Saving an user group

A short story that perhaps you can relate to or get some insights from:

I came 2008/2009 into an very old organization (40+ years old) after about 10 years of hard times with losing members and with that members fees, lost interest from sponsors, bad reputation of the name, few people attending meetings, previous board members that used all the money for personal benefits, people trying to split the organization etc.

I made a decision very early, I was there to create content to make the user group relevant in the future. Luckily there was other at the board that could take care of the boring stuff such as cutting costs, going through bylaws and just keep the members list up to date and make sure invoiced went out.

We had a very good relation with IBM locally and the first year we cancelled our yearly conference (two per year was done in the past) and made a half day in IBM facilities where mostly IBMers and business partners showed up. Previous conferences had cost us money we no longer had more or less..

The year after we arranged a two day conference with approx 80 people attending, again mainly IBMers, business partners and some old members that always showed up. On my initiative we ended the conference with a brainstorming session where one very important idea came up from one of the participants. “Why not make sessions that attracts developers?”

Back then, around 2009 – 2010 the agenda was mainly for hardware people including operating system management. We did, and the following year we invited Paul Tuohy, Susan Gantner and Jon Paris, with that we grew the number of participants to over 150 and more each year with a peak of 300+ attendees when we in 2016 hosted the Common Europe Congress which was seen as a huge success. Common Europe and many other organizations through out in Europe had similar issue like we had in Sweden after all.

We also produced a members magazine which I took control over. Another huge success was made especially I was lucky to know a person doing magazines for a living. We got really good attention from all around the world, and I always brought a number of them to the board of directors meeting for COMMON in North America for example.

The third thing I started was a monthly newsletter that had about 800 subscribers when I quit doing them in 2019. Short messages about what is going on in the community, news from IBM etc was the success factor. People really liked to read about their beloved platform that the outside word gave very little attention after all.

First page of a newsletter

What would I like to say with this?

  1. Keep an good relation with your local IBM people
  2. Keep it simple. All initiatives are good initiatives.
  3. Look around and see what resources you have available. Perhaps just starting a monthly newsletter or a Slack group for chatting is good enough to start with. Or just gather some people in a pub and brainstorm together.

Webinar Built on Power Peptalk – Oracle runs best on Power!

Recording of the webinar can be found HERE

The presentation can be found HERE

Date: January 20th, 2022

Time: 14.00 – 15.00 Central European Time

Welcome to join us for a inspiring call / discussion where the following will/might be discussed:

A (very) short introduction to IBM (RISC Based) Power Servers
Why Oracle runs so good on IBM Power Servers
What did TietoEvry do to convince so many customers to move from x86 PC-servers
– The arguments that works
– The pain customers had before the move
– The quick wins etc.
When does EnterpriseDB make sense instead of Oracle?
Learn about the massive resources you have available from IBM to become successful with Oracle on Power.

And hopefully a few WOOW and YEEEAH will be delivered.

Join us and please engage with your own stories and questions

SPEAKERS

Tommi Sihvo from TietoEvry has been working on IT-area for 20 years now; Started with coding Oracle Forms and by doing Configuration Management within a Logistics system used world-wide. After that he moved to Unix area; and have been working in several different roles & projects; mainly focusing on IBM Power hardware & AIX.
François Martin from IBM is a Global Competitive Sales Specialist and responsible for developing brand and product specific solutions that address client’s business needs (both industry and business) and deliver client value while supporting brand specific business strategies. François has experience and skills with Power Systems Sales competition. He understands customer situations, sales, and technical sales to tackle competitive proposals. François has knowledge of competitors sales strategy, especially competition against Oracle.
Torbjörn Appehl – Built on Power has been specialized in the business application platform named IBM i and It’s predecessors since 1997 in many various companies and positions. Today he has hisown advisory consultant firm helping companies optimizing their investment in IBM Power Systems also helping IBM to revitalize their ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors in EMEA as a contractor.

How to create a Minecraft server on IBM i 7.3

(By Tobias Haupt)

Step 1: install Java 11

Download B_GROUP1_04_IBM_i_RS_730-00 from ESS and burn it on DVD.

Start a new Terminal Session with ACS or HMC.

First ENDSBS *ALL *IMMED

Next GO LICPGM and then 11. Search for 5770-JV1 *BASE – install it.

Now we have installed the base enviroment for java. Next we have to install the Java11 package. For that follow the instructions on:

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/download-installation-and-usage-java-11-ibm-i-os

Next you have to install the PTF SF99725.

Now start a new SSH Session (when the connections will be refused, go into your terminal ans type STRTCPSVR *SSHD).

Create a new folder with mkdir /minecraft. Download the Server from https://getbukkit.org/ and copy it to the directory.

Change the current directory with chdir (F4) /minecraft <- This is really important, otherwise java is going to unzip the files in the root directory)

Test if the Minecraft server starting with RUNJVA CLASS(‘/minecraft/spigot-1.11.2.jar’) JOB(MINESERVER) (you must change the numbers to your version).

You shoud see this Window now:

Additionally you can create your own command to start Minecraft.

CRTLIB MINECRAFT

CRTSRCPF FILE(MINECRAFT/MINESRC)

WRKMBRPDM FILE(MINECRAFT/MINESRC)

F6 Source Member: STRMINSVR Source Type: CLP

CHDIR DIR(‘/MINECRAFT’)
RUNJVA CLASS(‘/MINECRAFT/SPIGOT-1.11.2.JAR’) JOB(MINESERVER)
ENDPGM

CRTSRCPF FILE(MINECRAFT/MINECMD)

WRKMBRPDM FILE(MINECRAFT/MINECMD)

F6 Source Member: MINECMDM Source Type: CMD

CMD PROMPT(‘COMMAND FOR MINECRAFT SERVER’)

Next CRTCMD