Meet these new IBM Champions
In 2021, we are holding the IBM Champions nominations form open throughout the year. New nominations are reviewed quarterly. While we still plan to do our primary recruiting and all renewals in Q4, I do have the pleasure of introducing you to these new IBM Champions for 2021.
Brian Simpson
Brian is VP of Analytics and Performance Management at Newcom Analytics and an expert and advocate for IBM Planning Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics. He has a diverse background with Analytics solutions, including Performance Management, Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, and Advanced Analytics technologies. His skills and experience include complex project planning and project management, as well as hands-on solution development, testing, deployment and training.
Brian is a member of the IBM Planning Analytics OM Advisory Council and the IBM Cognos Analytics OM Advisory Council. He also participates in design sessions with IBM's UX teams. As he says, "I love to give back to IBM and do my best to help make the product better. I'm very vocal with my feedback with IBM and known for my honesty and integrity, but also for not holding back or speaking the truth. The IBMers know my heart is in the right place -- I'm a very strong advocate for our customers in front of IBM and want what's best for the customers and the product."
Tim Fields
Tim is Principal at Fields Consulting Services. He has recently been instrumental in revitalizing the Southern California Maximo User Group and Northern California Maximo User Group. He says, "We have seen a 50%-100% increase in attendance for in-person groups before COVID, and over 100% growth in attendance using Webinars during COVID in 2020." He's working to help the community understand the new IBM Maximo Architecture including RedHat OpenShift.
Gordon Leary
Gordon is Director of IT at AMPORTs, Inc. and president of the COMMON user group. He has deep experience across IBM i, networking, and messaging. Gordon has attended COMMON conferences since 1988, and in the last several years, he has participated on several committees including Communications and Networking, Volunteer Recruitment and the GoTo Market task force.
Rikke Jacobsen
Rikke is CEO of CogniTech A/S in Denmark. Rikke has worked with IBM Cognos Analytics for more than 20 years and she's known as "Mrs. Cognos" for her skill helping clients make sense of their data. Rikke has also been honored as an Analytics Hero.
Rodd Dunlap
Rodd is a CISSP and lead information security engineer at Wells Fargo, Team Lead, Information Security, Protection & Compliance. He has been an active member of the Guardium community for many years. Rodd has been supporting not only the user groups, but also customer advisory boards and Tech Talks.
What have IBM Champions been up to?
Did you miss our regular updates on what IBM Champions have been up to last month? We had so many amazing IBM Champions speaking at Think that we wanted to call your attention to those sessions - it's not too late to catch those (and other!) sessions on demand; they're available through June 23. Now it's time to take a look at the other activity the Champions have been contributing over the past month or so.
DDC: Data & AI
In addition, don't miss the upcoming Digital Developer Conference: Data & AI. The event will take place June 8 - it's a 24-hour conference event with some great sessions, including these from IBM Champions:
- A Practical Use of AI in a manufacturing session, from @Mark Lack
- A Day in the Life of a Solutions Architect and a Data Scientist, including @Renato Castilho
- Succeed with AI by doing it backward, including @James Taylor
IBM Champions will also be speaking at
NAViGATE,
IDUG, and more.
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