Steve Conway writes: >John: my vote is that this is NOT an advertisement and is welcome. I'm >all for free presentations, from IBM or any other vendor.
It's also perhaps worth noting that, if you have z/OS, there's no additional charge for z/OS 1.9. In fact, there's some potential cost reduction: people report that z/OS 1.9 is measurably more CPU-efficient on balance. You might also get more specialty engine enablement, depending on where you're coming from. And some customers in some parts of the world buy extended support on old releases, so moving to a supported release (and staying there) avoids that unnecessary expense. Steve, I personally try to draw the line at technical versus sales presentations, not just free presentations. I tend to think that genuinely meaty technical presentations (and especially hands-on labs if possible) with no direct sales implications are reasonable to pass along, as long as I don't overdo it. (Although I still might use the "IBM PR" -- Public Relations -- label in the subject line as a courtesy to my fellow readers and out of an abundance of caution.) I also tend to focus on areas where people are asking questions, here or offline -- a "relevance" standard of self-censorship. PCI security compliance is a good example, and how-the-heck software pricing works is another. If I do mention a product name I try to do so typically by way of example, and I will frequently list analogous non-IBM products that I know about. One major reason is that there are other vendor employees here, and it's silly to generate 6 additional messages saying, "There's also product X, product Y, and product Z." I will also list free alternatives that I know about. Very often I will go research these lists and post those, as I did in starting the encryption products list. I will not post here anonymously or pseudonymously. Although I only speak for myself, readers here should know my employer in order to understand what biases I may have. I try to set my biases aside, but people should have the right to assess how well I do that. That probably means every few months somebody will question whether I'm an IBM mole or whatever -- on a forum called IBM-MAIN. :-) There's nothing I can do about that, but I don't mind. I'll continue to identify my employer in every post. That's not to suggest everybody else needs to do that. Some people post pseudonymously, and many more people post without identifying their employers. I'm not criticizing that, but it's just not right for me. When I do post, sometimes I'm wordy in specific ways because I try not to assume that everybody knows what I'm talking about -- what Cognos 8 BI is, to pick an example, or why anybody should care, or what relevance it has strategically. There are lots of beginners, and more coming, so this is very important to me to make mainframe knowledge more approachable. And since I don't want scores of mundane e-mails, I'll also err on the side of including a Web address and/or e-mail address. I do not take something somebody else wrote and click send. I edit, filter, and block, heavily. It's got to be interesting to me, and I must have high confidence it will be interesting to others., I'm not paid to haunt IBM-MAIN, and probably a few managers would prefer I spend such time on other, "more productive" activities. I don't get any commissions on anything, sadly. I do chime in here occasionally because selfishly I learn a lot and enjoy it, but also my impulse is to try to be helpful. There also aren't that many people here from Asia. If somebody thinks I have failed in meeting these standards, or if someone has suggestions for better standards, please let me know. I'm quite open to that. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
