Dave Andrews on Why CICS Community Should Attend Impact

View the YouTube video on which Dave Andrews, IBM’s Director of CICS products, encourages the CICS community to attend IBM’s Impact conference in Las Vegas May 3-8. Dave offers to meet with customers one-on-one to hear your plans and needs, and to help on a one-to-one basis – an extraordinary opportunity for those that can attend.

IBM’s CICS group gets it, taking advantage of YouTube, Facebook, and blogs to interact with customers, and webcasts to provide free education. Stay tuned for my upcoming interview with Dave Andrews, in which I asked him about those things.

IBM Impact 2009

The 2009 edition of Impact, IBM’s Smart SOA Conference, is quickly approaching. Impact is the place to go to learn about Websphere and IBM’s implementation of SOA. Plenty of IBM business partners will also be on hand with add-on or competing products. CICS appears to be becoming a larger part of Impact every year. As is SHARE, Impact provides a great networking opportunity. Also, Billy Crystal will be on hand, as will 80’s rockers Huey Lewis and the News. There are plenty of reasons to attend Impact if you can.

Impact runs from May 3 through May 8, in Las Vegas. Cost is $2150 in advance, or $2250 at the door, which is a little high compared to SHARE, but hotel rates appear reasonable (stay at the hotel where Impact is hosted for under $200 per night), and flights to Las Vegas likely can often be acquired for less than flights to other cities. IBM estimates that attendees can acquire over $15,000 worth of education. It will be well worth the trip for those that can make it.

Free IBM Teleconference on CICS and SOA

On April 8 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (3:00 p.m. UTC), IBM will present a free teleconference on CICS and SOA. The full title of the teleconference will be The future of SOA on z/OS built on a smarter foundation of CICS TS V4, WAS V7 and Rational.  Topics to be covered include code reuse and modernization, programming models, and solutions.

The speakers will include Ian Mitchell (CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Architect), along with Colette Manoni (WebSphere Application Server for z/OS Architect) and Cindy Krauss (Rational Developer for System z Architect).

The teleconference will be available for replay if you cannot participate, so check it out and register if you can listen in.