Join us in New Orleans, Louisiana for POWERUp 2026, the premier conference for IBM i professionals. Whether you’re an experienced expert or just starting your IBM i journey, this event offers unparalleled education, hands-on workshops, and valuable networking opportunities. Stay ahead of the curve with insights from industry leaders, explore the latest innovations, and connect with a thriving community that shares your passion for IBM i. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge, grow your skills, and power up your career!
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Stop coding like it's 1985. Your legacy RPG habits are a financial drain and a massive headache for the next generation of developers. Kill the Clutter! Permanently eliminate fixed-format and arcane shorthand. This session is your urgent intervention.
Learning Objectives:
• Master Fully Free-Format RPG to write code that looks and behaves like a modern language. • Name Names: Adopt Descriptive Naming standards that remove all ambiguity. If you can't read it quickly, it's garbage. • Build Defenses: Don’t rely on the *PSSR subroutine. Implement Rock-Solid Error Handling using MONITOR/ON-ERROR to manage failure, log results, and stop programs from crashing like amateurs. • Enforce the Rules: Understand and apply consistent layout, indentation, and ILE modularization to create code that is instantly scannable and maintainable—or you'll be fixing it at 2 AM. This isn't about nice-to-haves; it's about reducing catastrophic failures and cutting your maintenance costs. You will leave this session knowing how to write RPG that future-proofs your career and the system.
According to Fortra Survey 2026, IBM i Skills & Modernizing Applications figure in “Top 3” concerns of IBM i shops. In this session, we explore a framework to help customers modernize their core IBM i applications in-place leveraging their existing IBM i infrastructure & engineers. Start with an IBM i monolithic application written in fixed RPG with display files for menus and Db2 as the datastore. Explore how to transform it into a modern & future-ready IBM i application with techniques such as Code Transformation, AI-powered Unit Test generation, DevOps Integration, UX & UI Modernization and Integration with modern applications.
Learning Objectives: Understand the challenges associated with IBM i monolithic applications while appreciating the robustness and decades of proven performance of the IBM i platform itself. Explore techniques to modernize the applications in-place on the IBM i platform.
Kuldip is a Senior Technical Staff Member at Rocket Software responsible for modernizing IBMi applications/workloads and their development through a combination of Generative AI and pure/hybrid cloud deployments. He has a rich and diverse experience architecting, designing, developing... Read More →
Andrew Clark is the Senior Principal Software Engineer for IBM i at Rocket Software. Andrew has over 35 years of experience on IBM i beginning with the "secret Mankato Project" on a pre-release version of OS/400, and an internship at IBM Rochester working on the Query team. He... Read More →
Tuesday April 28, 2026 9:15am - 10:15am CDT Studio 9-10
You have a disaster recovery plan? Are you really prepared? We are now in the Cloud ! How does this affect my DR Plan going forward ? The difference in surviving depends on how well you prepare for the unexpected. This session breaks down the components of disaster recovery planning as it relates to the availability and recovery of your systems. Testing is essential to examining critical points of failure, assumptions, and technical gaps.
Learning Objectives:
1. Evaluate the effectiveness of your current disaster recovery plan in hybrid and cloud environments. 2. Identify critical dependencies, assumptions, and failure points in IBM i DR testing. 3. Develop a repeatable annual DR validation process to ensure readiness and business continuity.
Josh is a Senior Solutions Architect and IBM Champion at Lightedge, focused on modernizing enterprise cloud solutions for IBM Power platforms. Subject matter expertise in designing resilient, cost-effective hybrid-cloud strategies and high-availability architectures that align technology... Read More →
Tuesday April 28, 2026 10:45am - 11:45am CDT Studio 9-10
Db2 Mirror for IBMi enables continuous availability for your mission-critical applications. Learn how Db2 Mirror synchronously mirrors database updates between two separate nodes in an active-active or active-passive (with read access on the secondary) mode. Presenting 2 case studies deigned to deliver near zero downtime and optimal application availability to their business.
Learning Objectives:
Learning objectives: 1. IBM Lab DB2 Assessment 2. Building a proven reference architecture with Testing and Operations 3. Understand new features available for DB2 Mirror
Scott Forstie is a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM i development and spends most of his time working as the Db2 for i Architect. He has worked on IBM operating system development since joining IBM in 1989. Scott is a frequently published author, speaker at industry events... Read More →
Tuesday April 28, 2026 3:15pm - 4:15pm CDT Studio 9-10
William Starke is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for Power microprocessors. Since graduating from Michigan Tech University, Bill has been employed by IBM for over 30 years in several roles, spanning mainframe and Power systems performance analysis, logic design... Read More →
Tuesday April 28, 2026 4:30pm - 4:50pm CDT Studio 9-10
Learn how to create and work with System Monitors in IBM Navigator for i. Also learn how to use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) visualization tool to view System Monitor data.
Learning Objectives: 1. How to create a System Monitor 2. How to view system monitor data
Senior Software Engineer - IBM i Performance Tools & High Availability Development, IBM
Shauna joined the IBM i development team in 2008. She has developed and supported IBM i performance data collector tools throughout her entire IBM career. From the very beginning of the Db2 Mirror for i project, she has also been the technical team lead for the Db2 Mirror Configuration... Read More →
Tuesday April 28, 2026 5:05pm - 5:25pm CDT Studio 9-10
