When you’re walking down the aisles of an expo hall at a technical conference, what do you expect to see? Stacks of collateral? Maybe a few giveaway T-shirts? A fancy switch-ball or two? How about a crowd of people watching as a fellow attendee slams hard drive trays into a server enclosure and frantically plugs in network cables as a digital clock times them?

Cynical attendees might look at the Server Challenge and think of it as a gimmicky way to draw a crowd to our booth, but when you step up to the server enclosure to compete, you’re getting a crash course in SoftLayer’s business (along with an exciting tangible experience).

Before your first attempt, you’ll learn that SoftLayer is a hosting provider and that you’ll be reassembling a miniature version of the larger server racks we have filling data centers around the country (soon to be around the world). You see that one of SoftLayer’s biggest differentiators is our network configuration: A public network, a private network and an out-of-band management network connection to every SoftLayer server for free … And when the clock starts, we can share even more of the SoftLayer story.

Our goal is to let you experience SoftLayer while you’re just hearing about other companies. As it turns out, the experience draws people in:

One of the coolest parts of pulling together that time lapse video from OSCON was seeing the reactions on the faces of the participants when they finished. The challenge sparks a surge of adrenaline, so when competitors stop the clock, they expectantly check to see how they fare against the conference’s Top 10 times.

In the last conference alone, no fewer than five other companies (who don’t even have a connection with the hosting industry) approached us to ask how they could build their own Server Challenge. Needless to say, the Server Challenge is becoming a SoftLayer conference staple … And we’re looking forward to the hottest competition ever at HostingCon 2011 next week!

Between your study of server schematics and your dissection of the winning run’s strategy from the end of the OSCON video, make sure you click through to George’s HostingCon preview so you can learn where to find SoftLayer in San Diego.

-@khazard

P.S. Space is limited for the HostingCon Party, so if you’ll be in town, make sure to let us know so we can give you a promo code for free admission!