Susan Gantner
www.partner400.com
Susan's career has spanned over 24 years in the field of application development. She began as a programmer developing applications for corporations in Atlanta, Georgia, working with a variety of hardware and software platforms. She joined IBM in 1985 and quickly developed a close association with the Rochester laboratory during the development of the AS/400 system.
Susan worked in Rochester, Minnesota for 5 years in the AS/400 Technical Support Center. She later moved to the IBM Toronto Software Laboratory to provide technical support for programming languages and AD tools on the AS/400.
Susan left IBM in 1999 to devote more time to teaching and consulting.Her primary emphasis is on enabling customers to take advantage of the latest programming and database technologies on OS/400.
Susan is a regular speaker at COMMON conferences and other technical conferences around the world and holds a number of Speaker Excellence
medals from COMMON.
Susan is a Technical Editor with IBM Systems Magazine.
Skip Marchesani
Skip Marchesani retired from IBM after 25 years and is now a consultant with Custom Systems Corp, an IBM Business partner. Skip spent much of his IBM career working with the Rochester Development Lab on projects for S/38 and AS/400, and was involved with the development of the AS/400. He was part of the team that taught early AS/400 education to customers and IBM lab sites worldwide.
Skip is recognized as an industry expert on DB2 UDB for System i, iSeries, and AS/400 and author of the book 'DB2/400: The New AS/400 Database'. He specializes in providing customized education for any area of the System i, iSeries, and AS/400; does database design and design reviews, and general System I, iSeries, and AS/400 consulting for interested clients. He has been a speaker for user groups, technical conferences, and System i, iSeries, and AS/400 audiences around the world. Skip is an award winning COMMON speaker and has received their Distinguished Service Award.
Jon Paris
www.partner400.com
Jon's IBM midrange career started when he fell in love with the System/38 while working as a consultant. This love affair ultimately led him to joining IBM.
In 1987, Jon was hired by the IBM Toronto Laboratory to work on the S/36 and S/38 COBOL compilers. Subsequently Jon became involved with the AS/400 and in particular COBOL/400.
In early 1989 Jon was transferred to the Languages Architecture and Planning Group, with particular responsibility for the COBOL and RPG languages. There he played a major role in the definition of the new RPG IV language and in promoting its use with IBM Business Partners and Users. He was also heavily involved in producing educational and other support materials and services related to other AS/400 programming languages and development tools, such as CODE/400 and VisualAge for RPG.
Jon left IBM in 1998 to focus on developing and delivering education focused on enhancing AS/400 and iSeries application development skills.
Jon is a frequent speaker at User Groups meetings and conferences around the world, and holds a number of speaker excellence awards from COMMON.
Jon is a Technical Editor with IBM Systems Magazine.
Paul Tuohy
www.comconadvisor.com
Paul Tuohy has worked in the development of IBM Midrange applications since the '70s. He has been IT manager for Kodak Ireland Ltd. and Technical Director of Precision Software Ltd. and is currently CEO of ComCon, a midrange consultancy company based in Dublin, Ireland. He has been teaching and lecturing since the mid-'80s.
Paul is the author of "Re-engineering RPG Legacy Applications", "The Programmers Guide to iSeries Navigator" and the self teach course "iSeries Navigator for Programmers". He writes regular articles for many publications and is one of the quoted industry experts in the IBM Redbook "Who knew you could do that with RPG IV?".
As well as speaking at RPG & DB2 Summit, Paul is also an award winning speaker who speaks regularly at US COMMON and other conferences throughout the world
Scott Klement
www.scottklement.com
Scott Klement is the I.T. Manager and Senior Programmer at Klement Sausage Co, Inc. He is also a technical editor for System i NEWS magazine (formerly known as NEWS/400) as well as the editor of the popular Club Tech/System iNetwork Programming Tips e-newsletter.
His efforts to help RPG programmers improve their skills have earned Scott an iSeries Innovation Award (presented by Mark Shearer GM of the iSeries division of IBM and Beverly Russell, President of COMMON), a Gary Guthrie Award for Excellence in Technical Writing by the staff of System iNEWS magazine. a Silver Medal for best Feature Series the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) (West region), and "Speaker of Merit" from COMMON.
Scott lives with his wife and son in the Milwaukee WI area.
George Farr
George Farr joined the IBM Toronto Laboratory in May 1985 and worked with the RPG development team for seven years where he developed many functions in the compiler. After spending a year with the AS/400 languages architecture and planning team he joined the visual development organization as the compiler development team leader for the first release of VARPG and later became the Visual RPG Development Manager. Currently he is the Technical Manager for all of the RPG compilers on the iSeries and Windows platforms. In addition, he is the technical development manager for a new generation of tooling based on the eclipse technology.
He is a frequent award-winning speaker at COMMON, conferences and user groups worldwide. He has published numerous articles on the subject of AS/400 languages and environments. He authored many books including 'ILE- A First Look', 'RPG IV By example' and most recently he co-authored, with Phil Coulthard the books: 'Java for RPG programmers', and 'Java for COBOL Programmers On OS/390 and OS/400'.
Barbara Morris
Barbara Morris is the lead developer for the WDS compilers in the IBM Toronto Lab. She has been working on the RPG compilers since she started at IBM in 1989 after receiving a Computing Science degree from the University of Alberta. The first enhancement she developed was the ENDIF/ENDDO opcodes for RPG/400 in V2R1; her most recent enhancement was the XML opcodes for ILE RPG in V5R4. Some of the other notable enhancements that she developed for RPG include subprocedures, qualified data structures, and the call-interaction with Java.
Barbara is a regular participant in several online RPG forums, and has published many articles about RPG.
Mike Cain
Mike Cain is a Senior Technical Staff Member within the IBM Systems and
Technology Group focusing on DB2 for i5/OS performance and scalability.
Prior to his current position, he worked as an IBM AS/400 Systems Engineer
and Technical Consultant. Before joining IBM in 1988, Mike worked as a
System/38 programmer and DP Manager for a property and casualty insurance
company. Mike has extensive experience working with customers and business
partners, and uses this knowledge to influence the solutions, development
and support processes. He is located in Rochester, MN USA.
Kent Milligan
Kent Milligan is a senior DB2 for i5/OS consultant in IBM ISV Business Strategy and Solutions Enablement for the System i platform. After graduating from the University of Iowa in 1989, Kent spent the first eight years of his IBM career as a member of the DB2 development team in Rochester. He speaks and writes regularly on various DB2 for i5/OS relational database topics.
Bruce Vining
Bruce Vining is President and co-founder of Bruce Vining Services, L.L.C., a firm providing contract programming and consulting services to the System i community (www.brucevining.com). He began his career in1979 as an IBM Systems Engineer in St. Louis Missouri then transferring to Rochester, Minnesota in 1985 where he continues to reside. From 1992 until leaving IBM in 2007 Bruce was a member of the System Design Control Group responsible for OS/400 and i5/OS areas such as System APIs, Globalization, and Software Serviceability. A frequent speaker and writer, Bruce can be reached at bvining@brucevining.com
