Yesterday, I attended “Building the Next Generation Data Center Workforce,” an interactive workshop that brought together leading data center operators, students, educators, workforce leaders, legislators and other stakeholders to discuss how public and private partnerships could align the industry’s technical needs with public educational infrastructure.

The data center industry has a labor shortage in excess of 200,000 people, and the session brainstormed ideas from a panel that included Vantage Data Centers, Menlo Digital, Casne, MPINarada, GOR Group, and educational institutions like NOVA/NVCC, and the International Coaching Federation.

Read the story to find out how the industry is addressing the “blue collar” stigma and showing students and parents that advanced jobs can be attained without advanced degrees, as operators are seeking mission-critical mindsets, an ability to problem solve, and to balance blue and white-collar jobs in “new collar” jobs.

Susana 2

Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech

AI Infrastructure Top Stories

Informa Data Center World: During an interactive workshop at Data Center World in Washington, D.C.,public-private partnerships and “new collar jobs” that require a blend of hands-on acumen and mission-critical mindsets were the topic of the day.

NTT Data talks ‘physical AI’: Despite the hype around physical AI at the edge, industrial models for robots don’t require on-site GPUs, says NTT Data, emphasizing lightweight math models over token-hungry language models.

EU’s €180M framework: The European Commission is advancing digital sovereignty through its Sovereign Cloud procurement program is enabling EU institutions and agencies to access compliant cloud services over the next 6 years.

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OpenAI Codes upgrade: OpenAI’s coding assistant, Codex is being transformed into a more reliable partner for developers, with new features including the ability to interact with a computer and to work across various applications autonomously.

FERC to assert more power: Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants FERC to get data centers onto the grid faster, so he’s making a a high-stakes move to regulate the way America’s biggest electricity customers are brought onto the power grid.

Microsoft partners with NABTU: Construction unions are supercharging efforts to train workers for the AI economy, and Microsoft is joining North America’s Building Trades Unions to bring much-needed new talent into the data center workforce.

Middle East drives security boom: The Middle East wars are turning data center security into a booming industry, says Forbes, which explores a surge in demand for specialized, hardened security and counter-drone technologies.

Innventure’s waterless cooling: Innventure subsidiary Accelsius announced the commercial launch of the NeuCool IR150, which it claims is the first fully integrated rack-level, two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling system with a waterless approach.

Google eyes Georgia: Google says it will pair a new data center in LaGrange with “long-term investments in local energy affordability and environmental stewardship,” claiming the facility would be “one of the most energy-efficient in the industry.”

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