Picture this: The year is 2005. It’s the The Massive Technology Show being held in Vancouver at Science World. Peer 1 staffers in the back room kitchen feverishly mixing the signature “Peertini.” They’re using extra large garbage cans as mixing vats. (New, clean plastic garbage cans, of course.) Between 4:30pm and 8pm the Peer 1 “bartenders” cranked out almost EIGHT HUNDRED Peertinis (served in special Peer 1-branded glasses) to some very thirsty show attendees. A sea of green drinks filled the Science center.

Happiness abounded and the Peertini legend was born.

THE PEERTINI

1½ ounce Vodka
1½ ounce White Grape Juice
½ ounce Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps
½ ounce Triple Sec
½ ounce Lemon Juice

DIRECTIONS

Shake with ice
Strain into a chilled glass
Garnish with Granny Smith Apple

Smile.

We are honored to be listed on The 5 Best Vancouver Business Blogs . PEER 1 has been mentioned as having the ability to come off as personal on our blog, focusing on community-sided topics and contests as well as keeping the balance right between company announcements and posts that are just for fun.

At PEER 1 we’re always striving to continue this balance. It’s very important to us to maintain not only a professional atmosphere to show people how PEER 1 is the smart choice for business solutions, but to also include a personal presence and allow everyone to see that we are real people too.

This past weekend ServerBeach – our dedicated division, exhibited at the Interactive Festival at South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas and were listed as one of the Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter. Be sure to take a look at the pictures on Flickr that were taken at this event and follow us on Twitter for news and upcoming contests:

PEER 1 on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer1

PEER 1 on Twitter: @PEER1

Last week at the Austin Game Developers Conference PEER1 employees spoke with attendees on just how much latency kills when it comes to gaming. What a coincidence! PEER1 just so happened to have a booth at the conference offering “Latency Kills” packages geared towards hardcore gaming providers, publishers, and developers. GREAT!

The conference turn out was even bigger than last year, which PEER1 also attended. There were many great companies exhibiting their products and we all made our rounds to introduce ourselves to each and every one of them, learning about their business and products at the same time.

The 2-day conference was a complete success and we certainly look forward to attending next year seeing many familiar faces, while at the same time making many new friends.

You can view our pictures taken from the conference at any of these websites: PEER1 on FaceBook, PEER1 Community, Flickr, or PEER1 on MySpace.

If you were not able to attend the Structure 08 conference in San Francisco on June 25th, you can watch it here:

I was invited by Techvibes to write a blog post about the first ever Structure 08 conference hosted by GigaOM, which I attended and my company PEER 1 sponsored. It was held on June 25th in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center:

Just got back from the Structure 08 conference hosted by GigaOM and headline sponsored by my company, Vancouver-based PEER 1. The sold out event was a tremendous success with over 600 people in attendance representing companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and VMWare. A third of the conference room was allocated to media alone.

Making the decision to sponsor Structure 08 was an easy one. It is so rare to have a room full of the brightest minds discussing and debating the latest technology impacting IT infrastructure. “Cloud Computing” was by far the topic of the day, a buzz term that seems to encompass anything related to virtualization or on-demand scalable web hosting, which is sometimes, well, cloudy.

The line up of speakers included Jonathan Yarmis of AMR Research, Mendel Rosenblum of VMWare, and a heated discussion that included panelists from Google, AT&T, GigaSpaces, Mosso, Joyent, and XCalibre. Read more

Om Malik is reporting today that the Structure 08 event on June 25th is almost sold out… in fact at the time of his post, there are only 25 tickets remaining. PEER 1 is the proud headline sponsor and we’re ecstatic with the enthusiasm in this event. Om is right, the lineup of speakers and panelists is simply outstanding and we expect the discussion to be lively and very, very informative. Panel topics include:

• Working the Clouds: NextGen Infrastructure for New Entrepreneurs
• The New New Stack: Re-examining the Internet Platform Chain
• The Race to the Next Database: Overclocking and Analytics Augment Your Data Layer
• Harnessing Explosive Growth: Infrastructure Strategies and Tactics
• Infrastructure On Demand: Should You Build Your Future on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)?
• Eyes Wide Shut: Why is the VC Community Keeping Its Wallet Shut to Infrastructure?

Read more

PEER 1 is sponsoring the first-ever Structure 08, presented by GigaOM. Focusing on the innovations of internet infrastructure, the conference will bring together the most influential leaders of the industry at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on June 25, 2008.

PEER 1 will host a private press event as well as a private VIP dinner, hosted by Om Malik while at the conference. Presented by GigaOM, Structure 08 is a significant one-day event that will sort through the emerging and disruptive computing technologies which are now becoming the building blocks for the next generation of the Internet. The conference will cover and examine many topics of technology innovations, such as virtualization, SaaS and cloud computing, associated with the current Internet infrastructure build out and the companies leading the way.

PEER 1 is committed to offering the smartest, most reliable solutions for its customers, engaging in every stage of IT infrastructure development while providing the needed platform for innovation.

Did you know that PEER 1 is one of the only hosting providers to offer all three types of web hosting under one roof; co-location, self-managed and managed hosting? All of these solutions are backed by PEER 1’s fully redundant network that delivers high performance bandwidth through 15 state-of-the-art data centers and 17 points-of-presence (POPs) across North America.

The full conference web site is available at http://www.structureconf.com.

ServerBeach (a PEER 1 company), Blue Flavor, and Raincity Studios are proud to present the 3rd annual South by Northwest (SXNW) Geek Fest Party at the Iron Cactus in downtown Austin, TX. This is one of the hottest events during SXSW. There will be plenty of free drinks and cool people to meet. Over 1,700 people showed up last year with line ups out the door. Come early and meet the Beach crew. We’ll also have a booth at SXSW Interactive and will be giving out plenty of Beach swag.

About Iron Cactus: a Southwestern style grille and Margarita Bar. They pride themselves on presenting authentic Southwestern cuisine, gleaning recipes and ingredients from Southern Mexico to Utah. Plus, Iron Cactus features more than 80 Tequilas and is considered in the top 10 best Tequila bar in the world.

Venue: Iron Cactus, 606 Trinity Street at 6th Ave, Austin, Texas 73301

For more details about this event, including maps, comments, and other attendees, visit the event page by clicking here. We hope to see you there!

We’re sponsoring Launch Party Vancouver tomorrow evening at The Republic on Granville Street. The event kicks off at 5pm with a handful of demos from local start-ups looking to show off their products/services to a primarily techie, marketing and venture capital crowd. Launch Party is described as “a lively mixer for the city’s brightest entrepreneurs, tech junkies, and bloggers, who are doing it, have done it or want to make their ideas happen here. The goal of the event is to connect BC’s growing community of Internet and new media leaders with investors and other trailblazers across Canada and abroad.”

You may have already noticed, there is a thriving technology community here in Vancouver with a thirst for innovation and being on the bleeding edge. If you are not convinced, events like this one, as well as the BarCamps, Massive and Northern Voice will convince you. If you can find the time, I encourage you to attend. You can see the details here. We are also running our 12 Months Free Managed Hosting contest at the event.

PEER 1 sponsored DemoCamp Vancouver04 yesterday. The presentations were held at Workspace in Gastown with drinks flowing at the Flux Bistro afterwards. Four presenters, including Nethooks (new social networking site), Momentum Magazine (new magazine focusing on European style city bikes), and Adhack (user-generated ads for companies). A humorous ‘battledecks’ took place between Linda Bustos and Jordan Behan. Linda was clearly on top of her game, improvising and keeping her story moving, even with a banana appearing on the screen. It’s good to see the enthusiasm around BarCamps and DemoCamps in Vancouver. This one was very well attended as was the last BarCamp Vancouver I went too.

See photo gallery