Maxava Doles Out $52,000 In iFoundation Grants

October 6, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

High availability software maker Maxava has awarded the next round of its iFoundation grants to help promote the IBM i platform.

Founded in 2011, the Maxava iFoundation provides non-profit organizations that are promoting and expanding the IBM i community a grant of up to $2,000 to help in their efforts in the IBM i cause. The iFoundation grants are a perfect example of enlightened self-interest, as is, I must add, the support we get from Maxava in our Four Hundred stack of newsletters. Without companies like Maxava supporting our newsletters, user groups like COMMON, and other national, regional, local user groups, it would be much more difficult to maintain the IBM i community. As I tell all of our advertisers each month, when I send them their bills, we are grateful for the chance to help them do what they do, which is to provide and promote goods and services to the IBM i community, which as you all know, is different from all other IT communities. I have never seen anything else like it, and someday I might write a book on that aspect of it. So I bow to Maxava’s management for its generosity and foresight and I once again encourage other vendors in the IBM i community to reach out, work together, and so similar projects to benefit the community.

Maxava says that this year there were a record number of applications for the iFoundation grants, although the number was not available at press time. Nor was the breakdown by type of project or organization. But it looks like a lot of the money is being given to local user groups for a variety of efforts. The funds can be used to cover educational conferences and workshops, speaker expenses, marketing and educational collaboration with local colleges and universities, and similar means of exchanging information or building community.

“These are all groups working for the continuing vitality of the IBM i community and the development of the people operating within it. Maxava is delighted to see an increase in the number of applicants for 2014,” said Allan Campbell, CEO of Maxava, in a statement announcing the awards. “It is especially encouraging to see the number of participating groups in Europe more than double this year, and we’re looking forward to meeting many of them when we take up looksoftware’s generous invitation to join their iBelieve tour in November of this year.”

You can register for the European iBelieve tour at this link. The tour starts on November 10 in Norway and goes through Switzerland, Austria, Poland, BeNeLux, and ends in the United Kingdom on November 20. Frank Soltis, the former chief architect of the AS/400 and its successors, is joined by his own successor, Steve Will of IBM, on this tour. Trevor Perry, the self-appointed and very effective IBM i evangelist, and Alison Butterill, IBM i product offering manager at IBM, are also speaking on the tour.

iFoundation grants were passed out to organizations in the Americas, in Europe, and in Africa, and a spokesperson for Maxava says that the majority of them were related to user groups in one form or another. Many of them do not want to have their grants publicized, so we can’t tell you about them. But the Southeast Michigan IBM i User Group (SEMIUG) was happy to pipe up about what its plans were for its iFoundation grant. The money is being spent to support its “iDevcloud box,” which as the name suggests is an application development machine that runs the IBM i platform. The user group is inviting programming students to create a game on the IBM i platform, and will award prizes to the best game in November.

“This is a great opportunity to engage the future generation of resource into our local community and get acquainted with future talent,” explained Laura Ubelhor, SEMIUG’s president. This worthwhile activity will greatly impact the future of the platform within our local community.”