RE: IBM a personal comment

[GKern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Just a few comments to add...

LUGs for educattion ? Our group here in northwest Ohio is nearly dead, and 
it's not due to a lack of education offerings. We've offered web-ex's, 
teleconferences with IBM'rs direct from Rochester. We've done a lot of 
ILE, SQL, & IFS with Common speakers and business partners. We partner 
with SE Mich and Indiana (Detroit and Fort Wayne) Lugs to share resouces. 
(The local community college IS teaching WDSCi and free-form RPG.) The 
market is shrinking due to buyouts and attrition. The new businesses (read 
non-midrage shops) don't know about iSeries because IBM doesn't see profit 
in selling one box (iSeries) vs selling hundreds of servers (pc's, unix, 
linux) and naturally IBM will advertise the things they can sell the most 
of.

In Toronto at the past Common Soundoff session, my wife told the IBM'rs 
present, directly, that us users and supporter's who try to market the 
iSeries to non-belivers, that is doesn't work because the people we preach 
to, don't want to hear it from us because they don't hear it from IBM.

The platform is dying. I see my future in MYSQL, PHP and HTML.

Regards, Jerry

Gerald Kern
IBM Certified AS/400 RPG IV Developer & RPG IV Programmer
MIS Project Leader, Lotus Notes/Domino Administrator
The Toledo Clinic, Inc.
4235 Secor Road
Toledo, OH 43623-4299
Phone 419-479-5535
gkern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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