IBM i Fall 2023 Event Calendar Shaping Up
September 11, 2023 Alex Woodie
The next variant of the coronavirus might try to stage a viral comeback, but that’s not stopping IBM i professionals from packing their bags and gearing up for a busy fall conference season, which starts this week with the IBM TechXchange in Vegas.
IBM TechXchange is a major conference that offers hundreds of sessions for developers, data scientists, IT architects, operations professionals, and infrastructure architects, among other personas. The event, which takes place September 11 -14 at the MGM Grand resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, is expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees for educational and training sessions on AI, automation, data, hybrid cloud, infrastructure, quantum, security, and sustainability.
As an IBM event, you can expect quite a bit of IBM-specific content, including for Power servers and software. And as luck would have it, there also will be a handful of IBM i sessions from IBMers and representatives of third-party vendors, starting tomorrow and going through Thursday.
IBM i content on Tuesday will include a session by Robert Andrews, IBM’s principal security consultant for IBM i, about how to defend against ransomware. IBMers Dexter Charles and Bryan Bush will present a session on PowerVS on Tuesday (to be repeated on Thursday). Two representatives from VTL provider Falconstor, CEO Todd Brooks and VP Abdul Hashmi, will be hosting a session on optimizing backups on Tuesday, too.
On Wednesday, TechXchange attendees can check out a session on IBM i systems administration and Navigator for i, which will be presented by Pete Massiello, an IBM Champion for Power. Tim Rowe, an IBM i Business Architect, and ARCAD Software’s Andrew Clark will present on Merlin, DevOps, and Git. You won’t want to miss the inestimable Scott Forstie, the database architect for Db2 for i, talking about securing Db2 for i, also on Wednesday.
If the Vegas sands haven’t gobbled you up by Thursday, you can tune into an IBM i strategy and roadmap session by IBM i Product Manager Alison Butterill. That day will also feature a session on PowerVC by IBM’s Ian Robinson.
You can still register for the event here. If you can’t make it to Vegas this time, or have outstanding warrants from your last visit, you can still watch the keynotes, which will be livestreamed. The keynotes start Tuesday morning and continue through Wednesday. You can catch them here.
The IBM i events continue next week with a pair of Summit Deep Dive Workshops hosted by System i Developer. Paul Tuohy will present a workshop on database modernization on September 19. Two days later, on September 21, Susan Ganter will present a workshop titled “RDi Quick Start for PDM Fans.”
System i Developer chum Jon Paris and Mike Pavlak pick up the baton the following week with another pair of Sumit Deep Dive Workshops, this time on data structures and arrays for RPG developers (Paris) and an intro to open source on IBM i (Pavlak).
The Deep Dives continue on other topics for six more weeks. A total of 13 System i Developer workshops are being presented right through Halloween (which lands on a Tuesday this year). You can purchase seats for these online workshops in onesies and twosies for $299 a pop, or work up the courage to commit to several workshops and get up to a $50 discount per. Alumni also get a discount. For more info, click here.
If you’re interested in ERP implementations and digital transformation – and really, who isn’t these days? – then you won’t want to miss Third Stage Consulting’s Digital Stratosphere 2023 event, which is taking place in Denver, Colorado, on October 5. It’s not an IBM i event per se, but the topics are definitely apropos to the challenges IBM i shops face as they seek to modernize older and legacy applications.
The event will feature the insight of Third Stage’s CEO and founder Eric Kimberling, who has a refreshingly sober take on the inevitable challenges and pitfalls companies face with big IT projects, which vendors and system integrators tend to gloss over. In addition to keynotes, attendees can expect panel discussions, interactive workshops, executive roundtables, and networking opportunities. The cost is $300 and you can register here.
The big IBM i event this fall is COMMON NAViGATE, which is scheduled for October 9-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, at the Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront hotel.
NAViGATE 2023 currently is slated to feature more than 100 sessions on a range of IBM i topics, as well as a vendor expo for IBM i and Power solution providers to display their wares. This is also shaping up to be a delivery vehicle for IBM to share detailed information about the fall Technology Refresh (TR) cycle, which we have no details about yet, but which we can confidently say will take place in October (as they are wont to do).
Registration for NAViGATE 2023 is $1,095 for COMMON member and $1,395 for non-members. You can register here. And of course, you can always check out the full calendar of IBM i events in the Four Hundred Monitor column.
