Thank you Patrick

I want to thank Patrick Behr for taking the time, last night, to talk to the Central Texas IBM i User Group.

Our next meeting will be in January, the person talking to the group, subject matter, and the date will be announced later.

November 2024 meeting

Our March meeting will be on Tuesday November 19 at 6:30 PM US Central Time (see the time in your time zone) .

This month we welcome Patrick Behr, a COMMON Speaker of Merit.

Presentation  SQL 101 Bullet Train:
Hang on as we go from 0 to 300 MPH with SQL. We'll start out slow by covering the basics of creating tables, inserting, and selecting data. We pick up speed as we discuss Constraints, Join Types, and SQL Views. We will be going at full speed when we learn how to leverage Functions, Procedures, and Db2 Services! We will bring it all back to the station as we use all our SQL skills to build a project that combines everything we've learned along the way.

1. Use SQL to create tables and avoid common data errors with constraints
2. How to use Views, Functions, Procedures
3. Discover how many Db2 services are available!
4. See how all these things fit together

Bio:  With a career in IT spanning over 20 years, Patrick Behr has been working on IBM i (and its predecessors) for all of it. He spent most of his career working with RPG and Db2, and earned the COMMON ILE RPG Developer Certification. He has also worked in web development and application and database modernization. Patrick is a COMMON Speaker of Merit and has spoken at conferences and user groups across the country.

September 2024 meeting

The Central Texas IBM i User Group will be holding its September meeting on Tuesday September 10 at 6:30 PM US Central Time .

This meeting is online, FREE, and open to everyone.

Our guest presenter is Jasmine Kaczmarek.

Presentation description:  This session will feature tips, tricks and suggestions to guide you through various events and transitions you may experience in the modern workplace, from ransomware to working and managing staff remotely.

 

Bio:  With over ten years of experience on the IBM Power System, Jasmine's passions include modernization, API development, integration of gamification techniques into business applications and mentoring new developers. Jasmine is an avid promoter of adopting open-source languages into traditional RPG-only businesses to aid in the development of modern user experiences. She also has a keen interest in hobby development projects using Unity and improving outdated small business websites. Jasmine is a member of the N2i Committee and the COMMON America Advisory Council (CAAC). Jasmine Kaczmarek is the Vice President of Technology for M.R. Williams in North Carolina.

July 2024 meeting

The Central Texas IBM i User Group will be holding its July meeting on Tuesday July 9 at 6:30 PM US Central Time .

This meeting is online, FREE, and open to everyone.

Our guest presenter is Simon Hutchinson.

Presentation description:  Have you recently taken over responsibility for a LPAR? Or are you concerned there is too much "rubbish" on your systems? Use these techniques to identify the most common wastes of space you have, & plan your cleanup efforts. Includes: How to identify the big three “wasters” of space, Simple ways to clean this up, How to monitor that this does not happen again.

 

Bio:  Simon has been writing his highly acclaimed IBM i blog, RPGPGM.COM, for eleven years sharing his knowledge, experience, and giving many detailed examples of the latest RPG, SQL, and CL. His work has led him to be recognized by IBM as an IBM Champion for Power and IBM i Community Advocate. He is a subject matter expert for COMMON North America, awarded the John Earle Speaker Scholarship in 2023, and this year was recognized as Gold medal speaker.

May 2024 meeting

The Central Texas IBM i User Group will be holding its March meeting on Monday May 13 at 6:30 PM US Central Time .

This meeting is online, FREE, and open to everyone.

Our guest presenter is Marina Schwenk.

Presentation description:  Service Programs and Unit Testing the Perfect Pair
Do you have monolithic programs that you have to start breaking up into manageable pieces? Have you been tasked to start unit testing and don’t know where to start? This session is meant for you.

We will work through the benefits to modernizing your code and why you want to adopt unit testing. We will work through breaking apart monolithic programs and how to write their respective unit tests. We will discuss some best practices in unit testing and how you can take some of those best practices and apply them to your everyday development processes.

 

Bio:  Marina started her career in January 2015 at Everbrite LLC in Greenfield WI after graduating from Gateway Technical College in May of 2014 with an Associate’s degree in IT Software Development. Marina worked for over nine years as a Senior Programmer Analyst/IBM i admin at Everbrite and is now a Senior Programmer/Analyst/IBM i admin at Innovative Software Solutions and her role consists of RPG, SQL, mobile development, IBM i administration and Java. Marina earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems Software Development from Bellevue University in June of 2017. Marina is an IBM Champion, the President for the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association(WMCPA) users group, a member of COMMON’S New to IBM i (N2i) committee, a COMMON board member, a member of COMMON America Advisory Council (CAAC), the COMMON board liaison for the COMMON America Advisory Council (CAAC), a private tutor in English and Programming for students at an associates or bachelor’s degree level, a public speaker on topics ranging from RPG, SQL, personal development, standards and unit testing. Marina was named a IBM fresh face(Now raising stars) in 2019. She has also completed two open source projects the first is logging in RPG and IBMiUnit, a RPG unit testing framework.

March 2024 meeting

The Central Texas IBM i User Group will be holding its March meeting on Tuesday March 5 at 6:30 PM US Central Time .

Our guest presenter is Gregory Simmons.

Presentation description:  Procedure Driven RPG
In this session, after demonstrating the fundamentals of a procedure, I will demonstrate the benefits of procedure driven RPG. Together, we’ll explore real world examples of how this mindset has improved code written by myself and my team with regards to three facets: Readability, maintainability and reusability. All three of these benefits translate into a more efficient development team.

 

Bio:  Gregory Simmons is a software engineer with PC Richard & Son. He started on the IBM i platform in 1994, graduated with a degree in Computer Information Systems in 1997 and has been working on the OS/400 and IBM i platform ever since. He has been a registered instructor with the IBM Academic Initiative since 2007, and holds a COMMON Application Developer certification. When he’s not trying to figure out how to speed up legacy programs, he enjoys speaking at COMMON and other technical conferences, running, backpacking, SCUBA diving, hunting, and fishing.

He is also an IBM Champion for Power for the first time in 2024.

January 2024 meeting

The Central Texas IBM i User Group wiull hold its first meeting of the New Year on Wednesday January 10 at 6:30 PM US Central Time. .

This meeting is online, FREE, and open to everyone.

Our guest presenter is Mike Pavlak.

Presentation description:  What is OpenAI and Why Should You Care?
Open AI and specifically Online GPT has captured the latest in IT headlines. In this session we will discuss the history of Open AI, how it has matured and the goals of the team behind the technology. We'll also explore (speculate) on its impact to education, finance and most assuredly, Information Technology. We'll wrap up with a live demo of the Copilot application and how it might add productivity to the typical IBm i shop, but at what cost?

Learning Objectives:
1) Learn the basics of operating OpenAI and ChatGPT.
2) Understand how to plug in to Copilot.
3) See how to leverage AI tools in actual development scenario.

 

Bio:  Mike Pavlak has been working with IBM midrange solutions since 1992 and IBM Mainframes before that. After years of developing applications using RPG & CL he managed IT development and IT for power protection manufacturer Tripp Lite. Mike was instrumental in developing the adoption of PHP as the first open source language on IBM i and later joined Zend Technologies. Today, as a Solution Engineer with Perforce (Zend), Mike helps companies approach the challenges of modernization and open source technologies. In addition to several roles as a volunteer with COMMON Mike also teaches PHP & Python classes part time at Moraine Valley Community College in Suburban Chicago.

Mike lives in suburban Chicago constantly searching for the best microbreweries in the Midwest and elsewhere.