IBM Champions Deadline Is Next Week

November 8, 2017 Alex Woodie

Who would you like to see become an IBM Champion? If there’s somebody in the IBM i or Power Systems community that you think can make a difference, then you have less than a week to nominate them.

Every year, IBM selects a new group of champions across five areas, including analytics, cloud and cloud integration, collaboration solutions, Power, and IBM z. To be considered for the 2018 class of IBM Champions, a person must be nominated by Monday, November 13.

So, what is an IBM Champion? According to IBM, the program “recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community – and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence.” You don’t have to be a techie to be an IBM Champion — business leaders and educators have also been named – but it definitely helps.

The IBM Champion rolls are fluid, and some Champions stay with the program for a period of years. For example, Jim Buck and Aaron Bartell have been IBM Champions for Power since 2012. Last year’s group included 27 returning Champions and 13 new ones.

There was a youthful touch to last year’s crop of newly crowned IBM Champions for Power. Liam Allan, 19, and Kody Robinson, 24, have become recognizable faces in the IBM i community. And through their respective jobs at Profound Logic and Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., Allan and Robinson have helped to raise the bar on progressive uses of RPG.

There are several ways to become an IBM Champion. You can go to the nomination page on the IBM developerWorks website and nominate yourself, if you like. You can also nominate somebody else to become an IBM Champion, provided that you have his or her permission to do so. There is also a way for IBMers to nominate people, and for existing IBM Champions to renew their participation in the program.

So, what does it take to be an IBM Champion? IBM’s Libby Ingrassia offers seven pointers to determine ideal candidates.

Someone freely gives you advice in person, on Twitter, on forums.
You regularly read the blog of someone for help or shared code…
Someone in your organization knows everything there is to know about your IBM software or hardware and makes it all work together and is always the one answering questions…
There is someone whose presentations you enjoy and learn from…
Someone is putting their own time into organizing an event you value…
Someone has positively influenced your choices of what to deploy and when…
There is someone whose contribution you would miss if they were to stop…

The IBM i community is a relatively tight-knit group of professionals who have dedicated some portion of their careers to this unique and special platform. The community stays mostly constant from year to year, but recently there have been some folks who have stepped up their activity around the platform and emerged as leaders with a voice that others can follow.

So who do you think is deserving of the title IBM Champion for Power for 2018? You have until Monday afternoon to nominate them.

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