New IBM Champion Class Grows Nearly 40 Percent

January 29, 2024 Alex Woodie

IBM unveiled a new crop of IBM Champions this month, and the first thing that stands out is the size of the 2024 IBM Champions class. Big Blue gave the honor to 1,155 individuals this year, a 38 percent increase over last year. Just about everyone who applied was named an IBM Champion, says Libby Ingrassia, the IBM program director, who also noted there was considerable overlap between IBM Champions and the new IBM Rising Champion Advocacy badge program.

IBM launched its IBM Champions program back in 2008 as a way to boost the visibility of customers and business partners who are subject matter experts or otherwise display thought leadership in their respective communities. Every year since, it has honored dozens to hundreds of individuals across categories like Power Systems, cloud, security, and analytics. IBM never offered an IBM i category in the IBM Champions program, but we’ve done our best at IT Jungle to figure out which IBM Champions belonged in our corner of the Power Systems market.

IBM is doing things a little bit differently this year. As Ingrassia mentioned in her LinkedIn post, IBM has accepted many more people into the program. “Please note, for the first year ever we didn’t have to say ‘no’ to almost anyone,” she wrote.

What’s more, almost all IBM Champion nominees qualified for one or more badges in our IBM Rising Champions Advocacy badging program, Ingrassia added. The IBM Rising Champion Advocacy program is a separate but related program that IBM started in 2023 as a way to “recognizes the advocacy contributions of IBM technology advocates,” Ingrassia wrote in a December blog post about the program.

To be considered for a IBM Rising Champion Advocacy badge, applicants must be members of the TechXchange Community and have committed two or more “acts of advocacy” – such as content creation, code contribution, hosting or supporting an IBM-related event, engaging in the TechXchange Community, providing a press or analyst reference, or other acts – over the past 12 months.

The IBM Rising Champion Advocacy program functions as “an on-ramp” for people to become IBM Champions, according to IBM. There are three levels of badging that people (only non-IBMers are considered) can achieve as part of the IBM Rising Champion Advocacy program. To gain the IBM Contributor badge, applicants must submit two eligible acts of advocacy. The next level, IBM Advocate, requires an additional three acts of advocacy, while the loftiest badge, IBM Influencer, requires three more acts of advocacy within a year, for a total of eight. You can see the full list of requirements at the IBM Rising Champions Advocacy Badge application webpage.

Another reason for the growth in the IBM Champion program is a big focus by IBM on artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud, Ingrassia wrote. “That doesn’t discount any other technology areas or products – we can’t do any of this without all of us,” Ingrassia wrote on her LinkedIn. “But we did almost double our investment in AI-focused IBM Champions, creating a huge growth area.”

You can see all of the 1,155 IBM Champions at IBM’s official IBM Champions webpage. IBM hasn’t yet indexed this year’s class by category, so it’s not immediately clear what the IBM Champions’ specialties and focus-areas are.

Needless to say, a lot of the names will be familiar to the IBM i community, including: Torbjörn Appehl, Josh Bander, Patrick Behr, Horacio Benedicto, Rob Berendt, Larry Bolhuis, Jim Buck, Calvin Buckley, Koen Decorte, Alan Fulton, Ashley Giddings, Kim Greene, Charles Guarino, Vernon Hamberg, Birgitta Hauser, Simon Hutchinson, Tom Huntington, Diego Kesselman, Scott Klement, Niels Liisberg, Pete Massiello, Jon Paris, Mike Pavlak, Steve Pitcher, Richard Schoen, Marina Schwenk, Alan Seiden, Holger Scherer, Heidi Schmidt, Peg Tuttle, Dave Waddell, Dave Wiseman, Steven Wolk, Jack Woehr, Carol Woodbury, and Andy Youens.

Some of these IBM Champions took to social media to share the news of their inclusion in the program for 2024.

“So many thanks once again to #IBM for this wonderful recognition,” wrote Guarino, president of Central Park Data Systems, on LinkedIn. “I am proud to be part of the community. It is truly an honor to join all of the IBM Champions worldwide.”

“I am thrilled to announce that I have been named an IBM Champion for 2024!” wrote Tuttle, who hosts the Incredible i Podcast and who recently joined Connectria, on LinkedIn. “It’s an incredible honor to be an IBM Champion. It is not just an individual achievement but a reflection of the amazing community I am fortunate to be a part of.”

Josh Bander, a Briteskies executive who turned heads in 2023 with his viral IBM i Everywhere marketing campaign, got the nod for the first time. “I’m proud to announce that I’ve joined an exclusive group of some of the most talented professionals in the world: The #IBMChampions2024!!” Bander wrote on LinkedIn. “Thank you all for being so supportive of the #IBMiEverywhere posts!”

“Honored to be named an IBM Champion for the 12th or 13th year in a row!” wrote Massiello, who recently retired from iTech Solutions Group, now part of Service Express, on LinkedIn. “It’s always a privilege to stand with some of the most amazing people I know. Being a Lifetime IBM Power Systems Champion still blows my mind after all these years. It’s truly the highest honor in the #IBMi & #POWERSYSTEMS industry. Thank you for this incredible recognition!”

“I am delighted and honored to have been nominated (Thanks, Simon!) and now named as an IBM Champion for 2024,” wrote Hamberg, a senior IT developer for Ecolab. “I look forward to learning and sharing with this community of over 1,000 persons around the world and especially continuing to promote and have an influence on IBM’s midrange systems on Power. This will be an extension of what I’ve been doing these last several years and an opportunity for more growth.”

Editor’s note: This story has changed. IBM has not “lowered the bar” for the IBM Champions program, as we first reported. Ingrassia tells us that her statement, “. . .We didn’t have to say ‘no’ to almost anyone” actually referred to the creation of the IBM Rising Champions program, and that acceptance criteria for IBM Champions remained the same as previous years.

This Issue Sponsored By

Table of Contents

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search