COMMON POWERUp 2026

While many developers would love to never speak to another human being, it is inevitable that someday they will have to. When software engineers leave their cubicles or home offices or whatever dark cave they write code in, they'll need the skills to communicate effectively. Communication skills come in handy even if you're sending an email instead of just standing up and walking 10ft to a colleague's desk.

This is a session not just for developers, but for anyone who has to talk to another human being, because effective communication is the key to success in your relationships, careers, and everyday life. As a professional in marketing and sales (Anna) and a software engineer who recently joined the IBM i platform (Justin), we’ve had to learn strategies to access complicated information and make it accessible to ourselves and our customers.

Join us to learn some new strategies that you can not only take back to the office, but utilize the moment you walk out of the session room. We’ll have time to workshop with attendees at the end of the session. Attend this session to maximize your conference experience!

Learning Objectives:
- Learn the steps of a successful communication process and how to avoid common pitfalls.
- Learn communication strategies for conversations with those outside your area of expertise.
- Learn how an AI tool can assist you with communication.

Your senior developers hold decades of business logic in their heads. When they retire, that knowledge walks out the door. But what if you could capture that expertise in an AI system that new developers could query? In this session, we'll show you how to build intelligent documentation systems that preserve institutional knowledge. You'll see how AI can analyze existing applications to extract business rules, generate comprehensive documentation from code, and create interactive knowledge bases that answer questions about your systems. We'll demonstrate techniques for documenting legacy applications automatically, capturing tribal knowledge through AI-assisted interviews, and building searchable knowledge bases that understand context. You'll learn practical approaches for knowledge preservation, see real examples of companies that successfully captured expertise before retirement, and understand the tools and processes required. Whether you're facing imminent retirements or want to preserve knowledge proactively, you'll leave with actionable strategies for protecting your organization's most valuable asset: expertise.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees will learn strategies for using AI to preserve institutional knowledge before experts retire. They'll understand automated documentation techniques, knowledge capture processes, and implementation approaches for AI-powered knowledge bases that make expertise accessible.

This session will take in a brief review of the history of magnetic media on the IBM i, along with some of the issues along the way.  It will offer a wider variety of options available to backup/archive data from the IBM I today, with a look at techniques that have become more prevalent (and feasible) in current implementations.  Attendees will get information that may provide more possibilities for their own environments than they knew were available.

Valence, the leading web and mobile framework for IBM i, is getting even smarter. In this fast-paced demo, we’ll show you how Nitro App Builder (NAB) — Valence’s browser-based low-code development tool — enables anyone with solid IBM i database knowledge to build and deploy modern web or mobile apps in minutes. But that’s just the beginning. You’ll get an exclusive sneak peek at Valence 6.4, featuring powerful new IBM i–centric AI capabilities designed to accelerate development like never before. With the integrated AI assistant, you can:

• Instantly generate app components
• Build dashboards and inquiry apps with download-to-Excel functionality
• Create intuitive data entry apps
• Even generate RPG or SQL logic with AI assistance

No coding required — but fully extensible for developers who want it. Whether you're a seasoned RPG developer, a super user who knows your physical files inside and out, or a programmer comfortable with HTML5 and JavaScript, Valence adapts to your skill level. And now with AI integrated directly into the development experience, much of the heavy lifting can be done for you. The bottom line?
You can build real, production-ready IBM i web apps — fast. Join us for a live demo of Valence 6.4, see AI in action on IBM i.

Join us on a transformative journey as we explore secure, scalable and resilient Cloud solutions purpose-built for the IBM i.   How can you unlock the modern capabilities of IBM Power Systems without introducing the complexity and risk while driving positive business outcomes?  How will POWERVS solve this.  Public, Private, Multi-Cloud -  What cloud is right for you?
 

• Resiliency Solutions Delivering Uptime Results
• Hybrid Cloud Architecture: Enhancing resiliency, security, and compliance
• Three reasons Why Cloud Computing is Important for Businesses

               Bonus - 1 BIG reason you may have never considered.