More than 300 IBM i users will be heading to a new venue for the 2026 version of the i-UG i-Power Conference.
After three years in Northampton, the Leonardo Hotel in Milton Keynes will host this year’s event.
- Dates: Tuesday 2nd June and Wednesday 3rd June 2026
- Location: The Leonardo Hotel Milton Keynes, 300 Midsummer Boulevard, MK9 2HP, Milton Keynes, UK
Andy Nicholson sat down with fellow IBM Champion, Steve Cast last week to discuss the conference.
Steve is Senior Vice President, EMEA & APAC at Freshe Solutions, and holds the positions of Treasurer of Common Europe and Marketing Director of i-UG.
Catch the full interview in the video below:
In recent years, the i-Power conference has focused on AI and open source capabilities within the IBM i platform as well as interfacing data on POWER for AI purposes.
The theme for 2026?
AI on IBM i has come of age.
Day 1 (Tuesday): Workshop Day
- Features a mix of full-day and half-day workshops.
- Gala Dinner takes place in the evening.
Day 2 (Wednesday): Conference Day
- Features keynote presentations to the whole conference, individual conference sessions, networking, and refreshments.
Who should attend i-Power?
IBM i developers, System Administrators, IT leaders, or a mix of topics for all?
Steve explains:
“We try and stream or section off different parts of the event for different audience members. Very much the first day, so that’s the Tuesday this year, is very much orientation around technical education. So by virtue of it being education and workshops, almost certainly that’s attracting a technical audience. The second day, with the IBM keynote, so what’s IBM roadmap look like? What are the AI solutions that IBM are working on? Everybody’s talking about Bob, so IBM Bob and how that’s going to revolutionise the way we develop software. All of those kind of topics draw in the decision makers, not just the technical teams”.
Those sessions at i-Power confirm what, to many IBM i shops, is the primary concern to the IBM i platform.
The growing skills gap.
As we’ve explored in previous editions of the IBM i Update, our IT leaders and System Administrators in the IBM i community face a critical resource shortage.
They’re often managing teams where developers are nearing retirement age.
This is the reality highlighted in the latest Fortra IBM i marketplace survey which highlights that as the number one concern for IBM i based businesses.
This shortage of experienced RPG developers means business critical IBM i applications are at risk, leaving businesses in urgent need of reliable application support and continuity.
IBM’s Bob has been positioned as a developer assistant designed to help close this gap by enabling newer developers to gain understanding of so-called legacy code.
However, there is a potentially dangerous misunderstanding among some in the IBM i community.
Bob is an assistant for coding, it is NOT a modernisation solution for your entire IBM i application estate.
Steve points out in the interview that is not the tool to convert applications from RPG to another language or to eliminate years of legacy technical debt.
For that, you need skilled, experienced IBM i developer specialists.
“I don’t think there’s much of a shortage of kind of Java developers or open source knowledge,” comments Steve.
He adds: “They’re all coming out of university, people with those kind of skills. The legacy RPG understanding is a little harder to teach. So maybe with something like Bob that helps us to understand the code. But a really critical point, if I may, is that Bob is very much a developer assistant, so a coding assistant. I think there’s a little misconception that Bob is somehow going to modernise your entire application or understand that entire application”
That’s not what IBM are trying to do with Bob. Bob is there to aid us as a developer.
It’s not there to kind of transform the entire application from one form of RPG to another, or RPG to Java, or whatever route you want to go. Bob’s not really the tool for that.”
For those of you who are interested in learning more about IBM Bob, i-Power has two full day workshops on Day 1 which delve into the possibilities further.
IBM AI: Bob & watsonx Orchestrate is split into a morning (Bob) and afternoon (watsonx) session. The morning includes hands-on demonstrations of some of the capabilities of Bob’s AI-powered Software Development assistant.
The afternoon focuses on IBM Agentic AI through watsonx.
In the other Bob-focused workshop, Carol Woodbury and Scott Forstie look at cyber security around the use of Bob with a demonstration of “the power of using IBM Bob for IBM i security tasks.
In addition, they’ll discuss the security safeguards and proper configurations you’ll want to consider when implementing AI.”
Register for i-Power 2026
You can register and see a complete schedule of events over the two-days through the i-UG website. With the packed itinerary, there’s bound to be something of interest for everyone.
