Upcoming Industry Events

Session: People power: Skills for Poland's rapid data center growth

Date: October 7, 2026 | 15:25-16:00

Speaker: David Zika, Regional Sales Director, CEEr, Uptime Institute

Location: Hall 1

Poland’s data center market is growing rapidly, but skilled talent remains a critical bottleneck. From electrical and mechanical engineers to network specialists and AI-focused operators, the demand for qualified professionals is outpacing supply.

This panel will explore how developers, operators, and educational institutions can collaborate to close the skills gap. Join to hear about training programs, university partnerships, and talent retention strategies, as well as efforts to attract foreign expertise to support large-scale, high-density, AI-driven data center projects. Delegates will gain insights into how building a resilient workforce ensures Poland can sustain growth, innovate efficiently, and remain competitive in Europe’s digital infrastructure landscape.

Debate: Preventing the next outage – Can reliability keep pace with rising density?

Date: October 13, 2026, 14:00—14:45

Speaker: Patrick Chan, Managing Director, South Asia, Uptime Institute

Location: Terminus 1 | Lobby Level

As workloads grow denser and campuses expand, the margin for operational error is shrinking. Higher power densities, tighter delivery cycles and more automated environments concentrate risk and increase the impact of failure. While digital tools and automation promise greater control, growing system interdependence may also introduce new vulnerabilities. In a market where data centres underpin financial services, government platforms and enterprise operations, outage prevention is now a strategic priority. This debate will examine whether operational practices are keeping pace with rising density, including:

• Do automation and AI reduce outage risk or create new systemic exposure?
• How can Digital Twins, advanced BMS and real-time monitoring strengthen resilience?
• What governance and operational disciplines are required for denser facilities?
• How should risk controls be embedded earlier in design, commissioning and handover?
• What lessons from recent outages reveal about hidden failure points?

Fireside Chat: Malaysia Data Center Market Outlook 2026-2030: From Hyperscale Growth to AI Infrastructure Hub

Date: October 22, 2026 | 11:30-11:50 AM

Speaker: Patrick Chan, Managing Director, South Asia, Uptime Institute

This fireside chat explores the market outlook through 2030, examining investment trends, regional growth, power readiness, and the opportunities and challenges that will shape Malaysia's position as a leading AI infrastructure hub.

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.

Panel: AI Sets the Pace for Data Center Cooling

Date: November 19, 2026 | 11:05 - 11:55 AM

Speaker: Hichem Djebali, Director, Uptime Institute

The rise of artificial intelligence is disrupting the status quo in data centers, particularly when it comes to cooling, which has become a critical issue in terms of performance, cost, and sustainability. Between increasing workload density, new architectures, and energy requirements, AI is no longer content to simply be hosted—it is imposing its own rules and redefining thermal strategies.

This roundtable discussion will explore how operators are adapting—and, in some cases, struggling to keep up—in the face of these technological and environmental pressures.

• The Surge in Thermal Demands Driven by AI Workloads: GPUs, Density, and Extreme Hotspots.
  Liquid cooling, immersion cooling, free cooling: Which technologies are truly essential?
• AI in Cooling: Real-Time Optimization or a Promise That’s Still Overhyped?
• Energy Efficiency vs. the Race for Power: A Balance That Remains Difficult to Achieve.
• Sovereignty and Data Center Deployment: What Climate and Regulatory Constraints Apply to Cooling?

Panel Session: Are our workforces trained and skilled for AI demands?

Date: November 19, 2026 | 10:55 - 11:40 AM

Speaker: Matthew Hawkins, Vice President of Global Education, Uptime Institute

Location: Strategy Stream - Room 1