Heading to Wisconsin (WMCPA)
Posted: November 11, 2008 Filed under: Conference, Don Yantzi, IBM i Leave a comment »I’m heading to Wisconsin to present at the Winsonsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA)’s Fall Conference. I’ll be covering 3 presentations (Customizing the RSE, Debugging, and What’s New in RDi 7.1 and WDSC 7.0) and one open lab (Using RSE, Customizing RSE, and Working offline with projects).
These are standard presentations I have given before, but I get to use and discuss RDi 7.5 publicly for the first time :) WMMCPA has a good lineup of speakers for this event, so if you are in the Wisconsin area then come on over on Friday and learn something new, network, and say hi.
I met Jim Buck (president of WMCPA) for the first time this summer in Rochester at Summer School (education for College and University teachers / professors). This was part of the IBM Academic Initiative, a program for sharing knowledge, support, and software with colleges and universities. I was quite amazed by the number of shcools teaching IBM i and Power systems courses; ranging from RPG through to DB2 on IBM i. If you teach at a College or University (IBM i or otherwise) you should definitely get hooked up with this program.
TUG MoM @ Toronto Lab
Posted: February 2, 2008 Filed under: Abe Batthish, Conference, EGL, HATS, RBD, RDi, TUG, WebFacing | Tags: Application Development, Conference, EGL, HATS, IBM, Rational, RBD, RDi, System i, TEC, Tools, TUG, User Group, WebFacing Leave a comment »On Wednesday, George Farr and the Toronto Lab hosted the Toronto User Group (TUG) for System i Meeting of Members (MoM) event.
TUG has always had close ties with the Lab, and we were happy to welcome them once again. Visiting from Raleigh N.C., Wendy Toh, Software Development director of Enterprise Development Tools & Compilers, and Danny Mace, Program Director of Rational Enterprise Transformation and Tools Development, were also in attendance. The session was conveniently held the day after the big V6R1 Announce, allowing members of the IBM System i AD team to introduce the changes and (quickly) demo some of the new features available in the latest release of our tools. Wendy also gave an insightful overview of IBM’s strategy in this space. Overall, the response was very positive. Some questions about the repackaging which George readily explained, and a lot of excitement over the new features made available through RPG, HATS, and the new RDi line.
As a follow-up, TUG will be hosting their annual TEC conference, Apr 22-24, which will contain over 20 sessions and labs presented by members of the IBM Toronto Lab System i AD Team, that will dig deeper into many of the new features introduced in the announce and at this event. Hope to see everyone there!
Upcoming Events
Posted: September 7, 2007 Filed under: Conference, Debug, RSE, WDSC 2 Comments »Fall and spring are usually busy times for conferences and user group meetings. This fall is proving to be no exception. Here is a list of upcoming events this fall that include content on WDSC and / or the RSE to help you plan your fall :)
- IBM webcast series on Accelerating the Modernization of System i Applications
- RPG and DB2 Summit (October 2 – 4)
- COMMON Focus (October 14 – 17)
- FASUG Application Development Day (October 23) (I’m presenting at this one)
- LISUG monthly meeting (October 24) (I’ll be presenting WDSC 7.0 What’s New and Creating Web Services with WDSC at this one)
- NESTU monthly meeting (October 25) (me again; FASUG, LISUG and NETSU are the 3 New York area user groups)
- System i Fall Technical Conference (November 5 – 9th)
- COMMON European Events (November 6 – 15th)
Updated: just got an email about SystemiNetworks’ RPG & Beyond Web conference September 18-19 and 25-26th. Looks like Susan Gantner is doing an RSE session and Aaron Bartell is doing a WDSC Goodies session.
Updated Sept 12: I built the original list from memory which apparently isn’t so good anymore! I forgot another one: iSeries DevCon2007 October 29 – 31st (thanks to Davin Wilfrid for the reminder!)
COMMON Videos and Winners of System i Innovation Challenge
Posted: July 12, 2007 Filed under: Abe Batthish, COMMON, Conference, System i, WDSC Leave a comment »Ran into this… The System iNetwork site hosts a vBlog (video blog) called iStudio. The blog contains interviews hosted by Bob Cozzi with various IBM System i celebrities like Jim Herring and Elaine Lennox during the last COMMON conference.
Topics include: System i academic initiative, the new entry boxes and user-based pricing, mySQL, and the VIP program.
(Can anyone spot WDSc and the Toronto Lab in the background?)
Also, a follow up to a previous post on the System i Innovation Challenge called Students… Win a Wii or iPod – what better way to attract young minds. Winners of the challenge were announced at the last COMMON where a team from Marywood took the prize by developing a web-based vacation planning tool. Congratulations!
The challenge was deemed successful at raising awareness of the platform and its benefits to students and academic institutions, and at acquiring an application to help attendees reserve time for the 2008 conference. :)
Two Minutes with George Farr on WDSC
Posted: May 8, 2007 Filed under: COMMON, Conference, George P., WDSC Leave a comment »I just came across this article on SystemiNetwork of a quick interview with Product Line Manager, George Farr. It’s short, but answers five questions:
- So George, we heard about some major internal changes at IBM between Rational and WebSphere — what’s all that about?
- Now that’s interesting . . . OK, then, what is all the fuss about the screen designer in WDSc?
- So, are you still saying that the screen designer will be left in Advanced Edition?
- For now then, what should customers use for designing 5250 screens and reports?
- We’ve got a few seconds left . . . anything else you’d like to add?
See the answers here.
Heading to COMMON
Posted: April 26, 2007 Filed under: COMMON, Conference, Don Yantzi, IBM, iSeries, WDSC 1 Comment »Over the next few days Nazmin, Claus, George, George (but not the George that writes on this blog :) and I will be heading from the Toronto Lab to Anaheim for COMMON. My last COMMON was Chicago so I’m really looking forward to it (for the past few years I have been speaking at the IBM System i Technology Conference).
We are presenting on pretty much all aspects of WDSC and WDHT along with some of the Rational stuff like change management and EGL. I’ve created a grid of all our WDSC and Rational Sessions using the My Grid tool on the COMMON website. In addition to the sessions that I am presenting, I’m hoping to catch Scott Klement’s session on Web Services from RPG Using HTTP API and one or two of Jon Paris‘ or Susan Gantner’s RPG IV sessions.
I’m also planning to catch up with some WDSC users, business partners and other IBMers. Plus expo, CUDS, etc… so it should be a busy week. I’m planning to do some live blogging from COMMON during the week, so stay tuned.
If you are going to COMMON and want to meet send me an email or just come find me there. I’m generally pretty easy to spot since I’m 6′ 6″ tall and I’ll have my ThinkPad. Feel free to just come up and say hi even if it looks like I’m busy. I’ll be in expo (when it’s running), CUDs (when it’s on), my sessions, Starbucks in the Marriott (during the day), or the Wine bar at the Marriott (during the evening). As a last resort check the pool :)
TUG TEC ’007 – Abe’s Recap
Posted: April 20, 2007 Filed under: Conference, EGL, JSF, System i, TUG, WDSC, Web 2.0 Leave a comment »The TUG TEC ’007 conference is now over and done. Once again, the folks at TUG went all out to ensure both the attendees and the presenters were well taken care of. I had a couple of sessions this year:
- Web 2.0 for System i (mentioned earlier in this blog), and
- EGL and JSF
I have to thank George P. and Kushal, my co-presenters, for their help with those sessions.
Attendance at the sessions were relatively good. And for the first run of the Web 2.0 session, I think the reaction was positive. Although Web 2.0 seemed to be new to most of those who attended, we hope we gave a useful introduction to this popular yet misunderstood topic, along with its impact on both the technology and business worlds. It’s funny how there’s always a puzzled yet intrigued look on people’s faces when we describe Second Life. :)
The EGL and JSF session seemed a little more relevant to the attendees from my impression. Though next time I would delay going into the details of the JSF framework until after showing how simple it is to work with, given the tools available in WDSC. Kushal’s demo on creating a JSF front end to an EGL application was impressive. Sorry we ran short on time for the second demo. Maybe we’ll add a demo video on YouTube later.
We haven’t received feedback from TUG yet, but I’m interested to hear back from the attendees.
Thanks to TUG and those who attended. See you next year.
