COMMON POWERUp 2026

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982.After 2 years working with early PCs and servers her began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36 He moved to AS/400 at its introduction In 1988. Early in his career he was a developer, then migrated to networking, system design, upgrades and general systems administration. Larry has worked on the smallest and largest and everything in between. He has been involved in many Beta and other early release programs with IBM. Larry has held more than 30 IBM certifications and contributed as an author to most of those, earning "IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert". Larry is also a contributing author to IBM Redbooks on IBM i and Power. Larry has been an award winning speaker at users groups around North America and Europe. He has been a long time volunteer and speaker with COMMON and has been awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze medals and also it's highest Honor the Distinguished Service Award. Larry currently serves on the Education team at COMMON. Larry been selected as an IBM Champion for the past six years. He is currently the Pricincipal IBM Power Systems Architect for Service Express.