Four Hundred Monitor, August 9

August 9, 2017 Dan Burger

We all know the short answer to the “What is Watson” question. Watson is IBM’s cognitive computing superstar. What to do with Watson and how to do it is a little foggy. If you’ve read the IT Jungle articles, you’re ahead of most. But if you’re still sorting out artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, this interview with IBM’s Alison Butterill and Jesse Gorzinski could help see cognitive more clearly.

Also in this issue, internship programs can help grow your IT staff while injecting youth and new skills. Internships attract talent. Think of it as an extended interview and planning for a long-term asset.

Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

(i Talk With Tuohy) If you’re still trying to figure out what exactly is cognitive computing, you’re not alone. Is Watson cognitive computing? What about artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning? IBM’s Alison Butterill and Jesse Gorzinski sort through the cognitive topic and explain how it can help businesses running on IBM i solve problems.

(MCPress) Brian May believes IBM i shops would benefit from internship programs. Picking quality interns is not difficult, and even if you must teach them about the IBM i and RPG, you get quality work at an internship price. And in the bigger picture, more internship programs, results in more young professionals who understand the value of IBM i. Help yourself. Help the community.

(IT and Us) How do enterprises with decades (and even centuries) of history defend themselves against start-ups using the most modern technologies? Even if they can figure out how to make that transition, will embracing the latest technology be enough?

(InformationWeek) Ruby on Rails combines two concepts developers love: elegant, readable code and easy development. This led to a surge in popularity for the web application framework in the early 2000s. But Ruby on Rails’ inherent problems such as scalability, error testing, speed and magical methods can cause frustration

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources

(Seiden Group) This handout from Alan Seiden’s presentation titled “Speed up your web site” includes tips for improving Web application performance. It focuses on front-end performance including topics such as request-response protocol, caching, creating favicons, the “KeepAlive” setting, compression to decrease file size, and tips for JavaScript and cascading style sheets.

(IBM) The details of building cognitive applications with visual recognition are covered in volume three of a seven-piece collection of IBM Redbooks titled Building Cognitive Applications with IBM Watson Services. The series includes getting started, conversation services, visual recognition, natural languages classifier; language translators; speech-to-text and text-to-speech; and natural language understanding.

(Storagepipe) This white paper is a beginner’s guide to understanding cloud storage methods and terminology. It includes information on automating data protection and data recovery.

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

September 6 & 7 — Rochester, Minnesota – COMMON and IBM are hosting an educational event featuring Watson and IBM i as the cognitive platform for business. It includes the IBM Bluemix cloud platform and focuses on solving problems and driving business value with applications, infrastructure and services. Cognitive capabilities include language translation, text-to-voice, cognitive searching and Watson analytics. All can be added to existing RPG applications and Db2 for IBM i data. All sessions will be taught by IBM professionals. Registration fee is $299.

September 19 — Schaumburg, Illinois – The 2017 Omni Technical Conference and Expo features IBM i on Power Systems education on important topics such as advanced RPG, DB2, SQL, application development, Web development, application modernization, security, modern toolsets, and systems administration. The conference will be held at the IBM Schaumburg offices.

September 27-29 — Virginia Beach, Virginia -The Mid-Atlantic Group of IBM i Collaborators (MAGIC) IBM i User Conference is a three-day event with sessions and hands-on labs and is highlighted by three presentations by IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will. Topics for the lab sessions include PHP, .NET, RDi, Git, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A complete list of all sessions, speakers and vendors is available online. MAGIC supports the IBM i users in the Mid-Atlantic area: Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania. Registration is $320 for MAGIC members and $400 for non-members.

October 2-4 — St. Louis, Missouri – The COMMON Fall Conference features technical sessions, workshops, certifications, networking opportunities, and a vendor expo. The session grid and speaker lineup has yet to be posted, but you can expect a mix of fundamental skills and new technologies. An early registration discount is available and hotel reservations can be made.

October 17-19 — Minneapolis, Minnesota – The twice-a-year, spring and fall, RPG & DB2 Summit returns to the upper Midwest for its next technical conference with an agenda that expands to cover new topics such as Python for RPGers, how to bring the power of Watson to RPG applications, and SQL aggregation. It also incorporates sessions that will introduce hidden gems in DB2 for i as well as anticipated Q4 2017 updates to the database. In addition to the three-day Summit, an optional fourth day of hands-on workshops October 16, provides intensive education into four technology areas — SQL, RSE/RDi, Service Programs or PHP. Workshop attendees choose one topic for the “deep dive.” An early registration discount is available through August 31.