Easy Opportunities to Get Involved
By Tami Deedrick
A few opportunities to make a contribution to the IBM community are currently available to you and I hope you’ll take advantage of them. Check out the list below and get involved!
Al Barsa Scholarship
David Gibbs has once again initiated an Al Barsa Memorial challenge. Gibbs has even more matching contributors on board this year—including midrange.com, Jim Oberholtzer of Agile Technology Architects, Larry Bolhuis of Franken i, Pete Helgren of Value Added Software, Jerry Adams, Pete Massiello of iTech Solutions and John Earl of Townsend Security—making the potential to more than quadruple donations. Al Barsa was an IBM i advocate who died unexpectedly at the 2008 Spring COMMON Conference. The scholarship in his memory is used to further the education of other IBM i advocates. Gibbs is accepting donations until Dec. 16. See his blog entry for details.
Lotus Domino on i
Steve Pitcher has been advocating for Lotus Domino on IBM i and has amassed more than 225,000 signatures in his online survey/petition. A recent blog spelled out why you should care about this even if you’re not currently running Lotus on i. Take a moment to read his business case and join the movement.
Voice Your Opinion on IBM Products
Perhaps one of the best parts of amazon.com is being able to read the reviews of other readers or product users. Perhaps you absolutely love your IBM products and want the world to know. Now you can on the IBM product review and rate website. It’s a pretty simple process so let your voice be heard.
You’ve seen me write about this before but keep in mind that you can nominate the next round of IBM Champions. Visit the Champions website and help IBM identify the next great advocates to be honored.
Tami: Minor clarification ... the Al Barsa Scholarship is managed by the COMMON Education Foundation (a 501(c)(3) organization) ... they accept, and manage, the donations.
I'm just acting as an advocate for the scholarship.
I also serve on the board of the COMMON Education Foundation (http://www.common.org/index.php/ed-foundation.html).
Posted by: David | Nov 29, 2011 at 01:23 PM
Thanks for the plug Tami.
Posted by: Steve Pitcher | Nov 29, 2011 at 03:19 PM