midrange.com - In My Humble Opinion

I'd like to take a moment and remind everyone of the first rule of software upgrades ... no mater how confident you are of your upgrade procedure, it is absolutely critical that you ...

BACKUP YOUR DATA!

I'm currently dealing with a situation where someone did not do a backup before performing a upgrade, and the upgrade had some kind of glitch, and they have been down for 2 days now.

If they had done a backup, like the instructions indicated, we could have restored the backup and retried the upgrade, saving a lot of work a number of fronts.

So, please, do a backup before you run your upgrade. It will save you a lot of headaches in the long run. It doesn't mater what platform you're using ... iSeries, Windows, *nix, Apple, etc. Do a backup.

On the iSeries I recommend you backup the appropriate libraries to a save file with compression and save access paths (so the restore will go faster).

Just a few quick items from the Spring 05 COMMON conference in Chicago ...

• Scott Klement received an iSeries Innovation award from IBM & COMMON
• Ask the Experts night at Sundays CUDS was quite a success ... a lot of list members stopped by the MIDRANGE-L table to chat. A number of list members who were at COMMON had tables of their own to man, so not EVERYONE was necessarily able to meet everyone else.
• A good number of midrange.com buttons were given out. The majority of the remaining buttons were dropped off at the LUG booth, so they will make their way to the next conference. If I don't make it to the next conference (jury is still out on that), you can always pick up a button at the LUG booth.
• Attendance seemed to be pretty good, although I haven't heard official numbers.
• Some of the support services seemed to be a bit off. A number of the sessions I attended didn't have enough handouts. I even attended one where they ran out of handouts almost immediately ... and when the TLC crew went to get more, the copy office said they didn't have the master... even though they had printed out the first batch earlier that morning. This was commented on at Meeting of the Members (MOM)
• The facilities were quite nice ... and I'm very glad that everything was in one hotel and nobody had to go outside to get to other sessions. My only complaint would be this: There is a bridge you have to cross to get from the east tower to the west tower of the Hyatt ... and it was quite easy to get turned around at the escalators on the other side ... they should have had a sign saying "COMMON is the other way". (I'm not sure that came out right ... I'll review it later)
• Wednesday night I signed up for a BOF to discuss anti-spam techniques ... although only one person actually signed up for it, it was scheduled ... and 3 people showed up. It was enjoyable discussing how various types of organizations are tackling the spam problem. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have a session on SPAM?

Just a quick report from the Chicago COMMON conference ... and some first impressions.

• The expo seems bigger than before, but kind of spread out in an awkward pattern.
• Attendence seems to be up a bit. Although I haven't seen any figures.
• I've run into a few people wearing the old (black) MIDRANGE-L buttons ... and of course gave them a free upgrade to the latest version
• The opening session was quite interesting ... although I didn't necessarily agree with all the comments. The speaker, John Patrick was dicussing the future of the internet. He even mentioned blogs (although not this one )
• I had a very interesting discussion with Guy Vig at the IBM booth about the new command documentation generator. It looks quite interesting. Of course that's more work related than anything else.
• The "iSeries Nation Town Hall Meeting" was quite enjoyable ... they ran a number of the TV spots for the iSeries and gave everyone a a copy of the Wall Street Journal ad slick. They talked about the new investment in ISV and advertising budget (300% increase in the advertising budget, which is a very good sign). I'll be very interested in seeing how the plans are implemented.

I'll try to mention anything that particular interest that I encounter.

If you're attending the Spring 2005 COMMON conference in Chicago, don't forget to stop by the MIDRANGE-L table at CUDS on Ask the Experts night. Put some faces to the email addresses.

Ask The Experts night will be ...

SUNDAY, March 13, 2005 from 8-10pm,
Crystal Ballroom B, Green Level-West Tower

Yours truly will be the 'expert' for MIDRANGE-L