IT Jungle Editor Added To RPG Summit Speakers
January 13, 2014 Dan Burger
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Ted Holt, senior technical editor of the “Four Hundred Guru” newsletter published by IT Jungle has been selected to the cadre of speakers lined up for the next RPG & DB2 Summit, which will take place March 18 – 20, in Grapevine, Texas. Holt joins a group of instructors that includes Jon Paris, Susan Gantner, Paul Tuohy, Scott Klement, Aaron Bartell, Mike Pavlak, Mike Cain, Tom McKinley, and Barbara Morris. Paris, Gantner, and Tuohy are the proprietors of System i Developer, the training and education organization that stages the twice annual Summit conferences. Holt has been on the IT Jungle staff as a writer and editor since the publishing company’s inception in 2001. The Four Hundred Guru article index contains a library of tips and techniques supplied mainly by Holt, but also enriched by the contributions of Paris, Gantner, Tuohy, and many others. In addition to editing Guru, Holt has a day job as a senior systems analyst at The Taylor Group in Louisville, Mississippi. He’s the author of four technical books on topics that include CL, Open Query File, and QShell and has been a speaker at COMMON conferences and local user group events throughout the United States. Holt’s presentation “30 SQL Tips in 60 Minutes” has won him accolades and is a testament to his SQL expertise. His IT career began in 1981 and has primarily involved IBM midrange computers; his industry experience includes the fields of manufacturing, healthcare, education, retail, and wholesale. The combination of his professional accomplishments, communication skills, and unpretentious disposition led to the decision to add him to the Summit’s list of prestigious instructors. “Ted has a very practical slant on things as you can clearly tell from his IT Jungle articles. It is also clear from looking at the feedback from his readers that he is able to communicate things in a way that makes sense to people. We looked for a way to bring him in to the ‘family.’ We were significantly revamping the agenda for the spring 2014 conference and Ted was a perfect fit,” Paris said. The RPG & DB2 Summit, which has attracted between 100 and 150 attendees to each of its conferences, has a reputation for its interactive learning environment that stems from smaller class size and an emphasis on personalized attention, has been on an attendance upswing. An increased demand for modern RPG and SQL skills appears to be nudging the attendance upward, which perhaps is an indicator that companies are more inclined to leverage their IT investments to solve business problems and seek competitive advantages. According to Gantner, registration for the October 2013 conference in Minneapolis hit its capacity. “It is important to us to keep the Summit small enough that every attendee can get personal attention from the speakers,” she said. The Summit classes are organized into more than a dozen “session roadmaps” that focus on topics such as Blending SQL with RPG, Exploiting DB2 with SQL, Web Services, Mobilizing RPG Apps, Web Programming, Query/Reporting/BI, and ILE and Modular Programming. The session agenda gets tweaked with each new conference and always includes new and updated sessions on coding techniques in areas of high demand including SQL and CL. The goal, according to Gantner, is helping programmers deliver modern applications on the IBM i faster and more effectively. In addition to the three-day Summit agenda, there will also be pre-conference electives that include Gantner’s RSE/RDP/RDi Hands-On Workshop, as well as a hands-on PHP workshop and two half-day SQL seminars. Those workshop and seminar sessions will take place Monday, March 17, one day before the Summit begins. The Embassy Suites Outdoor World in Grapevine will be the host hotel for the RPG & DB2 Summit in March. RELATED STORIES IBM i Advocate Ian Jarman To Keynote At RPG & DB2 Summit RPG & DB2 Summit Registrations Rise, Signals Progress In IBM i Shops RPG & DB2 Summit Adds Analytics, BI To Agenda
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