Innovative CIO Keynotes at RPG & DB2 Summit

October 11, 2011 Dan Burger

Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, CIO at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming RPG & DB2 Summit held October 16-19 in St. Louis, Missouri. Reynolds-Lair will talk about the value of planning and implementing innovative projects from the perspective of a CIO who happens to prefer running an IBM i-centric business.

Reynolds-Lair’s success has not been rare or fleeting. FIDM has received four IBM-COMMON Innovation Awards. The most recent was presented at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in May 2011. FIDM also won in 2005, 2007, and 2009. And yesterday, she received the IBM Power Champion award at the 2011 IBM Power Systems Technical University in Miami Beach, Florida.

“As one the most effective CIOs in the IBM i community, Roxanne knows what it takes to cultivate a dynamic, creative IBM i development environment,” says Susan Gantner, one of the partners in System i Developer, the company that orchestrates the bi-annual RPG & DB2 Summit events.

“A big part of that is successfully advocating for business-worthy innovation among management,” Gantner continues. “We’re thrilled to have her share her front-line experiences and insights with us. She will add an even deeper business context to the Summit’s core technical curriculum.”

In her keynote address, Reynolds-Lair plans to discuss strategies for aligning IT with business objectives to achieve management buy-in for innovative ideas. Last week, the CIO spelled out a few of the IT-business alignment accomplishments at FIDM and offered her opinions on the keys to successful innovation at IBM i-centric shops in an interview with IT Jungle, which you can read here.

The Summit begins on Sunday, October 16, with half-day “Headstart Seminars” that can be attended separate from the main event or as part of a package deal. The Summit begins Monday and wraps up Wednesday.

RPG-based mobile applications are being emphasized at this Summit along with a bundle of topics such as using SQL with DB2 and RPG, Web programming, Web services, ILE and modular programming, modern development tools, and optimizing database and SQL performance. The complete session agenda–including the Headstart Seminars–is available online, along with registration details and a roster of top-notch speakers.