I’ve had the chance to get out and meet with people from the IBM i community lately at COMMON and the NHMUG meeting. After two long years of isolation, it was great to be out again and talk with people. Everyone was excited to get together, but there was another topic on everyone’s mind; how do we fix the great IBM i resource shortage and find more people to support IBM i?
It’s an interesting problem when you think about it. IBM i is the backbone of many industries, from financials and trucking to manufacturing and everything in between. IBM i runs the world, literally. Yet, for a platform so critical to industry and its success, there is very little education available for students to learn about this platform. There are a few opportunities for students to learn about IBM i, such as Gateway Technical College (They do a great job, and their students are successful in landing jobs in the IBM i world.), but they are few and far between.
Why is it that every student knows how to use a PC? But when they go to college, don’t learn about IBM i as an option? When I was attending classes, I could take AS/400 courses. Half of the class were adult learners who worked with the platform and wanted to learn more about it. I needed college credits at the time, and I had been an AS/400 administrator at my previous job and was working at a software company for AS/400 change management, so it seemed like a good idea.
I was a System Administrator for an AS/400 shop running JDE when I was twenty. I was tossed into the role when I was laid off from the same company as a Sales Administrator the week before. Two people in the IT department gave their notice on the same day. I received a call from my friend who was promoted to IT Manager, and she asked if I wanted to learn about the system.
That was it. I had an aptitude for computers my whole life. It started in the fifth grade when our Principal decided we all needed to learn about computers. He taught small groups of students at a time about the computer and how we could write Basic programs to make it do things. Before we could even touch the computer, he made us memorize …
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