Four Hundred Monitor, September 13

September 13, 2017 Dan Burger

Earlier this year, at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Expo, we started to hear what Watson could do when integrated with IBM i. People are still asking questions and more information is being made available. Cognitive computing, with its analytic capabilities, is bringing change to traditional enterprise application development. You don’t have to be smarter than Watson. You just need to be smart enough to know about Watson.

Also in Monitor this week: IBM and MIT partner on cognitive computing research; the right and wrong of agile development; and an IBM internship program for re-entering women in their tech careers. A model for IBM i to follow?

Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

(You and i) The future of business applications will be closely associated with cognitive computing. But that doesn’t mean application developers need to be experts in artificial intelligence. However, if you are unaware of what Watson can do and what it can do for IBM i, you are missing out on some good stuff.

(Tech Crunch) IBM and MIT have agreed to a 10-year, $240 million partnership that establishes the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab at the prestigious Cambridge, Massachusetts academic institution. Big Blue intends to invest $240 million into the lab where IBM researchers and MIT students and faculty will work side by side to conduct advanced AI research. Details of the intellectual property produced there are yet to be etched in stone.

(IoTDoneQuick) Thinking you are agile does not make you agile. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, stuff is harder than you thought, or changes need to be made based on customer feedback. So, maybe you should outsource your agility. Here’s why that is a bad idea.

(CNET) IBM’s Tech Re-Entry Program is designed to reverse the trend of women leaving their technology jobs. The program is a 12-week internship working on data analytics or programming projects with a mentor. So far, more than 30 interns have “graduated” to jobs. I’d like to see a project like this set up specifically for IBM i shops.

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources

(Linoma Software) Many organizations don’t have a secure and efficient way to handle data transfers. This survey calculates the savings from creating and managing file transfer processes based on interviews with customers using Linoma’s managed file transfer software.

(IBM developerWorks) The IBM Rational Developer for i Hub is a place for the RDi community to mingle and discuss all things RDi. It also provides a library of useful RDi information and resources.

(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.

(IBM) The IBM Watson developer community lives here. Getting started tutorials, finding tools, resources, documentation, and a question and answer forum—it’s all here.

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

September 14 — St. Louis, Missouri – Node.js and RPG will be the featured topics of discussion at the Gateway/400 user group meeting. Guest speaker Alex Roytman, CEO of Profound Logic Software, will present a remote session that includes how Node.js can deploy applications that are database- driven and transactional; how Node.js and RPG integrate; and how the Profound.js free framework, connector tools, and conversion service enable modernization. The user group meeting begins with lunch at noon followed by the presentation. The meeting location is Spazio’s restaurant located at 12031 Lakeland Road.

September 14 — Wauwatosa, Wisconsin – Open source subject matter expert Mike Pavlak will be presenting two sessions at the monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association. The first session is an introduction to Python on IBM i and the second session explores PHP and MVC application architecture. The meeting will be held at Mo’s Irish Pub located at 10842 West Bluemound Road.

September 14 — Nashville, Tennessee – The meeting of the IBM Midrange Users Group of Middle Tennessee will feature a presentation on SQL views, procedures and functions by David Lane. He will explain how SQL interfaces can be used to access, transform, order, and subset the information without needing to code to a system API. Lane has been programming since 1992 and has written applications for manufacturers, retailers, and trucking companies. He currently serves as president of the user group. The meeting begins with networking at 5:30, followed by dinner at 6 and the presentation after dinner.

September 19 — Eden Prairie, Minnesota – RPG and RDi expert Susan Gantner will be discussing free format RPG at the monthly meeting of QUSER, the local user group for IBM midrange professionals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The presentation will explain why free format RPG is important, the rules and the gotchas, available conversion tools, and how Rational Developer for i (RDi) can help. The meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the HelpSystems offices located at 6455 City West Parkway.

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. IBM i experts on the speaker list include Tim Rowe, Scott Forstie, Barbara Morris, and Pete Massiello. The conference will be held at the IBM Schaumburg offices.

September 19 — Costa Mesa, California – The OCEAN User Group meeting will feature the annual State of the IT Job Market presentation by Bob Langieri, director of IT recruiting at Excel Technical Services. Langieri monitors the market for IBM i jobs, particularly in Southern California, where positions are limited compared to 10 to 15 years ago and are likely to be temporary and filled by contractors or freelancers. He provides advice for both job seekers and employers. The meeting location is National University located at 3390 Harbor Boulevard. It begins at 5:30 p.m.

September 20 — Markham, Ontario, Canada – Thibault Dambrine–an IT professional working out of Calgary, Alberta. His IBM i systems experience spans retail, ERP, telecom billing, data warehousing and data conversions. The presentations he will deliver are rooted in lived-in experience–is the guest speaker at the Toronto User Group meeting. We will present two sessions. At 5 p.m. he shares his knowledge on SQL joins and aggregate functions. At 7 p.m., he provides insights on data conversion methods. Between the two sessions is a buffet dinner and networking. The meeting location is the Monte Carlo Inn & Suites Downtown Markham.

September 21 — Burlington, Vermont – The Vermont Midrange User Group will host its 13th Annual Technical Conference from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The list of speakers includes Alison Butterill, offering manager for IBM i; Doug Mack, DB2 for i consultant for IBM Lab Services; Aaron Bartell, director of IBM i innovation for Krengeltech; and Paul Tuohy, CEO of Comcon. A conference registration discount is available through August 28. The event will take place at the DoubleTree Burlington hotel.

September 25 — Webinar – Steve Will, Pete Massiello and Trevor Perry discuss the top concerns of IT executives running mission-critical applications on IBM i. Topics on the agenda include leveraging existing applications to meet evolving business needs, total cost of ownership of IBM i compared to other systems, the value of modernizing applications instead of replacing them, and overcoming development challenges that keep older applications and older versions of the operating system in place. This session begins at 1 p.m. Central Time. Bring someone who is unfamiliar with IBM i.

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.

September 27 — Westbury, New York – Scott Forstie, the DB2 for i Business Architect, will be the guest speaker at the Long Island Systems Users Group monthly meeting. Forstie will present three sessions on SQL: SQL Views for Dummies at 3:30 p.m., SQL for the Security Officer at 5 p.m., and DB2 for i Tools at 8 p.m. In between sessions two and three, there will be time for networking, cocktails, and dinner. LISUG meetings are held at the Westbury Manor located at 1100 Jericho Turnpike.

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 16-17 — Minneapolis, Minnesota – The CIO Summit, an event focused on exploring ways to leverage IBM i investments, is open to a limited number of CIOs. Topics of discussion include common challenges faced by IBM i CIOs and IT directors, managing new technology, evaluating the cloud, hiring the right skills, delivering enhancements, and completing integrations and new applications on time and on budget. Requests for invitations are being handled online.

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.

October 16-20 — New Orleans, Louisiana – The IBM Power Systems and Storage Technical University agenda will include more than 600 technical sessions delivered by top IBM developers and experts. Topic areas include IBM i, AIX, Linux on Power, Open Power, Power hardware and software, and storage. Sessions and demos are geared to all skill levels. Take advantage of networking opportunities to connect with product developers and industry leaders and join in discussions on real-world IT challenges and successes

October 23–26 — Las Vegas, Nevada – ZendCon offers authoritative sessions, in-depth technical tutorials, exhibit hall activities, and informal opportunities to spotlight the best in enterprise PHP and open source development, focusing on the latest for PHP 7, the evolution of frameworks and tools, API excellence, and innovations on many open source technologies related to the web. It includes a track specifically for IBM i development.