YiPs, Jim Buck and AITP conference

So I’ve been working on a side pet project for awhile now and thought I would mention it now that ITJungle has written an article .

If you haven’t met Jim Buck you should.  He’s a great guy with an amazing mustache (well groomed, no crumbs, no strays).  Jim is probably one of the most I-care-about-the-students-I-teach teachers I have ever met.  He goes to A LOT of effort for his students and the IBM i community, which is why when he asks something from me I always do my best to bend over backwards to help.

So Jim calls me up a few months ago and tells me about this AITP conference that has a COBOL contest and thinks it’s a crying shame there isn’t an RPG one – because after all, anybody that has programmed in RPG knows that COBOL is inferior [ducks and runs].  We got to talking and decided that contests need to be fun.  Forget the challenge of creating a green-bar report from RPG – how about an RPG web application using open source Javascript frameworks!  So that’s what we’ve set out to do and we are just wrapping up the contest details this week.

Thanks also needs to go to COMMON because they are helping to fund travel.  IBM will also have representation at the conference with members from the RPG compiler and IBM i product teams.

I don’t know how often this happens (i.e. IBM and big user groups like COMMON attending college conferences) but it is a necessity for the future of IBM i so a next generation work force can take the place of the many retiring currently and in the near future.

What would I like from you the community?  The LEAST I will ask is that you send an email to Pete Massiello (president of COMMON) and Linda Grigoleit (IBM i Academic initiative lead) telling them thanks for supporting this effort AND that you would like to see more.

Linda: lfg@us.ibm.com

Pete: peter_massiello@common.org

Thanks for reading…

AaronBartell.com

http://aitpncc-contests.org/?page_id=356