IIUG Conference 2010

Finally back and recovering. When Dante described the various levels of Hell he had presumably not stood in line at Immigration at Chicago's O'Hare airport ;-) [4 booths open for 1,000 visitors to the US; none of the staff able to walk along with dogs shouting "Get in one line!" could presumably have been re-deployed to open more ...?] I enjoyed this Conference more than any of the five I've previous been to in its various guises. Here are some thoughts: Venue Kansas City is pleasant enough. The big drawback for "international" visitors is its inaccessibility - 18 hours door-to-door for me. However, as Stuart pointed out, it does allow access to many, many of the IBM team; KC's lack of "destination" status does keep the cost down; and he also tells me that nearly one-third of the delegates were from outside the US. Three of us travelled from my company in the UK, at an average airfare of $900, which is high, but offset by the low conference cost it sill makes it a substantially more viable option than attending fully-fledged, more local, IBM events such as, for example, IOD EMEA, which is next month. I really like the Marriott in which the conference is held. It's clean and comfortable and the staff just can't do enough to help. This would be very difficult to improve upon. Sessions The usual excelent programme of talks was presented, with many clashes where I could easily have gone to 3 of the 4 concurrent topics. I think the diversity of topics is about right. One theme that we agreed upon was that, in several potentially exciting sessions, too much time was spent on generalities leaving insufficient for Informix specifics. An example would be the 'Best Practices on VMWare' where the first 40 minutes was taken up by an engaging but generic talk about VMWare from a VMWare employee, leaving Sreeni (sp?) just 20 minutes to run through his presentation. The result was a disappointing lack of time to chew ovr the specific configuration and design issues the IBM team had found. I'm not sure what can be done here; perhaps more coaching, or reminders, from the Conference team about pacing? But this is a minor gripe. The presentation quality was very high. I particualrly enjoyed the VMWare one (comment above notwithstanding) and OAT presentation. OAT has really come from nowhere to be quite an impressive tool. I spoke to the presenter (Erica van Bargen (sp?)) afterwards: she says the major focus on developing OAT further is on Panther integration: from my personal point of view I'd rather see alerting-type functionality added to OAT so that it could be a more complete management tool that would allow the routine of Informix administration be de-skilled somewhat, but apparently this is not on the immediate horizon. Nonetheless, OAT is well worth looking at if you have not already. Keynote Jerry Keesee is an experienced and entertaining speaker who makes good use of visuals and humour, so this was an uplifting session. Execs Q&A I always find these unsatisfying, and this one was no exception. It's difficult to know what could be done: the IIUG Board makes no attempt to avoid selecting the difficult questions (it rather used to when I was on the Board in the early 2000s), but the format is that a tough question is asked, it isn't really answered, but there is no facility for follow-ups so the questions we all really want to know the answers to are glossed over. A case in point was the first one, about the disparity between the "double-digit growth" we occasionally hear about from Execs and the picture we hear from the local sales teams, which is more downbeat. I still don't know who's wrong, or whether in fact they might both be right in different ways, and we're certainly no clearer after this session. I don't believe that the execs are delibertely evasive, I just don't think some of them appreciate the frustrations of the Informix community as to the lack of visibility of Informix within IBM. Alyse Passarelli (sp?) spoke at some length about the competitioon, focussing exclusively on Oracle. I found this quite surprising since we generally find that SQL Server is the major competitor to Informix. Perhaps it is that execs like Ms Passarelli tend to meet only the bigger customers, where Oracle is more prevalent, whereas out on the field the average customer or ISV we encounter is much smaller and more open to the Microsoft message? Or, as an IBMer suggested to me, perhaps it's just that IBM as a whole is ever more obsessed with Oracle since its takeover of Sun ... Either way I found this answer a little concerning as I can't help thinking IBM may still be fighting the wrong battle. Gary Ben-Israel wrote a much more comprehensive review of this session in the IIUG Insider number 118. I don't know if this is generally available (it used to be published on c.d.i. but I'm not sure if it is any longer): I urge you to read it if you can. Exhibition There were some quite intersting things there, the usual array of US Business Partners, 3rd party vendors, development facilities such as Querix. I was surprised not to see Xtivia (sp?) or 4Js. IBM itself had a stand where it was demonstrating various initiatives: I sat through a Data Warehouse and a Cloud Computing one, both of which I learnt a lot from. Advanced Data Tools reprised its "World's Fastest DBA" competition, which is a briliant idea and evidently very popular, since by the time I registered all the slots were full! No doubt it saved me from gross embarrassment. This is a competiton where the entrant is invited to improve a given system by dint only of IDS configuration and addition of indexes. Respect to Tatiana Saltykova from Russia, who won for the second year running! Well done also to Pamela Siebert from the local IBM office, who was faster young DBA. I'm sorry, I don't recall the other winners. Usability sessions IBM ran some in-depth usability sessions where you had a one-on-one, or in fact one-on-many, hands-on session with IBM developers on various functions: an unparalleled opportunity to influence future developments. I signed quite a tight NDA and will probably go to prison even for mentioning the two I did: Panther installation and the Deployment Tool. Both really good, and the Deployment Tool is already available in 11.5xC6 and is an excellent method of quickly duplicating instances on a single server. Social There was a diferent social event organised each night, which many seemed to enjoy. In addition, with the hotel bar prominent, and with other attractions nearby, the opportunities for networking and informal discussion were excellent. Overall then I thought it was a terrific event. Congratulations to Cindy Lichtauer (sp?), Walt Hungren and to all those involved in the organisation. None to my knowledge has a background in professional Conference administration, but you would never have known it.

On May 2, 10:16 am, "Neil Truby" <neil.tr...@ardenta.com> wrote: > Finally back and recovering.  When Dante described the various levels of > Hell he had presumably not stood in line at Immigration at Chicago's O'Hare > airport ;-) [4 booths open for 1,000 visitors to the US; none of the staff > able to walk along with dogs shouting "Get in one line!" could presumably > have been re-deployed to open more ...?] > Because the guys who patrol the lines, even with dogs are not the same staff used to handle the counters. Now the trick of getting through the lines is timing. Your flight arrival times and then hustling to get there first from your flight. Now if you were OTC, I'd say leave the clown suit at home. ;-) [SNIP] > > Execs Q&A > > ...  A > case in point was the first one, about the disparity between the > "double-digit growth" we occasionally hear about from Execs and the picture > we hear from the local sales teams, which is more downbeat.  I still don't > know who's wrong, or whether in fact they might both be right in different > ways, and we're certainly no clearer after this session. > Ah... that's part of IBM's new game "Spin the numbers". Now one thing for certain. Local sales reps don't know the numbers outside of their clients and maybe some have access to the territory. So you could have a single large client do well, or growth in the .dot com office (SMB space) and the larger clients are switching out IDS for MySQL. Sears? HomeDepot? Dare I say Wal*Mart? (OK, Wal*Mart gets huge discounts just to keep them happy). :-) > I don't believe that the execs are delibertely evasive, I just don't think > some of them appreciate the frustrations of the Informix community as to the > lack of visibility of Informix within IBM. > Boy do they have you snowed. They *are* being evasive. :-) And of the execs, outside of Jerry K, how many are Informix Heritage? ;-) > Alyse Passarelli (sp?) spoke at some length about the competitioon, > focussing exclusively on Oracle.  I found this quite surprising since we > generally find that SQL Server is the major competitor to Informix.  Perhaps > it is that execs like Ms Passarelli tend to meet only the bigger customers, > where Oracle is more prevalent, whereas out on the field the average > customer or ISV we encounter is much smaller and more open to the Microsoft > message?  Or, as an IBMer suggested to me, perhaps it's just that IBM as a > whole is ever more obsessed with Oracle since its takeover of Sun ... > Uhm you do know who now owns MySQL, don't you? ;-) (Do I have to spell it out?) > Either way I found this answer a little concerning as I can't help thinking > IBM may still be fighting the wrong battle. > You're a giant, you fight other giants. You don't fight the little guy. If you lose, you look worse than if you didn't get in to the fight in the first place. There's more, but I don't want to bore you with non-technical stuff.