My colleague, Kim May – Vice President of Business Development at The Fillmore Group, has been elected Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group.  Kim has served on the board of BWDB2UG since 2005 in many capacities such as programming and membership.  BWDB2UG continues to provide strong technical leadership for DB2 practitioners in the US Mid-Atlantic region.  Kim takes over from long-time board Chair Steve Rosenberger.

Kim is also an IBM Champion and is very active in the DB2 Community.  As an example, she presented at the IBM World of Watson conference in Las Vegas in 2016.  Kim recently returned from the zAnalytics Bootcamp held annually at IBM Silicon Valley Lab.

Kim’s business focus in 2017 is the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) and DB2 running on Linux on System z.  Please join me and the BWDB2UG board in supporting Kim in her new role.

The International DB2 Users Group (IDUG) has announced the 2015 North America Conference will be held in Philadelphia May 4-8, 2015.  As the conference has been held west of the Mississippi for the past few years, we are excited about having a “local” conference for the DB2 community in the East.

The Conference Planning Committee has begun efforts to invite DB2 users to attend.  Having just returned from the IDUG Europe Conference, and shortly before having attended Insight, the two events are quite different.  While Insight has a vast array of events and something for everyone (and a lot of everyone’s!) the IDUG Conferences are smaller, more focused on DB2, and definitely are the better events for technical networking and getting to know the DB2 community.

If you are making plans for 2015, please consider attending.  Information on the conference is available at www.idug.org.  And remember, although there is a fee to attend the conference, IDUG membership is free!

Since early this year IBM has been promoting efforts to better collaborate with their Business Partners by passing more IBM leads to partners.  I am aware of two campaigns in 2012 where IBM has pushed leads from direct IBM sellers to Business Partners.  This makes a lot of sense as it extends the IBM sales team and facilitates more Business Partner involvement with customers.

The talk hasn’t really had any real impact on our business, unfortunately, as the two big lead passing efforts haven’t resulted in anything of substance coming our way.

So, rather than passively waiting for IBM to pass leads the The Fillmore Group, I am trying to reach out to the IBM sellers.  Being a believer in the value of face-to-face meetings and knowing I would be at IDUG this week, I asked my colleague Andrew Stenger to invite as many IBM sellers as possible to join Frank and me for a drink at IDUG so that we can say hello, introduce the value TFG brings to IM customers, and perhaps begin working together. 

Andrew sent the email invitation to a group of IBM salespeople, some of whom we have worked with, and some who have been recommended to us.  I arrived at IDUG last night, am hoping to meet some sellers interested in working with us. 

If you sell IBM Information Management software and would be interested in teaming with TFG consider this an invitation.  We are a Premier Business Partner that is:  1) authorized to deliver IBM training, 2) has a history of successful Information Management product implementations (including DB2 migrations from Oracle), and 3) is certified and ready to sell DB2, InfoSphere, Netezza and IDAA.  Most importantly, if you are at IDUG, we work to support the DB2 community – Frank is a DB2 Gold Consultant and is presenting at the conference, and Frank and I are both Information Champions.  Please stop by and meet Frank Fillmore and me at Peak’s Lounge Thursday at 5:30pm Mountain time.

If you are an IBM customer attending IDUG, and would benefit from working with a Business Partner that will help you get the best deal on IBM software, implement it properly, and understand it well enough to feel confident taking supporting it long-term, please stop by Peak’s too.  It would be even better to meet you!

For those of you planning to attend this year’s IDUG Conference in Denver in May (Monday, May 14 through Friday, May 18, 2012), the early bird registration was officially opened today.   With early bird registration the conference fee is reduced to $1845.

Come see Frank’s presentation, session 271 on Thursday morning at 8:30. Frank will be presenting on, “Zero Outage Oracle to DB2 Migrations”. 

Register at www.idug.org  See you there!

IBM Information Champion Nadir Doctor successfully passed the IBM Netezza technical certification exam on his first try, without attending the bootcamp or any formal training, one handed.  OK, maybe not one handed.

Congratulations Nadir.  As one of the first IBM Business Partners to become a Netezza reseller, and one of the first to close a Netezza sale, The Fillmore Group is excited to have a team of consultants willing to independently prepare to support Netezza implementations.  Nadir is a fine example of our consulting team’s resources.  He has over ten years of DB2 database/data warehouse and tools experience including InfoSphere Federation Server and Optim Performance Manager and Query Tuner.  If your organization is in need of consulting assistance, please contact The Fillmore Group – we would be proud to introduce Nadir.

Registration for Melanie Stopfer’s DB2 Connect Virtual Users Group meeting, scheduled for this coming Thursday, May 19th at 12:00pm EDT, is available now.  Please click here to join us.

I am ready to leave for IOD and had some thoughts on this year’s conference based on what I’ve heard (unconfirmed, ok?)  It’s sad to hear from so many customers that they cannot attend.  IOD and IDUG offer DB2 users the broadest perspective on what’s happening in the world of OUR technology, and it seems the many incentives of attending – great training and lots of discussion about what new features and functionality are being planned, or have already been added (but no one knows about).  One vendor I spoke to estimated IOD attendance will be 80% vendors and IBM’ers, and 20% customers.  Bummer!

I think it’s important that every DB2 user get a sense of the strategy to merge all the acquired products into a comprehensive toolkit.  For those of you who won’t be at the conference, here are some suggestions: Read More…

I asked the 25+ people that attended the last Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group LUW track meeting if anyone had ever submitted a proposal to speak at either IDUG or IOD. The response? No one! Ever!

The call for presenters at IOD is out and proposals must be submitted by next Friday, May 29th. Please don’t say, ‘oh no, not me…’ – this is a great opportunity for anyone, at any organization using DB2, to be heard. Go for it!! It is worth it – see the note from Amit Patel below. By the way, Amit is the champion of Data Champions – something else everyone should consider becoming.

“…the call for speakers for the IOD Global Conference is open at the enclosed URL. The deadline to submit proposals is May 29. I have attached below the information on Speaker Entitlements for IBM Customers presenting at IOD. Thanks.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/speakers.html

Speaker Entitlements:

Customer Speakers
Customer speakers who are selected to deliver one or more Business Leadership or Technical Skill Building educational sessions will receive complimentary conference registration valued at USD $2,195. Conference registration entitles admission to all conference meals, education sessions, EXPO Solution Center, entertainment events and programs Sunday evening through Thursday. Customer speakers will also receive 3 nights (single room rate + tax) at an IBM-designated conference hotel if the customer is based in North America or up to 4 nights if the customer is based outside of North America. No other hotel or travel expense entitlements will be offered by the conference organizing committee. Only one customer speaker per session qualifies. The only exception is for a pre-approved customer panel, in which case prior written approval is required from Nancy Kreps, the conference education manager.

Customer speakers from government or public sector organizations must sign a document verifying that they are aware of IOD conference expense entitlements for customers and whether their organization allows them to accept. This documentation must be received by the conference team prior to IBM extending the conference fee or hotel night waiver.

Business Partner Speakers
IBM Business Partners who are invited or selected to speak are not entitled to registration, hotel or other expense entitlements offered by the conference organizing committee.”

When I first started working for Frank in early 2005 I volunteered to join the board of the Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group, our local IDUG regional users group. At that time our business was more focused on DB2 for Linux/UNIX/Windows, but the BWDB2UG was, and has remained, very mainframe-centric. The RUG is quite successful, with quarterly meeting attendance average around 75.

As The Fillmore Group has shifted to support the mainframe renaissance we haven’t lost sight of the need for local support for DB2 for LUW users however, and I am excited to announce that the board approved the addition of a second meeting track, specifically for DB2 for LUW, starting with our upcoming December 10th meeting. Best of all, in MY opinion, is that Frank Fillmore will present at the first meeting. I look forward to being part of the team that is enabling our local LUW folks to enjoy the low-cost education, support and networking the Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group members have enjoyed since 1988. Please join us December 10th if you are in the area.