The RPG & DB2 Summit - Fall 2011

With the excitement of the St Louis Cardinals' National League title game as a backdrop, over 100 upbeat IBM i professionals arrived in St. Louis for the RPG & DB2 Summit. Check out the Photo Gallery for a peek at some of the week's highlights.

Enthusiasm for the IBM i quickly eclipsed baseball once the lure of new development tips and techniques was cast. To hear Paul tell it, we're lucky that he pried Jon away from the Word Lens translation app long enough to help teach Mobilize Your i. Cool mobile apps DO fire the imagination and fuel innovation. But first, many shops want to refine the basic building blocks, making A Pattern for Reusable RPG Code, Top 10 Things RPGers Must Know and I Didn't Know You Could Do That Using SQL the most-attended sessions.

Keynote speaker Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, CIO at FIDM, challenged all of us to nurture a culture of innovation. Among her suggestions: not only must you have a strong business case for each IT project, but you must be able to articulate that case to management, or partner with someone who can. Finding a non-IT champion for each project can build bridges and increase the chance of project approval. An IT steering committee composed of business-level IT advocates (not necessarily execs) can also keep IT directed and give it more traction internally.

We faced a more immediate challenge . . . we were honored to have Ted Holt, widely respected editor of The Four Hundred Guru, among our attendees for this event. Kudos to Scott Klement, Kent Milligan, Mike Cain, Barbara Morris, Aaron Bartell, Scott Salisbury and Trevor Seeney for rising to the occasion and sending Ted (and all of us!) home intellectually satiated.

But more than anything, we continue to appreciate the good humor, curiosity, and camaraderie throughout this community, and how each individual at the Summit contributes to the fun. Hey, who knew that good-natured ribbing of a colleague could rob you of the best door prize (a Roku streaming media player with Netflix) and stick you with the annoying Singing Snow Man?

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