Tue May 12, 2026 - Thu May 14, 2026
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Representatives from every corner of the industry:
This is the must-attend gathering for data center leaders—an event that brings together new clients, strategic partners, and old friends from across the sector.
What You'll Learn:
Relevant News and Developments:
Who You'll Network With:
Why You Should Attend:
How You'll Do More Business
Looking to save on your stay?
Save on your stay near the event venue! Enjoy convenience, comfort, and special rates—book now while availability lasts HERE.
Join us at Blue Mash Golf Course for a day of golf, deal-making and fun!
View details on the course here: https://www.bluemash.com/
Interested in filling a foursome or sponsoring? Reach out to Brady.Bash@Bisnow.com.
Are you an end user*?
Click here to be considered for a complimentary pass. *Hyperscaler, colocation provider (non-sales), investor, private equity, or enterprise tenant.
Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center
5701 Marinelli Rd
Rockville, MD 20852
Looking to save on your stay?
Save on your stay near the event venue! Enjoy convenience, comfort, and special rates—book now while availability lasts HERE.
| May 12 | Activity |
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7:30 AM 8:20 AM |
Coffee, Networking & Breakfast
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8:20 AM 8:30 AM |
Opening Remarks: Welcome to DICE National 2026!
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8:30 AM 9:15 AM |
State of Northern Virginia and the New Global Hubs: Where the Next Trillion in AI Infrastructure Lands
As Northern Virginia tests the limits of power, land, and community patience, capital is rapidly scouting the next generation of hubs in the U.S. and abroad. This keynote explores how AI‑driven demand, grid realities, and geopolitical risk are reshaping the map of “must‑build” markets. How are investors, hyperscalers, and developers deciding where the next trillion dollars of data center and power infrastructure will actually be deployed—and what does that mean for pricing, timelines, and competition in 2026–2027?
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9:15 AM 10:00 AM |
Building at the Pace of Capital: Supply Chain, Capacity Planning and the New Procurement Playbook
Capital is ready to fund mega‑campuses, but long‑lead equipment and constrained manufacturing capacity often dictate the real schedule. This session examines how developers and operators are using multi‑year procurement strategies, standardized SKUs, and prefab ecosystems to align construction pace with capital deployment. How are teams forecasting capacity, locking in critical gear, and structuring supplier relationships so projects can actually absorb the dollars committed on investment memos?
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10:00 AM 10:15 AM |
Top Ten Data Center Legal and Business Issues for Powered Land, Leases and MSA's That You Should Know About
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10:15 AM 10:35 AM |
Networking Break
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10:35 AM 11:15 AM |
Monetizing the Mesh: AI‑Ready Network Architectures and the Business Case Behind Them
AI‑era networking—from GPU fabrics to multi‑region low‑latency paths—is as much a financial decision as a technical one. This panel explores how operators are evaluating ROI on new network topologies, dark fiber strategies, and richer interconnection ecosystems. Which connectivity investments pencil out when weighed against customer demand, churn risk, and differentiated pricing, and how are network choices shaping asset values and deal terms?
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11:15 AM 12:00 PM |
From Dirt to Deal: Site Strategy, Permitting and the Economics of “Where to Build Next”
Early‑stage decisions on land, zoning, and power rights now lock in outcomes for both risk and return. This discussion looks at how teams are blending market analysis, community engagement, and lease / land structures to create bankable projects. How are developers structuring ground leases, incentives, and risk‑sharing mechanisms with cities, utilities, and end‑users so that sites are both permittable and financeable?
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12:00 PM 1:40 PM |
Lunch and Expo!
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1:00 PM 1:30 PM |
Women's Coffee & Connect!
Join fellow women professionals for a coffee-powered networking break focused on connection, collaboration, and community.
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1:40 PM 2:15 PM |
Edge Economics: Distributed Infrastructure for AI Inference and Localized Demand
As inference and latency‑sensitive workloads move closer to users and data sources, edge facilities are emerging as complements—not replacements—to hyperscale campuses. This panel explores where edge plays make economic sense, how operators are underwriting returns, and what partnership models (carriers, towercos, hyperscalers) are working. How should developers think about portfolio design, risk and capital efficiency when spreading bets across core, hub, and edge locations?
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2:15 PM 2:55 PM |
Funding the Talent Shift: AI‑Augmented Workforces and the Cost of Doing Nothing
The talent shortage is not just an HR issue; it is a line item in every pro forma and financing model. This session looks at how owners are justifying investments in training, apprenticeship, and AI‑enabled tools versus the cost of delay, rework, and downtime. Where does AI realistically reduce operating expense, and where must organizations still pay a premium for specialized human expertise to protect their assets and maintain lender confidence?
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2:55 PM 3:15 PM |
Networking Break
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3:15 PM 3:55 PM |
From Market Land Grab to Disciplined Growth: How 2026 Sets the Tone for the Next Cycle
After a decade of land grabs and hyper‑growth, the industry is entering a phase where discipline matters as much as speed. In this keynote, senior leaders reflect on Day 1 themes—markets, sites, supply chains, and talent—and discuss how their organizations are prioritizing projects and capital. What does “responsible growth” look like when demand is still exploding, and how will the decisions made in 2026 shape competitiveness through 2030?
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3:55 PM 4:35 PM |
Closing Day 1 Keynote
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| May 13 | Activity |
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7:30 AM 8:20 AM |
Coffee, Networking & Breakfast
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8:20 AM 8:30 AM |
Opening Remarks: Welcome to Day 2!
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8:30 AM 9:15 AM |
Power Playbooks for the AI Era: Making Limited Megawatts Go Further
AI growth is forcing teams to think differently about how every megawatt is allocated, sequenced and used across a campus. This panel explores how operators are reshaping power strategies with staged energization, smarter distribution, and selective use of on‑site and alternative solutions to stretch constrained capacity. What practical approaches are helping projects move forward in tight power markets, and how are teams designing today’s systems so they can absorb future upgrades without major disruption?
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9:15 AM 9:55 AM |
Scaling AI Campuses: Balancing Ambition, Risk and Deliverability
AI‑driven campuses are stretching what teams thought possible on power, density and timeline. This panel explores how designers, builders and operators are framing the next generation of large sites—deciding how big to go, how fast to phase and where to draw the line on complexity. How are teams weighing long‑term growth plans, customer commitments and on‑the‑ground constraints to decide which AI campus visions move forward and which get reshaped into something more achievable?
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9:55 AM 10:20 AM |
Networking Break
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10:20 AM 11:00 AM |
The Future of Cooling: Designing for High-Density AI Without Overbuilding
As GPU densities climb, cooling strategies must evolve without turning every project into a science experiment. This session looks at how teams compare liquid, immersion and hybrid options while keeping an eye on reliability, maintainability and long‑term operating profile. Which design choices are proving resilient as hardware changes, and how are project teams avoiding both under‑provisioning and expensive, rarely used over‑design?
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11:00 AM 11:40 AM |
From Blueprint to Build: Best Practices for Physical Security Throughout Development
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11:40 AM 1:40 PM |
Lunch and Expo!
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1:00 PM 1:30 PM |
Women's Coffee & Connect!
Join fellow women professionals for a coffee-powered networking break focused on connection, collaboration, and community.
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1:40 PM 2:20 PM |
Operational Excellence 2.0: Tools, Teams and the New Performance Baseline
Operating modern AI‑ready facilities requires tighter coordination between people, platforms and processes. This panel examines how organizations are updating playbooks around monitoring, incident response, skills development and collaboration across sites. Which combinations of DCIM, analytics and automation are actually improving reliability and efficiency, and how are leaders deciding where to invest next to raise the baseline across their portfolios?
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2:20 PM 3:05 PM |
AI-First Design: Rethinking Scale, Redundancy and Modularity
Designing for AI reshapes fundamentals, from power topologies and cooling concepts to space planning and building form. This session explores how teams are updating reference designs and standards to support higher densities, faster change and more varied customer needs. How are designers choosing where to standardize versus customize, and what lessons from early AI builds are already changing the next wave of templates?
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3:05 PM 3:20 PM |
Networking Break
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3:20 PM 4:00 PM |
Closing Keynote Day 2
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| May 14 | Activity |
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7:30 AM 8:20 AM |
Coffee, Networking & Breakfast
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8:20 AM 8:30 AM |
Opening Remarks: Welcome to Day 3!
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9:00 AM 9:40 AM |
When Data Centers Come to Town: Water, Traffic, Tax Deals and the Fight for Community Trust
When data centers arrive in new or growing communities, the biggest friction points are often water, traffic, tax incentives and quality‑of‑life impacts rather than land and megawatts. This panel explores how developers, operators and public officials are reframing engagement, benefit packages and project design to build durable trust instead of opposition. How are teams addressing water use, transparency around incentives and infrastructure impacts early—and which approaches are turning skeptics into long‑term allies as campuses scale over multiple phases?
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9:40 AM 10:25 AM |
Delivery at Scale: Turning Big Pipelines into Real, Buildable Projects
Backlogs are full, but not every project can move at once. This panel explores how owners, builders and designers are prioritizing work, sequencing scopes and standardizing approaches when they have more demand than delivery capacity. How are teams deciding which projects to advance, which to re‑shape and which to slow down—while keeping customers engaged and internal resources focused on the right opportunities?
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10:25 AM 10:40 AM |
Networking Break
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10:40 AM 11:25 AM |
Sustainable by Default: Embedding ESG into Fast-Moving Projects
Expectations around sustainability continue to rise even as timelines compress. This panel looks at how teams are choosing materials, cooling strategies, power options and reporting practices that move the needle without slowing projects down. Which approaches are becoming standard across portfolios, and where are teams still experimenting to find solutions that work in different markets and climates?
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11:25 AM 12:10 PM |
Lifetime Achievement Award Presentation/Keynote Day 3: Joe Kava
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12:10 PM 2:00 PM |
Lunch and Expo!
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2:00 PM 2:45 PM |
Smart Jobsites: Construction Tech That Keeps Critical Paths Moving
Construction teams are leaning on robotics, drones, reality capture and field data platforms to keep complex data center projects coordinated and on schedule. This session focuses on the tools that are actually making a difference on the jobsite—from clash detection and material tracking to real‑time status updates that inform daily planning. How are project teams integrating these technologies into standard workflows so they support faster, cleaner delivery rather than remaining one‑off pilots?
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2:45 PM 3:30 PM |
Designing for Speed: Construction Strategies That Shorten the Path to First Power
When timelines are tight, construction planning can either unlock speed or bake in delays. This discussion explores how modular power and cooling skids, repeatable building layouts, prefabrication and smarter sequencing are compressing schedules on large data center projects. Where are teams successfully using these construction‑driven strategies to reduce redesign cycles, cut field changes and move from concept to energized capacity faster in high‑demand markets?
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3:30 PM 5:30 PM |
Post-Event Reception and DICE CASINO NIGHT!!
Join Bisnow and your friends for food, drinks and casino games!
What better way to wrap up an amazing three days of networking, deals and content??
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| May 15 | Activity |
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8:00 AM 3:00 PM |
Golf Outing!
Join us at Blue Mash Golf Course for a day of golf, deal-making and fun!
Interested in filling a foursome or sponsoring? Email: Brady.Bash@Bisnow.com
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Seniority Breakdown:
Industry Representation
Our 2025 event saw more than 50 organizations bringing multi-person teams—with some groups sending over 10 attendees each! The crowd spanned the entire data center value chain:
Plus:
Dynamic presence from telecom and tech innovation leaders
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