RE: Fall COMMON conference focus

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've stayed out of this one, but since it's evidently an open forum for
opinions regardless of their relevance, I may as well throw in my two cents.

If you know anything about COMMON, you know what an invaluable resource Al
Barsa has been over the years.  Al has typically done nine or ten sessions a
conference, and including the new speaker's orientation.  He's been voted
COMMON's Best Speaker before, and has gotten the COMMON Distinguished
Service Award.  Like it or not, Al is one of the faces of COMMON.

And it's the same in the iSeries industry.  I don't want to guess how many
bugs we as users haven't seen because Al has already reported them and IBM
fixed them--especially horrible, nasty bugs in save/restore that don't
appear until it's too late to fix them.  I don't care whether you like or
dislike him, agree or disagree with him, Al has achieved a position in the
iSeries community that precious few of us will ever attain.

Al and I are not close; we're at best nodding acquaintances.  I do no
business with him or his company.  So why bother with this missive?  Because
as far as I'm concerned, Al has earned the right to gripe if he wants to.
There aren't many people who have contributed as much to the industry; after
Cozzi, Klement and Paris (and a few others--this ain't a contest, so I don't
need to name 'em all), the list starts to thin out pretty quickly.

So if you don't want to hear Al's gripes about COMMON, don't read the posts.
But until you've presented a couple of hundred COMMON sessions of your own,
it's MY OPINION that you really don't have the standing to take Al to task
on it.

Respect.

Joe



> From: nickmart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> I agree with Mr. Haase on this one. Just because Mr. Barsa is miffed about
> not having many sessions at Common, why do the rest of us have be on the
> receiving end? Address your problem with the Common scheduling staff.