Learning And Laughing With Scott Forstie And Tim Rowe
December 8, 2025 Alex Woodie
In the darkest days of the 2020 pandemic, with COVID lockdowns in full force, IBM i business architects Tim Rowe and Scott Forstie decided to try something new: start a video blog. Dubbed iSee, the short videos blend serious technical content around ACS and SQL services with goofy puns and silly drawings. Fast forward to fall 2025, and iSee is going strong, as the pair recently aired their 100th iSee episode.
“Scott and I have been thinking about some fun things that we want to talk about to help you in your every day job,” Rowe said in the very first episode of iSee, which has been hosted on the COMMON website from the very beginning and which can be accessed here.
The videos are relatively short, lasting typically 10 to 15 minutes. They’re lightly scripted and often feature demos with the duo’s favorite tools: Access Client Solutions (ACS) for Rowe and Run SQL Scripts for Forstie. “It’s amazing what you can do with these two tools,” Rowe said in episode four. “We’re doing these sessions . . . because we want you to be successful,” Forstie said.
What the iSee episodes lack in length they make up with being packed with useful information. Rowe and Forstie are both experts in their respective fields, with Rowe being the IBM i business architect responsible for system management and application development, and Forstie being the Db2 for i business architect who lives and breathes SQL. Both work out of the company’s development lab in Rochester, Minnesota.
Rowe and Forstie get many of their ideas for iSee episodes from viewer feedback from IBM i professionals. But in addition to being relevant, iSee videos are one other thing: fun. Rowe and Forstie have worked together for decades, and it shows. They’re genuinely funny, blending a superior understanding of technology and the byzantine IBM product catalog with jokes about contemporary life. You might call them the Abbot and Costello of the IBM i comedy circuit.
The iSee series also allows Rowe to showcase his artistic skills. Equipped with nothing but (apparently) MS-Paint, Rowe expertly cuts and pastes cartoon images of himself and Forstie into different costumes and situations. Forstie often finds his cartoon self put into difficult situation, such trying to escape a cardboard box, but Rowe gets his, too.
During the recent POWERUp conference in Anaheim, Rowe showed up with Disney-esqe stickers that showed Forstie as a member of The Incredibles, while portraying himself as Woody from Toy Story. “We decided to branch out and have just a teeny bit of fun,” Rowe told IT Jungle at the show. “He’s our art department and our marketing genius,” Forstie deadpanned.
Over the years, we’ve learned some personal details about the two most visible members of the IBM i development team. We learned that Forstie is not a backer of the Vikings football team; apparently, he’s a Chiefs fan. We know that Rowe is not a fan of asparagus or Brussels sprouts. Forstie, on the other hand, enjoys a nice sprig on occasion. “You’ll find me chewing buckwheat all the time,” he said in response to Texas-ization of his likeness for the then-upcoming 2024 POWERUp in Fort Worth, Texas. We see the changing of the season in Rowe’s backyard, the snow and the flowers, the occasional curious critter, and the Ninja apparatus that his kids train on.
The fun is fun, but iSee is mostly about the tech. The pair’s favorite tools, ACS and SQL services, provide the lion’s share of content, but occasionally they roam into adjacent topics. What happens when data queues “go sour”? How do you find stuff in the audit journal or the IFS? Have you ever been fooled by your spool files? Data security is important. So are IBM i backups. What’s going on with VS Code and Code for i? What is adopted authority and why do you need it? How many tools are in Systools (153).
During the 100th episode, Rowe and Forstie invited COMMON Executive Director Manzoor Siddiqui onto the show. Siddiqui was the show’s first guest, so bringing him back provided a full-circle moment for the business architects and their host. “It’s great to see you guys having fun,” Siddiqui said. “I know the people who watch it certainly enjoy it, as long as they’re learning something.”
Rowe and Forstie continue to churn out about two episodes of iSee per month, or about 20 per year. ACS and SQL services provide a never-ending surplus of material for the pair, and there’s no sign of them slowing down.
During the 100th episode, which you can view here, Forstie and Rowe sounded a little surprised that iSee has found such success over the years. “I always thought this could bridge between the in-person events, get to know us a little better, get to understand some of the topics,” Forstie said. “And then the next time we meet up at the next event, it’s going to be all the better.”
“We appreciate all of our listeners who have come and joined these and hopefully we’ll continue to provide education,” Rowe said. “This was one of those things where we figured we’d do this and see where it went. It’s kind of surprising. It’s been over five years and a hundred episodes and still going strong.”
