Dan Burger
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Toronto Tech Conference An Educational Achievement
March 25, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreSuccessful IBM i tech conferences depend on a couple of key performance indicators. First of all, there has to be attention to the right topics and speakers and secondly there must be a core group of volunteers who are dedicated to getting the conference done right. The Toronto User Group (TUG) consistently scores high with its annual Technical Education Conference (TEC), which this year is scheduled for April 25 and 26 in Toronto.
There are good reasons for this. The user group has education professionals that are prominent and they put an emphasis on education that is evident with the
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Work Smarter, Not Harder–Unless Told To Do Both
March 18, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreFrom one extreme to the other. Last week the came the news that Ginny Rometty, IBM‘s CEO, banked more than $16 million in compensation for her work guiding Big Blue in 2012. Rometty is an exceptional achiever. IBM grooms exceptional achievers. The company is good at that and the rewards, as you can see, are generous. At the same time, we got a glimpse of what it means to be on the fast track and how it feels to be treated like human capital. You either make money for the company or you’re something that costs the company.
Rometty,
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IBM Social Business Message: Productivity Gains, Cultural Change
March 18, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreIf you’ve been watching IBM promote social business, you’ve probably noticed the volume and frequency has been turned up. If you’ve seen IBM i chief architect Steve Will or read his blog, you know he’s a big time social evangelist. Back in January, there was an event called Connect 2013–the rebranding of Lotusphere that had to be done after the Lotus brand was wiped from the new product slate. In the past several years, it has become a social media lovefest.
Ten days ago, in an interview with Forbes, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty ranked the social network as
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H-1B Visas Are No Solution To IT Skills Shortage
March 11, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere is more than one perspective on H-1B visas that connect foreign IT specialists with jobs in United States. However, the biggest stick is not carried by those who would argue that what counts most is filling U.S. jobs with U.S. citizens. Since the economy was sawed off at the knees, experienced business computing professionals have been discarded and less expensive substitutes have been sought as part of the corporate globalization rules of the game.
It is bad now and it could get worse.
One of the reasons it looks threatening goes by the name of the Immigration Innovation Act
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Northeast User Groups Add iBelieve To Conference Format
March 11, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreLike most people in the IBM midrange community, when taking the time to think about updating skills and learning new technologies your thought process automatically shifts into “when do I have time for that?” mode. It may take some mental wrestling, but the conclusion should be there’s no better time than the present. And if one, two, or three days devoted to education is unattainable, then the hole you’re digging may someday be too deep to climb out of.
In case you were wondering, there still are companies that invest in IT training and education. They recognize the advantages that
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Enthusiasm, Persistence, And The IBM i Payoff
March 4, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreInnovation is an overused word that gets nailed to everything from a pair of socks to cures for baldness. Let me give you a place where it actually applies: the Southeast Michigan iSeries User Group (SEMiUG). Membership in local user groups is not what it once was. The IBM midrange community is no different than most in that regard. One reason for the membership decline is a dearth of educational innovation with the result being decreased value.
I’ve written about the SE Michigan user group before. Check out the “Related Stories” at the bottom of this article. In November, the
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COMMON Hopes Everything Is Bigger in Texas
March 4, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreComputers and the Internet have been important drivers in long distance education, which serves a purpose when time away from the IT department and tight budgets prevent travel. But most educators and students believe in the classroom education leads to greater success. A traditional classroom environment, hands-on lab sessions, as well as the networking with your peers are why people get excited to attend the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition, which is coming up April 7 through 10 in Austin, Texas.
The COMMON conference, or simply COMMON, as most people refer to it, is a special event–the largest gathering
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Mobility Is The Motivator For Green-Screen Migrations
February 25, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM i shops are moving to greener pastures. It’s a migration, but it’s not the one that demonstrates the platform is dead, like some folks have been claiming for longer than a generation of young programmers has been sleeping in their own beds. Those pastures are greener because green-screen applications are steadily being left behind. And the migration within the IBM midrange user base has quickened as a direct result of mobile computing.
It is no more surprising than moving mountains.
“The majority of customers we deal with have mobility as a significant part of their requirements going forward,” I
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Incentives For IBM’s Missouri Facility Scrutinized
February 25, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM opened its state-of-the-art Information Technology Service Delivery Center in Columbia, Missouri, in October 2010. At that time, IBM publicized it would create up to 800 jobs by the end of 2012.
That’s the kind of news any city would welcome these days. And these types of things just don’t drop out of the sky. Cities and states woo corporations to their locations with offers of tax incentives and real estate deals. Of course cities and states are working with public money. And the public expects transparency in how its money–many millions of dollars–is being spent and what is guaranteed
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IBM Tech Conferences Feature Power, Hot Technologies
February 25, 2013 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM has three big technical conferences coming up in the next three months: one specifically for Power Systems, while the other two will take on strategies and best practices for all the hot technologies including mobile, social, big data, and cloud.
The conferences begin with Pulse2013, which begins next week, March 3 to 6, in Las Vegas. IBM anticipates attendance to hit 8,000 and has put together an agenda of more than 450 technical training sessions, hands-on labs, skill certifications, and product demonstrations. The four educational tracks, sort of mini-conferences within Pulse, are Cloud and IT Optimization, Smarter Assets