Fall Conferences

 

I've been very busy this fall attending various conferences and local user groups. This began the week of September 17th when I spoke at three Local User Groups in the Northeastern US:

• Fairfield Application Systems Users Group (FASUG) in Connecticut where I spoke about IBM Systems Director for the IBM i Environment
• Long Island System Users Group (LISUG), where I did a pre-meeting presentation on IBM i performance tools and an after-dinner presentation on monitoring capabilities with i. There was a Q&A discussion during the dinner hour where attendees asked questions and discussed various topics and the interaction was excellent.
• North Eastern Systems Technology Users Group (NESTU). This meeting proved to test my flexibility. When I left home to drive to the meeting I simply packed up my computer as I always did. When I got there my laptop was mysteriously unresponsive and was never revived. Unfortunately I had not copied my presentation to a USB drive. Since I was unable to present, I spoke about my performance topics in a roundtable style of discussion.

Three days after NETSU, I attended Fall COMMON in Columbus, Ohio, without a working laptop. I had the challenge of how to do my presentations without a laptop. Thankfully, my hard drive had not failed and I was able to recover my presentations. My iPad and I got a crash course in presentations. With the purchase of the appropriate video adapter and a couple of apps, I successfully presented with my iPad and my iPod served as my remote. This set-up works quite well. Despite receiving a replacement laptop, I've continued to present with my personal iPad and iPod.

Back to the Fall COMMON conference – it is much smaller than the Annual conference, but it was well attended this year for the fall event. The meeting agenda was very good as well. If you prefer a smaller conference, the Fall COMMON conference is definitely something to consider.

The latter half of October I went back to Rochester, MN for the IBM i Large User Group (LUG). This trip was unexpected. I'd been involved with the LUG for years as part of the IBM i development team; however, after moving to the Lab Services organization, my involvement had diminished a bit. Guy Havlick, the IBM liaison to the LUG is retiring at the end of the year and I was asked if I would like to take over the role from Guy; I was honored to be asked and accepted without a second thought!

Following the LUG, I traveled directly to Las Vegas for the Power Systems Technical University. The weekend was busy with a two-day workshop on IBM Systems Director, followed by an equally busy week of presentations. It was a privilege to attend the evening dinner where Captain Chesley Sullenberger gave a presentation about leadership and responsibility.

Finally, this past week I went to the New Hampshire Midrange Users Group (NHMUG) for a day of presentations on IBM i performance tools and the latest in i systems management enhancements. I very much enjoy spending time with these user groups. However, getting home from this meeting proved to be a bit of a challenge due to the Nor'easter that came in that evening. Some areas of New York and Connecticut accumulated several feet of snow within just a few hours.

For my readers that may not know … I no longer live in Rochester, MN. My management is in Rochester and I maintain strong ties there. I now live in NYC and my travels kept me away from the city during the recent hurricane, Sandy. The area in which I live was inconvenienced with the lack of power for about 5 days. However, the NY and NJ areas that were hard-hit by the storm continue to struggle from the extensive coastal damage and face a long recovery.

 

 

COMMON Europe Power of i Tour

For the past two weeks, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to be part of the COMMON Europe Power of i Roadshow. I attended and presented at events in Nyborg Denmark, Vienna, Lisbon, Brussels and Luxembourg. My coworker, Tim Rowe, has been doing presentations in other cities within Europe as part of this COMMON Europe event.

COMMON Europe is a bit different than COMMON as we know it here in the U.S. In the U.S, we have a major spring conference and a smaller fall conference; COMMON also supports other educational opportunities such as Webcasts.

While there’s a general COMMON Europe organization and an annual conference (called the CEC - COMMON Europe Conference), each country is also responsible for education to its COMMON members. As such, you’ll note on the COMMON Europe home page that there are links to the various countries and their COMMON organizations and events.

COMMON Europe, like COMMON U.S., also has an advisory council that meets with IBM on an ongoing basis. A key component of both of these advisory councils is working with IBM on future plans and requirements for Power Systems and IBM i.

I'd like to share the highlights and interesting points of this trip; most of this information is actually not technical, so enjoy the break from my usual technical writings.

Nyborg, Denmark. Nyborg is a small community west of Copenhagen. It was in beautiful fall color when I arrived – which was nice since the fall colors had already past in Rochester. The meeting was very well attended and was an all-day event. I think the highlight of the day was the last hour when Richard Moller Nielsen talked about coaching the 1992 Danish football team to the European Championship. I couldn't understand what was said, but it was very clear from the audience that his talk was very entertaining.

Vienna, Austria. The event in Vienna was very small with just two of us each giving one presentation. However, COMMON in Austria has been active in having ongoing events each month, so they don't always get a large attendance for each event. My highlight in Vienna was getting a little bit lost the next morning! I was out wandering some of the side streets looking for a nice, quiet place for a small breakfast, when I realized I didn't know where I was …. and I didn't have a map along! I did some careful backtracking and found my way to familiar territory, but it left me with little time to enjoy the leisurely breakfast I had hoped. Lesson learned: ALWAYS bring a map.

Lisbon, Portugal. My time in Lisbon ended up being not at all as planned! It turned out that there were two events scheduled for the same day; one in Lisbon with IBM i customers, and one in Tomar with Power Systems business partners. At the last minute, they decided to combine the two events into one. Of course, that was the right thing to do, but it also meant that I was reworking my presentations to be more general at the very last minute! What was wonderful about the event in Tomar was the team-building session that started the day; rather than all-day meetings, the first 90 minutes was spent in small groups of about six on sort of a scavenger hunt, looking for specific things around the town or some information about IBM. While 90 minutes wasn't enough time to complete the activity, it was a very good way to get acquainted with some of the other people attending the meeting. Perhaps we should think about activities like this more often. One other point about the event in Portugal is that COMMON Europe does not have a presence in Portugal at this time; there’s an attempt being made to change this, however.

Brussels, Belgium. The event in Brussels was my busiest with three presentations. It was sort of “Dawn May Day.” The audience was again rather small, but very attentive with excellent questions and discussions outside of the presentation time. While in Brussels, I was taken to probably the best restaurant I’ve ever visited – La Maison du Cygne. It was amazing! I also discovered I really like Belgium chocolate. I’ve never been much of a chocolate lover, but even the free little chocolates they had at the IBM Forum location were wonderful!

Luxembourg, Luxembourg. Luxembourg turned out to be an easy day! Giving the same presentations for the third time makes things easier, of course. What I found interesting about the audience for this event though was it was entirely men – not one single woman. During a couple other events, we had some brief conversations about the difficulty in getting European women interested in technology, but all the other events did have one or two women in the audience. It's a good thing I’m not bothered by being in the minority!

Overall, this was a fantastic trip and I'm honored to have had to opportunity to participate in these events. Everyone was very hospitable and friendly, and I would like to thank those who took the time to show me sights and share information about their wonderful cities.

 

 

 

i Can … Attend COMMON Europe

Last week, I was fortunate to attend the COMMON Europe conference. Steve Will, Jenny Dervin and I were there from Rochester. We all gave several presentations at the conference, and afterward we attended the COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC) face-to-face meeting. 

The conference was held in Stratford-upon-Avon, which I found to be a nice little community with an amazing amount of traffic! The conference was split between two hotels that were separated by a busy street. I don't think anyone suffered any injuries crossing the road, but patience was required. For those of us who don't routinely have roundabouts in our traffic patterns, we had to pay a little extra attention because we didn't know for sure which direction the cars would be going. I found the “Look Right” and “Look Left” words painted on the road at pedestrian crossing points to be very helpful!

The conference was quite a bit like the Annual COMMON Conference we have here in the U.S. There were several tracks of presentations running in parallel that attendees could choose from. Aside from being a much smaller event, the main difference from COMMON in the U.S. is that the sessions were only 60 minutes long, rather than 75. 15 minutes shorter doesn't sound like a big difference, but presentations prepared with 75 minutes in mind end up being a bit long for 60-minute sessions. There was also an expo and evening events. The Monday evening event was a group dinner at Warwick Castle, which was very entertaining with excellent food and a lot of fun; the magician was a big hit.

The CEAC meeting was a mix of educational information from IBM back to the group, as well as ongoing discussion about requirements and future directions. The requirements process is very important to both IBM and our customers as it definitely influences our investment decisions. Since we've just released 7.1, you can imagine that we’re relatively early in the development of our next release, when it's much easier to react to new requirements.

Steve, Jenny and I traveled together during the trip and did have a little free time while in Stratford-upon-Avon to do some sightseeing. We also took an extra day at the end of the trip to do “London in a day.” None of us had been to London before, so we spent the entire day walking and seeing the major sights – Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, Tower Bridge.... Needless to say, our feet hurt by the end!

The trip there and back was uneventful, which is a good thing. On the flight home, I chatted with the young man sitting next to me; he was traveling from Ireland to Estes Park, Colorado, where he’s planning to spend the summer working as a lifeguard. Working as a lifeguard for the summer is something a lot of young people do, but not many travel quite so far for that summer job!

 

 

i Can … Say This is a Great Conference

It's been a busy week! The CAAC meeting, eight sessions, a two-slot Open Lab, Ask the Experts, Expo, the Power Down events …. I'm almost done! My last two sessions are at the end of the day today. I will admit, though, that the cold of the hotel is taking its toll on me – I didn't realize I should have brought my Minnesota cool-weather clothes to Florida! I do have a bit of free time today, so I am going to get outside and warm up a bit – in fact, this blog was written out by the pool.

This week has been a great week! Being more involved with the conference – being on the SET, speakingand having attended the past several conferences – has allowed me to get to know more and more people. It has been wonderful to reconnect with old acquaintances and meet new ones. I appreciate the feedback and comments on my sessions, as I'm always striving to improve the content – there are always new ideas, suggestions and creative questions.

Throughout the conference, I've also received input and had discussions on various aspects of the i operating system. You can be assured that I'll be taking that information back to the development lab for discussion and consideration as we work on our future features and enhancements.

I've heard good feedback on the overall content of the conference. There were a lot of sessions that were very well attended with packed rooms – sessions on the latest and greatest enhancements, along with sessions on the fundamentals that are important for everyone to know. And just a reminder: most of the handouts are on the COMMON website, so even after the conference is over, you can continue to learn by reviewing the handouts from sessions that you were unable to attend.

Last night's Power Down event was fun! Larry Bolhuis caught up with me in the hallway yesterday, and I could tell by his demeanor that he was going to ask me to do something. When he asked if I would be the IBM participant for the Jeopardy event, I couldn't say no. I will admit that at first I was a bit nervous about it – after all, I didn't want to look like a dumb blonde by getting too many answers wrong! But once the game got started, I knew it would be great fun! Congrats to Randy for the win!

Tonight's Power Down main event will be a good conclusion to the conference. I won't dress up in '60s garb, but I do plan to enjoy the event. As the conference draws to a conclusion, it does cause me to think there is something special with COMMON and the IBM i community that isn't found elsewhere in the industry.