Hope to See You in Anaheim for the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference!

This year the IDUG North American DB2 Tech Conference is being held in Anaheim, CA from April 30th through May 4th. That means we'll be near Disneyland, so you can plan for a great week of DB2 and analytics education... and then follow it up with a visit to Mickey. 

Whether or not you care about Disneyland is irrelevant, though, because a week at an IDUG event is always an educational and enjoyable time. If you’ve ever attended an IDUG conference before then you know all about the fantastic educational and entertainment opportunities that IDUG offers. Of course there will be a ton of informative technical sessions on all of the latest and greatest DB2 technologies and features. 

There are a couple of great keynote sessions scheduled this year. Mike Gualtieri, an analyst with Forrester Research, will deliver Forrester's view on Big Data, Analytics, and Open Source. And then IBM's Daniel Hernandez will talk about machine learning in another keynote session. I'm looking forward to both of them!

And this year the Data Tech Summit is being held in conjunction with the typical, informative DB2 sessions. The Data Tech Summit offers up content for data architects and data scientists on topics like big data, cognitive computing, Spark, R and analytics. So if you are looking for a little bit more than just DB2 stuff, you can check out the agenda for the Data Tech Summit at this link.

As usual, I will be busy this year at IDUG. I have a session on Thursday (Session A14, 8:00 AM) titled Prest-O Change-O where I will discuss the ins and outs of DB2 for z/OS database change management. Change is a constant and once you create your DB2 environment it is guaranteed that at some point, something will need to be modified. This session will go over the different types of changes, the complexity of some types of changes, and trends and issues impacting change management including DevOps, regulatory compliance and data growth/Big Data. Hope you can join me!

I will also be delivering a vendor-sponsored presentation for LogOn Software with intriguing title of How to Accelerate DB2 SQL Workloads... Without DB2. Whatever could that mean? You'll have to join me on Wednesday at 10:30 AM to find out!

Let's not forget the exhibit hall (aka Solutions Center) where vendors present and demo their products that can help you manage DB2 better. It is a good place to learn about new technology solutions for DB2, but also to hang out and meet with IBMers, consultants, and peers. 

This year I'll be in the CorreLog booth (#107) in the Solutions Center on Tuesday. Be sure to stop by and say hello, take a look at CorreLog's great solution for auditing DB2 for z/OS, and register to win one of my books!

Already that is a lot for one week, but there is more. You can go to full-day education sessions on Sunday (at an additional cost), attend Special Interest Groups (where you can discuss the latest industry trends and topics with other interested technicians), attend Hands-On Labs (delivering working training led by IBM), and even take complementary IBM certification exams. 

And don't forget to download the mobile app for the conference to help you navigate all the opportunities available to you!

The IDUG DB2 Tech Conference is the place to be to learn all about DB2 from IBMers, gold consultants, IBM champions, end users, and more. With all of this great stuff going on why wouldn't you want to be there!?!?