The Rest of the Story

When Paul Tuohy retired in 2023, we knew that there was still an important role for SiD to fill in the IBM i community, particularly with programs such as the Lunch & Learn series. Since we also plan to retire someday, that meant finding new partners to fill Paul's role and, in time, ours. Let's just say that finding such people turned out to be a lot harder than we had hoped!

But eventually three community-minded people stepped forward, and we knew immediately they would be the perfect fit to carry on the SiD tradition.

So, won't you please join us in welcoming our new team members: Patrick Behr, Simon Hutchinson, and Mike Pavlak. All three of them are IBM Champions and award-winning speakers, so you know they know their stuff! In addition, each of them is among the subject matter experts we have turned to over the years for help with our own technical questions. If their names are not familiar to you, here's a brief introduction to each of them:

Mike Pavlak

We have known Mike as a friend and colleague for many years. He will be a familiar face to those of you who have ever attended an RPG & Db2 Summit event or workshop. His willingness to take on some new, trendy topic we wanted to cover at the Summit earned him the name "Mikey," a label that sticks with him to this day. For those not familiar with "Mikey will do it", it all started out with this commercial. Mike has been an active speaker at COMMON, Summit, and countless user group events around the world. Like us, he believes that every one of us needs to learn something new every day, and he delights in spreading the knowledge he gains.

Simon Hutchinson

Jon is especially thrilled that Simon is joining us, as he is no longer the only one with an accent! Simon is probably best known as the powerhouse behind the RPGPGM.COM blog, where he covers all things RPG and SQL. His prolific collection contains hundreds of blog posts — most of which include detailed code examples demonstrating "how to" information for many topics. Simon has been an avid supporter of User Groups for many years. Indeed, when he moved to Austin and discovered that there was no local user group, he promptly created one! Check out the Central Texas IBM i User Group.

Patrick Behr

We haven't known Patrick as long as Mike and Simon, but from our very first interactions with him we were struck by his passion for education and community. We first met him while working with the Ocean User group, where he currently serves as a Vice President and Conference Chair. He is a frequent speaker at COMMON and other User group events and also produces regular "How-To" articles and videos. You can find many of these, including his Getting Started with VS Code for i video series, on the Seiden Group website.

We're thrilled to be working with Simon, Mike and Patrick, and we know that you will appreciate learning new techniques from them as much as we do!

Susan Gantner and Jon Paris