White Sands Int'l Film Festival Program Announced

The 2009 White Sands International Film Festival (WSIFF) Announces Program
Films, Panels, and Parties Announced

March 26, 2009, Las Cruces, NM---- Selections were announced today for the Fifth Annual White Sands International Film Festival, which runs Thursday April 23rd through Sunday April 26th and features local talent. WSIFF will screen over 45 independent documentary and narrative films at the new Cineport 10 and will conduct a series of informative and exciting panels led by industry experts. Weekend events will comprise of an opening night bash hosted by Risottos and after parties by the Azul Nightclub at Hotel Encanto on Friday and Saturday night.

New Mexico film highlights include The Land of Space and Time, by award winning filmmakers Michael Lennick and Shirley Guilliford. This is a sophisticated and compelling story of the development of the United States Space Program and features Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range. Also included in the program is How the West Was Lost, a documentary about the locking up of 300,000 acres of New
Mexican land, written and directed by Las Crucesan Erik Ness. In addition, WSIFF will screen animations by NMSU's Creative Media Institute.

WSIFF will also conduct panels by industry experts such as actor Jamison Jones (24, He Was A Quiet Man) who will teach the "Business and Art of Acting", as well as Casting Directors Donn Finn (Titanic, L.A. Confidential) and New Mexico's own Jo Edna Boldin, who will host "Auditioning for T.V. and Film". Finally, WSIFF will offer a "Conversation With Mark Medoff", an Oscar Nominated and Tony Award winning writer (Children of A Lesser God, 100 MPG), which discusses screenwriting and directing, followed by a Q&A with Mr. Medoff.

Other participants in the festival include screenwriters Kathy Gori & Alan Berger (I Love You Phillip Morris), author and professor, Dr. Sam Smiley (Playwriting, The Structure of Action), Jon Hendry, IATSE Local #480 Union Leader, and Bill Hanson from Apple Computers.

Guests can view the full schedule and purchase passes and tickets at WWW.WSIFF.COM. Tickets are also available at www.whitemusicbox.com. (Day Passes sold day of festival at Allen Theatres Cineport 10; Rush tickets available if seating is available).

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Dorks, Geeks & Technologists

Two cool events a few of us have been talking about are (finally) starting up here in New Mexico. Creating opportunities for tech innovators to build, share and connect, events like Dorkbot and Ignite are a healthy sign of growth in our tech community.

Some other cool groups and events you might consider are:

IxDA NM (3/17)
Interaction Designers get together Tuesday night @ ARTS Lab to recap Interaction 09.
Want to know more about Interaction Design and why it's important? Check it out.

Dorkbot ABQ (3/22)

The main goals of dorkbot are: to create an informal, friendly environment in which people can talk about the work they're doing and to foster discussion about that work; to help bring together people from different backgrounds who are interested in similar things; to give us all an opportunity to see the strange things our neighbors are doing with electricity. dorkbot isn't really a forum for formal artist talks or lectures, but rather a chance for diverse people to have friendly conversations about interesting ideas.

Dorkbot originated in New York City. Since its conception, groups have been sprung up all over the world. For more information check out www.dorkbot.org.

More info at: http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotabq/

Spectre Series @ ARTS Lab (3/24)
The Spectre Experimental Music Series at ARTS Lab is getting good attention from musicians and experimental music aficionados alike. Barn Owl & Heavywater join us next Tuesday at ARTS Lab.

Ignite Santa Fe (4/29)
Ignite is a speaking event, designed to be a night of fast pace fun presentations. Each presentor gets 20 slides which will automatically advance every 15 seconds. We are current planning our first Ignite Santa Fe! If you would like to help out, sponsor, or present email Mick at: mick@davidmichaelthompson.com
More info at: http://ignitesantafe.com/

Reminder: Intel's Tom Greenbaum @ NMTC lunch this Friday

As needs for storage -- and energy conservation -- continue to increase, New Mexico is poised to do well on both fronts, and Intel is leading the way. After two very successful launch events, the NM Technology Council (NMTC) returns to the Santa Fe Complex this Friday, March 13th for "Data Center Lessons Learned" with Intel Data Center Operations Manager Tom Greenbaum.

NMTC Luncheon Friday, March 13th
Data Center Lessons Learned
Speaker: Thomas Greenbaum
Location: Santa Fe Complex *note Santa Fe location* 624 Agua Fria

Time: Check-in at 11:30; food served at 11:45; presentation at noon

Cost: $25 for NMTC members, $40 for non-members (individual membership is free!)

Space is limited, so please register at the new NMTC site

Looking for ways to reduce costs and conserve resources, including finding new, more efficient ways of operating our data centers. Intel Data Center Operations Manager Tom Greenbaum leads us through the process of designing a new data center while searching for green solutions.

At Intel, our data centers need to support the rapid growth in computing capacity required to design increasingly complex semiconductors. At the same time, we are trying to minimize data center power consumption and operating costs.

We are increasing data center efficiency and sharing our knowledge with other businesses. We are helping the industry address areas where data centers consume power including power conversion and distribution, cooling, and even lighting.

We are pioneering innovations such as using air economizers to optimize power and cooling in their data centers. A typical data center may use 60 to 70 percent of data center power for cooling. In one test here on the Rio Rancho site, the result was an estimated data center power savings of 67 percent. This is a potential savings of $2.87 million for a 10 megawatt data center.

Intel is lowering our power consumption with energy-efficient servers and power management strategies. Intel is committed to the "greening" of data centers by blazing new trails in corporate social responsibility and sustainable information technology.

Bio:

Data Center Operations Manager for one of Intel's few global Hub data centers. Responsible for all Information Technology data center rooms on the Rio Rancho site.

Tom supports the full range of IT customers including Design Engineering, office users, manufacturing and enterprise systems. Customer systems include disk storage arrays, tape backup, virtual server environments, mission critical servers, and large batch computing pools. In total, the IT data centers on the Rio Rancho site contain close to 7,000 servers.

The Rio Rancho global Hub data center is among the largest of the Intel data centers world wide with unique advantages in power availability, high density floor space, and network capacity. The FB7 building houses the Encanto Supercomputer which debuted as the 3rd fastest in the world. RR1 data centers have high availability supported by redundant infrastructure and backup power generation.

The North Campus is the location for several data center innovation projects. In 2008 Tom was a key contributor on the team that won the prestigious Intel Innovation Award for the Air Economizer Proof-Of-Concept (POC). The Air Economizer POC received a lot of industry praise as leading the way towards reduced power consumption and Green Computing. Currently, Tom is Test Manager for the Container Data Center (CDC) Proof-Of-Concept which just started. The CDC is a one-of-a-kind mobile data center with potential big savings over data center construction and sustaining costs. Special uses include burst capacity and disaster recovery.