After being an IBM Z Ambassador twice, I was invited to join the program again – this time as IBM zSystems Student Ambassador Captain. Kick-off was in February, so we are already more than two months into the program. A lot has happened within this short time frame though.
Together with a few other Captains I organized an event on the topic of cybersecurity and cryptography. I’m proud to say that we were able to land Eysha Shirrine Powers as one of the panelists. She is a Senior Technical Staff Member - Chief Architect for the IBM Z Cryptographic Portfolio. We also had the pleasure of welcoming back Joris Mertens, Developer Advocate IBM Z. Dr Onalenna Makhura of the University of Botswana was the academic voice of this group. One hour turned out to be way too short to cover all questions, there was such an interesting discussion going. Within the next few days, we will publish a discussion thread with the key takeaways and the recording of that session.
With the exam weeks coming up, rumor has it that the apartments of many students are suddenly squeaky clean. I on the other hand thought: “Let’s breeze through the IBM Z Xplore!”. No sooner said than done. With Fundamentals and Concepts finished, I’m in the middle of Advanced now and look forward to the new challenges.
April 5th was the big IBM z16 Day SE. An IBMer invited me as a speaker. Me?! A Student! What should I tell the professionals who are attending? Apparently, a big corporation like IBM is indeed interested in hearing the voice of the next generation as well. Thanks to all the events organized and hosted so far, I feel pretty comfortable with student events. This however is a very different beast, isn’t it? In the spirit of personal growth, I decided to go for it. After all, it’s an amazing opportunity! IBM made sure everyone was well prepared. There was a training session for the event platform, as well as another session to meet my fellow speakers of the “Using open-source languages to modernize applications” track (we were four speakers plus one host). A few days before the event I learned that there were already 11,000 registrations. That’s an awful lot! The event itself was … uneventful. The session was great, there were a few questions, and before I knew it, it was already over. That was definitely one of those “getting out of my comfort zone” moments. But it was so worth it!
There is one more event coming up in April. The group of IBM zSystems Student Ambassadors I’m mentoring together with another Captain is preparing a student event. I don’t want to spill the beans about it yet, but I can already say it will be an interesting combination of topics and activities. Stay tuned and check out the IBM Z Global Student Hub for the announcement!