Ask HN: I need interviews with datacenter employees for a grad school project

13 points by caloricflow 5 days ago

I’m a material science grad student at UC Berkeley doing a datacenter sustainability project for the school of Haas’ Lean Launchpad class. We are supposed to do over 100 customer discovery interviews over the course of the semester for the project.

If you work at a datacenter in any capacity (especially in management with buying power), we would love to hop on a 20 or 30 minute call to gain some insights into your expertise.

These are NOT sales calls. Just trying to do research for the class.

Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you.

lazyeye 5 days ago

Given how critical data-centers are now in the AI race, cant help wondering if this is a front for some kind of intelligence operation....

  • caloricflow 5 days ago

    This is an intelligence operation. For a school project.

schmookeeg 5 days ago

You might head over to the datacenter forum webhostingtalk.com which is riddled with colo types who might help you out.

  • caloricflow 5 days ago

    Excellent tip, thank you sir!

    • morphle 5 days ago

      Go to NANOG mailing list if you want to talk to bigger ISPs and Datacenter owners and Tier 1 providers.

      • caloricflow 5 days ago

        Will do! Thank you very much.

        • morphle 5 days ago

          As a pioneer ISP with datacenters since 1987 I can endorse your request on both webhostingtalk and NANOG mailing list.

          We could also email 200 expert volunteers directly, many are owners and top sysadmins of datacenters who helped Ukraine during the first weeks of the invasion in 2022.

          I also know a few people at hyperscalers Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, CERN, NIKHEF, AMS-IX, Leaseweb, etc we could try.

          >Will do! Thank you very much.

          That's what HN is for, experts helping each other.

          • caloricflow 5 days ago

            WOW! Thank you so much. Would you be willing to let me interview you directly? Regardless, I'd love to email you about the expert volunteers if that's ok.

            • morphle 5 days ago

              NP. Email me (see profile) or post a video conference link.

brudgers 5 days ago

Have you contacted data centers directly?

Or alumni of your school who work for large companies?

Consider this a low risk opportunity to learn sales. One maxim of sales is you cannot sell desperation. I mean if you are at the deadline for interviews, that’s on you. If the interviews deadline is a few months away, then work but frame your need accurately. Good luck.

  • caloricflow 5 days ago

    Thanks for the advice. Will leave out any mention of desperation in the future. Not quite at the deadline but struggling a little to find leads.

    • dang 5 days ago

      We've taken the desperation out of the title above :)

      You should put an email address in the About box in your profile so people have a way to contact you!