Au Revoir, COMMON

Before we begin, we should mention that the words "au revoir" in the title are used in their literal sense of "until we meet again," and not in the high-school French sense of "goodbye." As you read this, hopefully the reason for that distinction will become apparent to you.

COMMON's 50th anniversary meeting will be held in Orlando this coming May, but despite having volunteered as speakers and in other capacities at every conference since 1988, this time we won't be there.

There are many reasons for this, one of them of course being financial, but in the end the financial aspects were secondary, merely the catalyst that caused us to re-examine our involvement with the organization. We first wrote about the planned changes at COMMON back in May of this year and have been wrestling with the situation ever since.

Had it not been for the need to examine our participation from a financial perspective, we would probably have continued on autopilot, delivering sessions along with our other volunteer duties, as we've done every time a COMMON conference rolled around. Being forced to think about whether we could afford to do that next year also caused us to think about why we were doing it in the first place and whether the time, money and energy we've been donating to COMMON represent the best way for us to help the community.

This weekend we found ourselves at the moment of truth, wrestling with the decision to either accept or decline our sessions that had been selected for the spring conference. We concluded that we still wanted to support the idea of COMMON, but increasingly it became apparent that the COMMON we wanted to support was an idealized organization that existed only in our minds. We had hoped the old COMMON could return and we worked with many other volunteers to make that a reality, but for whatever reasons COMMON's direction seems to be set. For the time being we'll remain members of COMMON and hope that things will change.

This doesn't mean we'll be giving up working with and for the IBM i community. We plan instead to take the time, energy and money we would have spent participating in the Orlando COMMON conference and steer it toward other IBM i community efforts. We haven't made any final decisions on that, but we're looking at our options.

For example, there are many wonderful local IBM i User Groups that still work hard for members and are struggling because they don't have cash reserves to carry them through the rough economic times like these. Because we support their efforts, we've always given User Groups a discount off of our standard rates. As a first step in our new approach, we've further reduced our rates for LUGs that we've worked with regularly over the years. Obviously, we can't afford to spend all of our time doing work for little or no pay, but we do now have a few days we won't be donating to COMMON.

We'll also be working more with the Young i Professionals. Now there's an energetic group that's doing really useful things for the community! And you can stop giggling--we know we don't qualify as "young," but we're both proud to be considered honorary members of the group and intend to do more with it in the future. We also hope to do more in terms of providing online resources through our own Web site and through System i Developer.

We also intend to put some of the cash that a trip to COMMON in 2010 would have cost us to work supporting the iManifest efforts here in North America. This is one of the efforts we had hoped COMMON might use its influence and position to support, so it seems an appropriate alternative use for the money.

We can't tell you how sad it makes us to be writing this. We firmly believe in the concept of User Groups, and feel that a national-level user group has a major role to play. We hope things may change and if so, we look forward to returning some day in the future to an organization more like the COMMON that exists in our minds.

To the many, many friends we have made at COMMON over the years: THANK YOU. Hopefully we'll find ways to meet and work together again in the future.

Dear Margaret

Today's piece is dedicated to all our fellow travelers--some of this will probably sound achingly familiar to you!

Sunday: Dear Margaret,

Thank you for your note welcoming us to the hotel and for preparing our room so nicely. We will indeed try to do our part to save the environment and will follow your detailed advice on how to hang our towels.

We do however have just one small issue. In your enthusiasm to clean up the room this morning you also removed several bottles of water. In future could you please leave any full or part-full bottles in the room?

We also clearly did not understand your instructions regarding the towels as all of them were changed today even though we left them on the rack as instructed.
 
Monday: Dear Margaret,

Thank you for not removing the full bottles of water. We would however have been even happier had you removed the empty ones, particularly those that we had placed in the waste basket.

One small favor. Could you please resist the temptation to change the station on the radio?  We know we should have checked, but being woken by Def Leppard on FM 99.7, "Your Heavy Metal Heaven," at 100+ dB was not quite what we had in mind when we set the alarm clock expecting to be woken by NPR News.


Tuesday: Dear Margaret,

We appreciate the extra soap you left today, but think that three bath bars, plus the one already in use, is probably more than we will need during our stay.  We would however like some additional shampoo because we are almost out of that.

Also, sorry we obviously weren't clear. It wasn't your choice of radio station we were having a problem with, indeed being woken by Mariachi music is nowhere near as shattering an experience as Heavy Metal, but we would prefer it if you could just leave the radio alone.

Perhaps it was a different staff member who cleaned our room today as we see we are back to losing our partial bottles of water.  Not to worry, we have decided to keep them in the safe so that won't be a problem in future.


Wednesday: To Whom it May Concern,

Shampoo is the yellowy stuff in transparent bottles.  Soap is the white stuff in a paper wrapper. We appreciate the extra bar of soap, but we still need some shampoo please. And the conditioner is getting low ...

Could you please clarify the process regarding hanging up towels because all of ours were replaced again today, so we obviously haven't got it quite right yet.


Thursday: To Whomever ...

Thanks for the shampoo. Unfortunately, you failed to notice that we were out of conditioner and lotion. But don't worry--we're leaving today so it really doesn't matter that much to us. We'll try again next time.



P.S. Everything in this note has happened to us, just not all in one trip. It was, however, our experiences last week in Las Vegas that prompted this blog entry, and indeed accounted for a number of the incidents recounted above.

We are Not Alone

This week, we're at another gathering of the i faithful, this time in Vegas for DevCon. In a lively discussion session this afternoon, several interesting topics arose.

First up was the topic of education of a new generation of IBM i developers. From the panel, we discussed the great things that the IBM Academic Initiative is doing to help schools enlighten students about what IBM i can do. The panel members also challenged the audience members to do their part by providing internships or indeed by hiring the younger generation when they graduate.

Even though these youngsters have no practical experience, what they do have is knowledge, enthusiasm and a willingness to learn how to apply what they have learned in school. While students who have participated in schools that offer IBM i curriculum specifically may have a lot to offer, don't shortchange a bright young candidate who can easily be taught IBM i and/or RPG. We raised the point that as long as you introduce these youngsters to the latest form of RPG (i.e., Subprocesure and /Free-form) most, no matter if their background is Java, PHP or .Net, will readily embrace the language. Indeed those with a leaning towards business programming may end up preferring it. This is another of our "soapbox" beliefs, and it was good to find that others on the panel shared our feelings on the subject.

One attendee shared that her company had helped to get an IBM i curriculum started in a nearby local community college and challenged others to consider doing the same. Sometimes, it may take simply letting your local school know that there are jobs waiting for those who graduate with those skills. Interestingly a great many community and junior colleges actually run their administration system on IBM i, and yet few teach it.  Do they fear students will hack into their grades and fees, perhaps?

It was exciting to hear about what some of the attendees are doing with their applications, applying many of the skills and techniques we've been spending the last several years teaching and encouraging--modularizing and modernizing their applications, adding new front ends, or making their code available as Web services. Some of the stories are truly inspiring. One woman is a single-person development shop, yet she has managed to successfully implement modularized code with subprocedures and service programs while keeping up with users' ever-challenging demands. Some young developers among the attendees have done some amazingly creative things while combining RPG and PHP; in one case, at least, in spite of the active discouragement on the part of his apparently short-sighted management. Fortunately, his end users were sufficiently thrilled with the results that his innovative work continues.

Anyone who says this platform is old or boring just hasn't been around the inspired developers we have seen in the last few weeks. This platform may have been around a long time compared to others, but from the looks of the things modern IBM i developers are doing today, we're just getting warmed up.

Memories...

Last week was one full of memories in ways we hadn't fully anticipated. We spent a little more than a week at the Hotel Sofitel in Minneapolis. Sofitel is a French-based chain and the French and European influence is obvious, even when transplanted into the heartland of America. We met several staff members from the hotel who came from Europe, including the executive chef, who prepared food that made us feel like we were back in Europe all over again.

We haven't spent a huge amount of time in France, but we have spent quite a lot of time in Belgium (right next door and therefore with many shared influences), which has become one of our favorite places in the world. One of our favorite dishes (among many, many favorites) is Croque Monsieur--a glorious meal whose basic description (a French version of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich) just can't begin to do it justice. Served, as are many meals in even the finest restaurants in Belgium, with frites (french fries), we each had that particular dish a minimum of four times. The croissants, brioche and pain au chocolat (chocolate-filled croissant-like pastry) for breakfast brought back memories of our breakfasts at the IBM education center in La Hulpe near Brussels. 

We were among a minority of the North American IBMers who loved the education center in La Hulpe. The center itself was rather sparsely furnished, to say the least, having small single beds in bedrooms that by American hotel standards were closet-sized. For years the rooms typically did not have TV or indeed many other amenities. So all the more reason to be out of your room as much as possible, wandering around the grounds and the adjoining forest and the lovely chateau next door to IBM, or gathering with friends and colleagues in La Cave, the IBM bar (sounds strange, doesn't it?). 

At La Hulpe, we always worked very hard, typically participating in ITSO Technical Forum events that often included sessions and labs on bleeding-edge technology that rarely seemed to want to behave as the instructors had planned. Maybe it's just the workaholic in both of us, but the hard work combined with abundant food and Belgian beer made us look forward to visiting La Hulpe time and time again. And this past week, preparing for and running our RPG & DB2 Summit event, we experienced that same mixture of hard work combined with fabulous food and beer (we did have some Belgian beer, but also enjoyed Summit, from a local Minneapolis brewery) and we found ourselves reminiscing of times gone by around 15 or so years ago.

One more thing that made last week's event feel like old times in La Hulpe was the fact that our keynote speaker was Ian Jarman.  Ian spent several years of his own IBM career in the ITSO and therefore was often among those colleagues with whom we shared the La Hulpe experience.

Leaping back into the present for a moment, Ian's keynote session featured coverage of four primary features of the 7.1 announcements that are about to be made. For us the most exciting were the DB2- and RPG-related announcements, which included a major RPG-related statement of direction for a new RPG Open I/O feature that will allow developers to build device handlers that will allow a wide variety of devices to interact with RPG programs using the old familiar op-code--Read, Write, ExFmt, etc. The power of this capability will become more obvious as ISVs and other clever developers begin to see what their imaginations lead them to create. We'll be releasing more information on this interesting development as and when details become available.

Last week was fun, exhausting and very fulfilling, just as the ITSO forum events were. The attendees and exhibitors were fabulous, it's so much fun to be surrounded by like-minded people all seeking to exploit their systems to the fullest.  And just like we did all those years ago we're both now trying to recover, both by trying to catch up on lost sleep (at least there was no jet lag in Minneapolis!) and trying to lose the extra pounds the French food added to our waistlines. Who would have thought that Belgium memories could come so close to being relived in Minneapolis! Thanks to the Sofitel and to over 100 energetic IBM i enthusiasts at the Summit, it was much like old times.

Oh good grief it's snowing!

There's something seriously wrong with the idea of snow in October. Or at the very least, snow at the beginning of October! What makes it seem even worse is the fact that even here in southern Minnesota it's unusual to have snow quite this early in the year. As a result, this blog may be even more meandering than usual. This snow has put us quite off of our track!

If we were back home we'd be celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving. We guess that Thanksgiving in Canada is earlier than it is in the United States because the Canadian climate is (reportedly) colder, therefore the harvest is earlier and with it, naturally, Thanksgiving. 

The fact that the many, perhaps most, Canadians live further south than many Americans (for example, Toronto is further south than Minneapolis--honest--go check, we'll wait. See--told you so!) doesn't prevent many of our American cousins from thinking we live in the "frozen north." Clearly they've not been in Minneapolis in October. Hmmm--wonder if the current cold snap is related to the recent exploits of the Minnesota Twins? We recall hearing the oft-voiced opinion that hell would freeze over before the Twins won the World Series again, perhaps the weather systems were being set up to achieve that effect when the hated Yankees stepped in and spoiled the fun? But we digress.

Why, you may ask, are we in Minneapolis when all sensible Cannucks are home tucking into turkey dinners? We're here for the RPG & DB2 Summit along with more than 100 of the IBM i faithful. The conference started today and we have another three days of sessions and companionship to look forward to. We really do get kick out of meeting some of the folks who follow our diatribes in this blog and others who have followed our writings or other conference appearances over the years. 

Sometimes when you write something and nobody responds, you're left wondering if anybody read it. Webcasts are a bit like that too. When you're teaching live and the topic isn't pitched correctly for the audience you'll see people's eyes glaze over and you can then attempt to remedy the situation by slowing down, or explaining something in more detail than you may otherwise have done. Webcasts don't give you that feedback--and neither, for that matter, does writing. Mind you, we certainly know folks read last week's blog! 27 comments and they're still coming in. Guess that topic resonated with a number of people.

Before we go we'll just mention that Minneapolis is the "home" of MSP Communications, which is the publisher of this blog and the IBM Systems Magazine for which we write. We've taken advantage of that fact to have some of the magazine's staff join us on site to mix and mingle with the attendees and help introduce even more fun into the event by sponsoring our picture badges. This is Susan's current badge:

All of the attendees will be sporting similar accoutrements before the week is out. As part of the process of building these badges, Jon has been introduced to the fun and games of green-screen photography and has done a lot more "fancy stuff" than he had previously. Another new hobby--just what he needed.

Next week we'll tell you what we learned at Summit because we always learn new things when teaching--it's one of the greatest joys of the job. Until next week.