon, biodiversity, and supply‑chain impacts in metrics
• Whether the sector can judge if frameworks deliver measurable real‑world outcomes

Seminar: Commissioning for AI Readiness

Date: September 24, 2026 | 14:00–14:25

Speaker: Rachid Arabi, Vice President of Europe, Uptime Institute

Location: Stage 2

Panel: Cooling the Curve: Can the Industry Scale Fast Enough for AI?

Date: September 26, 2026, 10:05 AM - 11:00 AM

Speaker: Jacqueline Davis, Research Analyst, Uptime Intelligence

AI infrastructure is scaling at a pace the cooling industry has never seen before. Rack densities are rising exponentially, chip roadmaps are compressing into six-month cycles, and operators are demanding solutions that can be deployed globally, reliably, and at unprecedented speed.

But this is not just a technology challenge. It is a manufacturing challenge, a supply chain challenge, a financing challenge, and ultimately a business model challenge. Can the cooling ecosystem scale quickly enough to keep pace with AI demand without compromising reliability, efficiency, or long-term interoperability?

This panel explores how cooling vendors, operators, investors, and integrators are responding to one of the steepest infrastructure growth curves in modern industrial history. From factory capacity and deployment models to standardization, partnerships, and new commercial structures, we examine what it takes to scale cooling from niche engineering discipline to the mission-critical AI infrastructure industry.

Panel: Cooling Under Fire: AI Infrastructure and the New Social Compact

Date: September 28, 2026, 11:00 AM - 11:40 AM

Speaker: Rose Weinschenk, Associate Research Analyst, Uptime Institute

As AI infrastructure expands at unprecedented speed, the industry is facing a new reality: technical capability alone is no longer enough. Data centers are increasingly being challenged by communities, regulators, and policymakers concerned about water usage, energy demand, land consumption, and the broader societal impact of AI-scale infrastructure.

At the center of the debate is cooling. Liquid cooling may be essential to support next-generation compute, but it is also reshaping public perception by fueling narratives around “water-guzzling” AI factories competing with local communities for critical resources.

This panel explores what sustainability means in the AI era, and whether the industry needs a new social compact to retain its license to operate. How should operators balance efficiency, transparency, and growth? What metrics will matter most in the future? And how does the industry move from a defensive conversation about resource consumption toward a more credible narrative around economic value, resilience, and responsible infrastructure development?

Wednesday Keynote: Energy Management in AI Data Centers – What’s the Same and What’s Different?

Date: October 28, 2026

Speaker: Jay Paidipati, Vice President, Energy & Sustainability, Uptime Institute

As artificial intelligence workloads increasingly migrate into enterprise and colocation data centers, operators and facilities managers must evolve their energy management strategies. The infrastructure principles that have governed efficient data center operations for decades are no longer sufficient on their own. AI data centers present a distinct set of challenges, ranging from high power densities driven by GPU and accelerator clusters to thermal profiles that strain conventional cooling architectures. This session explores how energy management must be recontextualized as rack densities routinely exceed 30–100 kW, compared to the 5–15 kW typical of legacy deployments. It examines how this shift demands a fundamental rethink of cooling strategies, from precision air management to direct liquid cooling and immersion systems. Attendees will gain an understanding of the operational and infrastructural differences between traditional compute environments and AI-optimized facilities, with a focus on energy efficiency as both a cost imperative and a sustainability mandate. We will review which traditional metrics remain relevant, identify the new metrics that must be considered, and discuss where the underlying data should be sourced. Participants will leave with a practical framework for benchmarking AI facility efficiency, evaluating cooling infrastructure investments, and integrating sustainability metrics into operational decision-making. The goal is to create facilities that can support the demands of modern AI while minimizing environmental impact and maintaining operational efficiency.