On 20th February 2025, i-UG’s next conference will take place at the Norton Grange Hotel in Rochdale. AI and Open Source dominate the agenda for the first i-UG event of the year.
The agenda will be mirrored at the South conference, which takes place on 13th March at IBM’s office on York Road, London.
i-UG is the official representative of COMMON Europe. It is the largest independent IBM i user group in the UK.
Find more information on the agenda and register for the North and South events through the i-UG website.
Attendees at both events will be able to enjoy refreshments as they register from 9:15am until 10am.
At that point, Mike Ryan, Steve Bradshaw, Colin Spofford and Steve Cast will provide an update and ‘state of the nation’ keynote.
David Spurway, IBM’s Global Principal for IBM Power, will present a 40-minute session on Hybrid AI for IBM i. He will be joined by Jay Diamond. He is the IBM Power Technical Sales Manager for EMEA. Doug Wilson will also join him. Doug is the Technical Sales Manager at IBM.
From 12:05pm, Mike Ryan, the Chairman of i-UG, will present a session about AI. The session is called: “Keep your Secrets… (AI running natively on YOUR Power server)” which may, or may not, include reference to Linux.
According to the event agenda, this session is summarised as follows:
“As much of the world is now recognising, the risk of giving away your companies Unique Selling Points – Your Intellectual Property – to a cloud based AI can send shivers up any CEO’s spine.
So, how can you get the benefits of incredibly powerful and focussed AI without going outside your network with your incredibly precious data?
Simple, just run it on your existing Power server!
We will cover the strategic position on operating this way and, at a high level – walk through the process of setting up the environment, creating your models and even running image recognition and analysis across the model… all on Power.”
The first session after lunch is called “i-Chi: Thinking differently about IBM i SysAdmin.” It is presented by the entertaining and knowledgeable Steve Bradshaw, who is the Technical Director of i-UG.
This session is summarised as follows:
“It is about thinking differently about IBM i System Management, embracing new ideas, automating processes and monitoring, using IBM i functions in ACS, Nav4i, ARE, IBM i Services, Integrating IBM i SysAdmin with other platforms and reducing your reliance on the 5250 command line.
In this session Steve provides practical examples of how to do this that you can start to use today on your systems using tools that are free to use, already installed on your systems and all without the use of the 5250 green screen.”
After a short afternoon break, the last session of the conference will be presented by Andy Youens. He is the Managing Director of FormaServe. The session is called “Simplify your IBM i: Three Must Have Open Source Utilities and How to Use Them.”
In this season, Andy will help you improve your IBM i. He will show you three easy-to-use, affordable, open-source tools.
Andy has been in our IBM i Updates before. He discussed modern IBM i development languages and using Python on IBM i.
AI and its use on IBM i is certainly a topical subject at the moment. We included how ChatGPT can be used for creating RPG free and fixed code in a previous IBM i Update.
If you’re attending either event, be sure to seek out Andy Nicholson, the host of the IBM i Update. He can be contacted at andy.nicholdon[@]proximity.co.uk.
