Recorded live at Data Center World 2026, Data Center Frontier Editor in Chief Matt Vincent sits down with Phillip Koblence, COO of NYI and co-founder of Nomad Futurist, for the latest installment of Nomads at the Frontier.

The conversation explores the accelerating realities of AI infrastructure buildouts, the industry’s growing focus on community engagement, workforce shortages, and the shift toward inference-driven deployments following NVIDIA GTC 2026.

Koblence discusses why major interconnection hubs and edge-adjacent urban facilities may become increasingly important in the inference era, the operational realities of deploying AI infrastructure in legacy carrier hotels like 60 Hudson Street, and why the industry can no longer remain invisible to the communities where it builds.

Additional topics include:

The continuing surge in digital infrastructure demand
Why conference attendance reflects sustained industry expansion
Power constraints and energy storage discussions emerging at Data Center World
AI factories and the evolving economic role of data centers
Workforce shortages across engineering and skilled trades
Nomad Futurist’s workforce development initiatives with Infrastructure Masons and I Am The Armed Forces
The growing complexity and diversity of the data center ecosystem

“Every element of everything within the data center has a full sub-vertical industry associated with it,” Koblence says during the discussion. “People would be surprised how large of an ecosystem is involved in creating the digital economy that exists today.”

Listen now for a candid, fast-moving conversation on the state of AI infrastructure and the future of digital infrastructure development.