Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Iowa Technology and Ken Patchett

I attended an awards show tonight that honored technology companies in Iowa and the progress we have made as a state. Produced by the Technology Association of Iowa, the event was very nice and it was inspirational to see all of the things going on in the state and the innovation that continues to make us a technology power-house.

A highlight of the evening was the keynote from Google's Ken Patchett. Ken has been quoted and photographed for countless news articles about Google data centers. Ken was incredibly supportive of the Iowa companies taking part in the event. He delivered a wonderful keynote, complete with a modified Google logo for Iowa (apologies--the picture was taken with my phone)
It contains the Iowa state flower and bird and (of course) a corn stalk. OK -- the real highlight was actually getting to meet and talk with Ken. As you can imagine he was incredibly popular, so I didn't get time to ask him the question I had ready. I was going to ask him his thoughts on the viability of wind energy generation for use in powering/augmenting a data center. An InformationWeek article last November posed the thought as well.

Congratulations to all of the award winners at the show tonight!

P.S.: I also wanted to congratulate Principal, HNI and Meredith for getting listed on Fortune's 'most admired' list!

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