How to Win the Week at IBM TechXchange 2025
This conference’s details were unknown to me for a long time, so here’s the short summary of what I found: how to prepare, and the benefits you can get.
What & When: IBM TechXchange runs October 6–9, 2025 in Orlando, Florida (OCCC). Monday is Community Day; the main conference continues through Thursday.
Why it matters: It’s a practitioner-first event with hands-on labs, real code, certifications, and 1,000+ sessions/labs across AI, automation, data, security, hybrid cloud, and mainframe.
Who should go: Developers, architects, SREs, data and security engineers, consultants, and IBM Champions/Rising Champions building advocacy momentum.
Quick prep checklist
- Skim the catalog and star priority sessions/labs; block time for one certification or more.
- Plan each day by setting your own timeline.
- Arrive Monday for Community Day meetups and OSS workshops.
- Plan to share: draft daily takeaways for IBM Community/LinkedIn to turn learning into advocacy.
Benefits you’ll bring home
- Validated skills (certs + hands-on labs).
- Free Certificates up to three free certificates but you need to pass the first to unlock the second and so on.
- Stronger network across product teams and user groups, including Maximo communities.
- Advocacy content for Rising Champions/Champion nominations: posts, talks, and tutorials.
Attending
I hope to be there this year. If it does not work out, I will use everything I learned here to prepare even better for the next edition.
If you have the chance to attend, go. Make the most of Community Day, book a lab, earn a certification, and turn the week into skills, connections, and advocacy, you can use all year.