President's Message By Don Rima

We’ve asked this before and it bears asking again: What do you folks want to see for meeting presentations? What will make you want to become/stay a member of WAM and attend meetings? This mailing goes out to about 500 Midranger’s in the MD/VA/DC metro area and for the life of me I can’t figure out why we don’t have more folks coming to meetings. The food's good, the speakers are good, the venue’s are easy to find... SO, if you any ideas as to what we can do to get you out to a WAM meeting and get you as a member, please let me know…send me a email at: dr2@cssas400.com and let me know your thoughts...

I’ve gotten a few calls and emails from folks over the last several months from folks asking me why I didn’t write a “state of the midrange” column last August. Frankly my priorities were a bit skewed from iSeries topics. But, the best summation I can think of came from a email I got last winter from someone that just read the State message from a year before. Their most noticeable comment was that “nothing has changed as far as IBM’s concerned….” They, of course, were very correct.

Well, by now you’ve heard the IBM side of V5R2. You know what’s happening in your companies and you’re once again curious and concerned as to what tomorrow brings and if you’ll have the skill sets to be able compete in that job market.

I can’t begin to recount how many of you have either called, emailed or asked me at WAM meetings things like “is the iSeries dead?”, “why isn’t IBM promoting OS/400 like they do pSeries?” , “we’re really scared with what we’re seeing happening with the AS/400 marketplace, will we have a job in a few years?”, “isn’t there more to this release than a new machine(890)?”, “why can’t I convince my company that Windows SQL Server isn’t a good solution?”……

Well…frankly, in our July meeting we’re going to get some answers to these questions and more as Carson Soule brings us his unique and candid views of “Life after V5R2…” and other commentary on what’s happening in the OS/400 market space. If you have any questions and want as direct of an answer as can be found, you’ll want to be at the July WAM meeting.

Hope to see all of you folks there… Again, please register EARLY. We don’t want anyone to be left or to go hungry as this is always a full house presentation.

Just a friendly reminder, there’s not going to be a meeting in August. BUT, we start off September with not only a SUPER one-day seminar and WAM meeting with Susan Gantner, but we follow it up in October with another SUPER one-day with Jon Paris, who will also be doing the October WAM meeting. Details to follow very soon.

Plan now for JAM. It’s November 8 and the grid and application forms will be on the web and distributed shortly.

See you on the 16th.

July 2002 Meeting

Tuesday July 16th, 2002
Holiday Inn on Hwy 1 & Beltway in College Park
6:00pm Networking/Cash Bar 6:30pm Dinner 7:15pm Presentation