N2i Archives - IT Jungle

COMMON Dances To A Fresh New Tune In New Orleans

May 4, 2026 Alex Woodie

This wasn’t the first COMMON conference held in New Orleans, but it may have been the best, considering where the IBM i platform is at this particular time and what happened down on the bayou last week.

For starters, the four-day event attracted about 1,300 attendees, which is a solid increase from the 1,200 that attended last year’s conference in Anaheim, California. But here’s the kicker: About one-third of the COMMON POWERUp 2026 attendees were attending the conference for the first time. In other words, around 400 folks decided that IBM i education and community were important enough for them …
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COMMON Youth Movement Continues at POWERUp 2025

May 21, 2025 Alex Woodie

Here’s a shocking fact for you: Disneyland was only five years old when the COMMON user group started way back in 1960. While Mickey Mouse hasn’t aged much, the folks who belong to COMMON and attend events sure have. But if the user group’s latest initiative succeeds, the current trend toward younger and more globally diverse members will continue well into the next decade – and beyond.

The aging of the installed base has been an issue that COMMON has been attempting to rectify for much of the past decade. It’s not necessarily a COMMON problem, but a problem for …
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Youthful IBM i Optimism In Fort Worth

June 3, 2024 Alex Woodie

The IBM i community showed up in force last month for COMMON’s annual conference. And they sure didn’t drive or fly to Fort Worth for the weather, which was hot and muggy. The POWERUp 2024 attendees – all 1,100 of them – came to the show to learn about the platform, which may be in the early stages of – dare we say it? – a youth moment.

First things first: the attendance number. COMMON was shooting for about 1,000, which is about where its annual spring conference has been for the better part of a decade (the fall conferences …
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IBM i Chief Architect Will Gives N2i Some Platform Pointers

January 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

It’s hard to find someone more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the IBM i platform than Steve Will, who holds CTO and chief architect titles at IBM. So when Will accepted an invitation from COMMON’s N2i (New to IBM i) group to speak to IBM i newcomers this week, it was a good chance to pick up something new.

One of the first things that IBM i newcomers will notice about the IBM i is that it’s an unusual platform, in several regards. For starters, it’s older than many platforms, being able to trace its lineage back to …
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IBM i Education Goes a Mile High at COMMON’s POWERUp 2023

April 19, 2023 Alex Woodie

The IBM i community is gearing up for POWERUp 2023, the annual conference and expo held by COMMON that is taking place next week in Denver, Colorado. While information on the recent IBM i Technology Refreshes will be in demand, the event in the Mile High City will showcase just about everything going on with the ever-popular midrange server.

The fun starts bright and early Monday morning at 8:30 MT, with the COMMON POWERUp Opening Session. COMMON President Dawn May will give the community an update on the state of the user group, present awards to the top speakers from …
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N2i Gains Traction Among IBM i Newbies

January 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

The YiPS made a big push to inject youth into the IBM i community over a decade ago. But when the youthful vigor ran low, members of the community regrouped, re-energized, and rebranded into a new group called New to IBM i (N2i). And judging from N2i’s recent success, the group has hit on something.

N2i has its roots in the YiPS, according to Marina Schwenk, who was a YiPS member back in the day and now is active in COMMON and the WMCPA. But there’s a crucial difference between N2i and YIPS, she says.

“The group that we’re …
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2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 1

January 16, 2023 Alex Woodie

What will happen in the IBM i world in 2023? Your guess is as good as ours, which is why we have corralled some of the most respected names in the industry to gaze into their crystal balls and give their prognostication for the year to come.

Donnie MacColl, the senior director of technical support and GDPR data protection officer at Fortra (formerly HelpSystems), kicks off this year’s batch of predictions with an expectation of more automation, thanks to a lack of skilled employees.

“Automated operations will accelerate along with migration to the cloud,” MacColl tells us. “Automation is key …
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Loopback Hackathon Set for Next Week

January 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

The Loopback Hackathon organized by Common Europe last fall was such a hit that the organization is teaming up with COMMON North America for another hackathon next week. And like the previous hackathon, this one is also focused on using IBM i with Loopback, a popular Node.js framework for rapid development of REST APIs.

Mark Irish, an advisory software developer with the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota, was tapped to lead the first Loopback Hackathon, which took place in the Netherlands. Spearheaded by Common Next Gen, a youth-oriented group that’s part of Common Europe, the event was a big …
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Plotting A Middle Age Career Change To IBM i

June 20, 2022 Alex Woodie

Not many colleges teach the IBM i and RPG anymore, which makes it hard for midrange shops to replenish talent that way. But organizations have another resource they can tap for technical personnel: slightly more experienced individuals who are ready to start a second career. This is the path taken by Shelly Petty, who recently shared her story at the POWERUp 2022 conference in New Orleans.

Petty spent 12 years working in the banking field before making her career change to IBM i. Her previous job was a high-stress position that required her to handle securities on behalf of corporate …
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