The QTS Experience

Henrico turned people away from White Oak for years — the crypto guys, companies waving billions. Anthony Romanello had a hand in most of those calls, and he retired from Henrico in January, so he can finally tell me how they made them. Turns out the community was vetting us the whole time.

Chapters:

00:00:06 Chapter Two After 34 Years

00:08:56 Frito-Lay Chips, Not Semiconductors: How White Oak Happened

00:11:57 When the Conv...

José Luis Friebel got into data centers by accident — second job interview in London, start tomorrow, we've got a conference in six months. Best accident of his life, he says. He told me the thing slowing this whole build-out down isn't power. It's plumbers. I did not expect that.

00:00:00  From a sunny coastal town in Spain to the global data center busi...

Jake Dukes runs programs at Zac Brown's camp for veterans and kids. Years ago he came to me and said he didn't want to talk about money or sponsorship — he wanted us to show up. I stayed till one in the morning. Their chef is also unreasonably good.

Chapters

00:00:06 Pastor, camp, and a friendship that started on a beach

00:04:29 The mission: find what makes a person unique, then magnify it

00:07:30 What a data center has to ...

When James told me the best early warning for a job-site injury isn’t a safety number, I said what you’re probably thinking — that’s ridiculous, and how would you even measure it? What came next changed how I look at it. Come find out what the number is.

Chapters:

00:00:00 A Gaelic footballer walks into a data-center podcast

00:02:07 Culture as bedrock: measure the inputs, not the score

00:05:30 Scaling cult...

Rob Hopewell’s been in data centers so long I keep accusing him of starting at 11 — UUNET, EdgeConneX, now running QTS sales. We get into why this AI moment isn’t the dot-com bust, why the phone in your hand is a data center, and how our industry can finally explain itself.

Chapters:

0:00  From UUNET to now — the early internet, peering, MAE East/West

5:44  “Unprecedented” — solvi...

A West Texas frac company turned out to be one of the best-positioned energy players of the AI era. Luke Saladyga explains how that happened, why power got scarce so fast, and why the steadiest jobs of the next decade might be ones nobody told you to want.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Welcome back on Star Wars Day

00:02:13 The perfect storm: how power got scarce

00:09:10 From Oracle to VoltaGrid: frack fields to AI power

00:10:21 Moving 25 t...

Somewhere along the way “diesel” turned into a dirty word. Jim McDonald’s spent 30 years on the generators that keep 911, hospitals, and your data alive — and he’s a little tired of playing the villain. We get into what’s real, what’s myth, and why he still thinks everybody wins.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Welcome, and the “luminary chair”

00:01:24 From the University of Delaware to fou...

We’re all chasing the same thing: safe, affordable, local power. Rahul Kar thinks we keep overlooking the easiest source of it — the power already sitting unused inside our own data centers. He’s convinced it’s hiding in plain sight, and he explains it with a kids’ story.

Chapters:

00:00:00 From Boston to Redwood City: an engineer’s “five grand challenges”

00:06:53 Hammerhead AI for n...

Most people think the cloud floats. Saurav Roychoudhury, a Capital University economist, ran the numbers on Ohio’s data centers and found concrete, copper, and a whole lot of jobs. We get into ripple effects, why community trust is the real bottleneck, and whether any of this is zero-sum.

Chapters:

00:00:00 From Calcutta to Capital University: the unlikely data center economist

00:02:31 How the Ohio Chamber’s data cente...

Join us for a live discussion from Truist Park at the 2026 Atlanta Conn3ct Data Summit where we discuss the very real challenge of educating and attracting the work force of the future.

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Learn More about QTS Data Centers on the QTS YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/users/qtsdatacenters

Think ...

Cosme Garcia didn't plan to work in data centers — a project manager got sick, somebody asked him to fill in, and three decades later he's still here, still curious, and still trying to be the least smart person in the room. We talk about wrenches, weather, and what to tell your kid.

Chapters:

00:00 How Cosme Accidentally Ended Up in Data Centers

02:00 Exodus Communications and Learning Power and Cooling the Hard Way

08:30 Wh...

Bill Kleyman, CEO of Apolo, says the gigawatt era is here, and our industry has to grow up fast. We get into power as a relationship, the new physical security frontline, why every data center is becoming an AI data center, and what bravery actually looks like in this market.

Chapters:

00:00 Cold Open: The Energetic Chipmunk on a Barrel of Oil

01:20 Welcome to the Gigawatt Era - Why It Is Already Here

06:31 The Outsider Reaction: W...

Ojonimi Bako's dad survived hepatitis C on a clinical trial at Gilead. Now Ojonimi builds the facilities where the next cure gets discovered. The CEO of Kaya connects construction chaos, AI-driven supply chains, and what it means to build something that outlasts you -- in under 90 minutes.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction -- Ojonimi Bako, CEO of Kaya

00:00:53 From Accenture and Walmart Labs to Construction: The Origin Story

00:05:36...

I sat down with Ivo Ivanov to talk interconnection, AI, latency, resilience, and why digital infrastructure has to get closer to people. Airports, robots, sovereignty, and even space made their way into this one.

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Intro & Why Interconnection Matters Now

00:01:20 - Explaining Interconnection in Plain English

00:06:09 - Why the Internet Must Be Developed Further

00:08:45 - Latency, Eye Blinks, and Real-Time Ro...

Last year, I grabbed lunch with Rob Coyle and his son, Reid. While Reid was easily the most entertaining person at the table, the conversation regarding the Open Compute Project (OCP) stayed with me for months. We finally sat down in the studio to discuss how we facilitate the tools that will enable humanity to thrive. From 800-volt power to open standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are exploring how to make the technolog...

We spend all day worrying about supply chains, but what about the "people chain"? Jason Coe and I dive into military-grade mission focus, the future of raised floors, and why a project is only as good as the team running toward the fire. Tune in to the next QTS Experience.

Chapters:

00:00 - The Data Center Symphony: Relational over Commodity

Roy Illsley joins me to challenge the status quo of global data. We’re moving past "one-size-fits-all" clouds to an era of digital self-sufficiency. From why the US and EU are in a friendly race for autonomy to the bold prediction that our next data centers will be orbiting the Earth—don't get left behind.

References & Guest Links Guest Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royillsley/ Company Website: https://omdia...

David Quirk joins me to unpack liquid cooling, AI infrastructure chaos, and why the data center industry might be losing—and rediscovering—its collaborative DNA. We talk standards, disruption, and what happens when innovation moves faster than certainty.

References Mentioned

ASHRAE TC 9.9: https://tpc.ashrae.org/?cmtKey=fd4a4ee6-96a3-4f61-8b85-43418dfa988d

ASHRAE Standard 90.4: https://www.ashrae.org/file%20library/ab...

Nuclear is getting sexy again, and it’s all AI’s fault. I’m sitting down with Brian Smith to talk about why big tech is reopening Three Mile Island and why splitting atoms is the most exquisite way to power our digital future. Let's get glowing!

• Guest: Brian Smith
• Company Website: Idaho National Laboratory

Studies & References

• Kairos Power & Google PPA: P...