No word publicly on where the location of the new data center will be, though The Salt Lake Tribune reports on speculation of a Bluffdale location. From a work force stand point that is a nice location, with fairly easy access to both Salt Lake and Utah counties (two of the main population centers in Utah).

Data center issues sure have changed over the years. It used to be that getting access to a high capacity facility meant going to where the bandwidth was (remember when MAE-West as king?). Bringing high capacity connections out to other areas was difficult and expensive. Now other operation costs have become the major issues, like how to keep thousands of servers cool.

From the perspective of cooling a SLC data center certainly makes sense. We’ve had snow at my house as early as September and as late as May. I wouldn’t be surprised if for half the year they won’t need any air conditioning at all, simply vent out the hot air and bring in the outside air. Check out the average monthly temperatures for Sandy and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Those are just the averages, there are a number of days during the winter where the high was below 25. Last winter it wasn’t unusual for it to be in the low single digits when I took Alice to school in the morning.

I’ve seen a few people speculate that Twitter will be bringing developer resources to the SLC area as well. I don’t see that as being very likely. I expect that their developers will still be mostly based in San Francisco. The Twitter jobs that do come to SLC will be nearly all operational in nature. Exactly how many jobs? I have no idea, but there are plenty of universities and colleges in the area that will be looking for the answer to that question as well.

I’m curious to see how this plays out, potentially it could be very good for SLC. And as a long time systems and network geek I have a special place in my heart for big buildings with lots of servers, routers, switches, and networking cable. Oh, and Evan Williams, if you are reading this, I’d love to get a tour of your new data center when it is done. :-)

Update:

Ash Buckles mentions that the Twitter DC is next door to seo.com ( next door, confirmed ). That would be with in the ball park of the Bluffdale rumor, just off I-15 about 15 minutes drive south of my house.

Here’s the seo.com location:

View Larger Map

This makes me curious about the network connectivity situation. And will this attract other DCs to the area?

Related posts:

1. Social Media Club of Salt Lake City: WordPress
2. Ignite Salt Lake 3
3. Twitter Style Group Blog With P2

If you’d be interested in participating at the Genius Bar drop us a note.

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Utah 2010
2. WordCamp San Francisco – 2010
3. I’ll Be At WordCamp Denver

August 28th is the day, University of Utah is the place. There will be updates at http://2010.utah.wordcamp.org/ as more of the details get filled in. I can say we are planning for two tracks, with one focused more on developer topics.

If you are interested in speaking send us a presentation proposal via the contact form on the 2010 site. We’re also looking for sponsors and volunteers (especially if you can help record video of each session).

Mark Saturday, August 28th on your calendar, come spend the day with the Utah WordPress community. Spread the word, use the #wcut hash tag for WordCamp Utah.

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Utah 2010 Update – Genius Bar
2. WordCamp San Francisco – 2010
3. WordCamp SF 2010 Presentation Video

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, at the request of state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff …

The bill would give administrative subpoena power to the A.G. – — without getting a judge’s OK — to obtain information such as e-mails and phone numbers when investigating child kidnapping or cyberstalking, which occurs over the Internet. Daw said that these subpoena powers already exist when investigating sex crimes against minors.

http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_14479120

I’m all for going after the bad guys. Go get a warrant and then track them down. If you don’t have enough to get a warrant then do some more digging. Skipping over sight provided by a warrant is a bad idea.

The mission of the Utah Attorney General is:

The mission of the Office of the Utah Attorney General is to uphold the constitutions of the United States and of Utah, enforce the law, provide counsel to state agencies and public officials, to work with law enforcement and protect the interests of Utah, its people, environment and resources.

http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/44.html

I’m not very impressed with Mark Shurtleff’s choice to throw the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution under a bus, even if it is in the name of trying to catch bad guys.

So it felt like a giant salt lick of hypocrisy when I came across his video about the 10th Amendment in regards to the just passed health care reform bill:

http://utahag.blogspot.com/2010/03/line-in-sand-for-states-rights.html

It’s hard to imagine that anyone can take you seriously when you stomp on one element of the US Constitution in an effort to increase your own power and then get upset when you think someone else is doing the same thing.

I don’t think I have enough details about the health care bill and the process used to make an informed determination on whether Shurtleff has a valid point or not. But I know this much for sure, after his involvement (he requested it) in H.B. 150, I don’t trust any of his opinions on the US Constitution. That is the real tragedy out of all of this, even if he’s in the right, I wouldn’t trust him.

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Utah 2010
2. The Constitution of the United States: Article I – Section 10
3. The Constitution of the United States: Article VI

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Utah 2010
2. Utah WordPress Meetup
3. WordCamp Utah 2010 Update – Genius Bar

I was reviewing the speaker & agenda list for this third installment and noted a few things:

1 – I’d never heard of Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock before. I suspect half the time of this competition is going to be reminding people what the rules are. Sounds fun though, who doesn’t look a good Rock Paper Scissors (++) round?

2 – 9 of the 16 speaker links went to sites that use WordPress. And 2 of the 16 didn’t have links at all. If you were to randomly walk into one of the sessions you have a slightly better than 50/50 chance (56.25%) of listening to WordPress user.

So make some room on your schedule for next Thursday and come on down to Ignite Salt Lake. Be sure to say hi. And if we are pitted against each other in the Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock Tournament all bets are off and I’m going for the win!

Related posts:

1. Twitter Salt Lake City Data Center
2. Social Media Club of Salt Lake City: WordPress
3. How Much Do You Need In Your Rainy Day Fund?

Related posts:

1. Social Media Club of Salt Lake City: WordPress
2. WordCamp Utah 2010
3. WordCamp Utah 2010 Update – Genius Bar

This past year, Utah was named the “Best Managed State” by the Pew Center in Governing Magazine. This recognition is a result of Utah’s proactive fiscal management and AAA bond rating (the highest rating given to States) and having over $400 million in Rainy Day Funds, a credit to Republican leadership in Utah. In light of declining tax revenues, please list your priorities for funding from 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest priority.

That as followed by a list of options to prioritize. The part that struck me was the $400 million plus in rainy day funds. I was pretty impressed, a state that actually set aside money when times were good to be used when times were bad. Many folks are now calling for these rainy day funds to be used to offset the shortfalls in the current budget. From what I’ve been reading in the Deseret News (one of the major Salt Lake City newspapers, Salt Lake Tribune being the other) politicians don’t seem to be very eager to make use of these rainy day funds right now.

I’ve been wondering why that is. Maybe they are worried that they might need that money if things continue to go down hill, the idea being that the rainy day fund is a fix of last resort. I don’t know, but I wanted to find out a bit more about what the Utah state budget looks like. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget (GOPB) has a budget summary PDF that looked like a good place to start. For fiscal year 2010 the budget summary page (page 9 of 177 in the PDF) indicated that the total recommended budget for 2010 is $10.6 billion. Utah has less than 3 million people, so the size of the state budget is relatively modest when compared with other states.

Utah Rainy Day Fund - From 2010 Budget Summary

There is a chart on page 14 of the PDF showing the historic balances of the rainy day fund. It peaked at $414 million and indicates the governor is requesting that some of that money be used to shore up the 2009 and 2010 budgets. When looking at the $10.6 billion and $414 million next to each other I realized that the rainy day fund is really only a small percentage of the annual state budget. How small you ask? 3.9 percent. I was disappointed when I saw that number, the way the rainy day fund is talked up I’d hoped for something a bit more.

With an annual budget of $10.6 billion the rainy day fund has enough money in it to run the state for 14.3 days. With the rainy day fund shrinking the reality is it wouldn’t even last that long. I hope your personal budget has a rainy day fund that would at least get you through one month.

Of course California would kill for a rainy day fund of any size right about now :-)

Related posts:

1. Presidents That Have Reduced The Federal Debt
2. WordPress.com – 5 Million Blogs
3. History Of The Federal Debt

The most interesting part of the event was listening to Josh James, CEO of Omniture. He had no problem bluntly talking about what things that he might do differently and convering what some would consider sensitive issues. The second keynote was from Matt Bowman of Novell, looking back at their history in Utah. This was hard to watch, because Novell’s glory days are long behind them.

The first panel was on “Does Utah’s image Limit Utah’s high-tech corridor?”. Lots of numbers thrown around, but little discussion about the question.

Next up was a panel about “Does Utah get a passing grade for high-tech workforce preparation?”. This one was more interesting because it has some specific give and take on ideas and techniques for educating the next generation of tech workers. Although none of them came out and said it, much of it danced around trade schools versus traditional college/universities.

The final panel covered “Show me the money! Is there enough capital to fund Utah’s high-tech industry?”. Both angel and traditional VC firms were represented on the panel, which helped give wider perspective of the current issues in getting and funding local Utah companies in the current economic conditions. This panel also did the best job in getting the audience questions involved early enough so that a real discussion could take place.

What I found interesting is that through out the whole event there was little (none?) discussion about the mass globalization that has been accelerating over the last 10 years. I can sympathize with the urge to only focus on things local, but there is so much more to the picture in todays world. For instance, I work from home and could live any where with a decent Internet connection. For a variety of reasons we now live in Utah. I didn’t hear a single person talk about attracting virtual office workers to the area. Perhaps that’s a harder section of the market to focus on.

In the end, it was good for me to hear what other people are thinking about; what they see as problems/challenges and how they’d like to solve them. Spending most days working out of my basement might make me a little too sheltered sometimes.

Related posts:

1. Twitter Salt Lake City Data Center
2. How Much Do You Need In Your Rainy Day Fund?
3. WordCamp Utah 2010 Update – Genius Bar