IBM Champions

Meet these IBM Champions

@Heidi Schmidt is CEO of PKS Software. She is part of the Enterprise Transformation Podcast team, president of COMMON Germany and Switzerland, and a leader for ceCMG, a mainframe user group. In a recent interview, she talks about the Mainframe DevOps journey, was part of an event about legacy transformation, and did a tech talk with IBMer Tobias Leicher about a recent CICS announcement. Find her on LinkedIn.

Carol Woodbury is an IBM i security expert. This year, she contributed 9 new articles on the topic to MCPressOnline. She has also contributed to the iChime virtual user group, IBM i TechChannel podcast, and The Incredible i show podcast. Carol is a frequent speaker at conferences and events, including COMMON Navigate, InSight, POWERUp, TechU, and COMMON Europe Power Camp. Find her on LinkedIn.

Declan Rodger is technical director at Spitfire Analytics. He's very active in the IBM Community, answering questions and posting blogs@Declan Rodger. He's also active in the TM1 forum, in sharing feedback, and creating content like videos demonstrating the functionality and use cases for IBM Planning Analytics. Find him on LinkedIn.

@Georges Kopp is an economist as well as a financial and administrative director with more than 40 years of international experience. In 2019, he was a regional winner of Master the MainframeHe is passionate about Mainframes, IBM i and everything around data as information. As a hobby, I love to code in different languages. And to dive in the Greek mythology! This year, Georges has been very active on LinkedIn, sharing and creating content around mainframe, IBM i, COBOL, and open source.

IBM Champions in Action

• Jacob Bock Axelsen brought the CTO of IBM Denmark in for a webinar with the CEO of the Danish ICT Industry Association.
• Kris Brown has been creating content around Data Fabric and Cloud Pak for Data.
• Mark Gillis blogged about the problem and solution for Stored Procs failing REBIND with missing embedded calls.
• Denis Tronin created an IDUG Db2 online webinar devoted to how Db2 for z/OS and DevOps play together.
• Sameer Paradkar was a finalist for two awards this year, the Cloud Professional of the Year – Cloud Excellence Award and the DevOps Professional of the Year - Devops Excellence Awards.
• Alfred Freudenberger wrote a blog on protecting SAP HANA against ransomware attacks.
• Tim Mather posted about the Power 10 Oracle reports for enhanced performance.
• Patrick Nzdayizigamiye recruited students to join the IBM Z day and to become IBM student ambassadors at the University of Johannesburg.
• Jonathan McKnight has been actively answering questions in the Cognos Analytics community and participating in the Cognos Analytics design partner program and sharing feedback.
• Daniel Luksetich wrote an article on Db2 Lite on Cloud.
• Shaun Frankson participated in the Insure Blocks Podcast, doing a deep dive on Plastic Bank's blockchain.
• Dana Rafiee has been supporting IBM sales teams for Power and Storage, creating content and sharing stories.
• Tom Crocker has been supporting the Db2 Tools for z/OS customer advisor council by organizing quarterly presentations.
• Susan Lawson presented the Db2 Certification course at IDUG NA, presented at the NEODBUG user group, and presented at the BOA Db2 User Group.
• Stephan Åkeborg supported and RFE for extended configuration of syslog for sending data to splunk.
• Steven Bex wrote a blog series and other content to support the launch of DAPPER, which combines Deloitte Analytics Platform with IBM Cloud Pak for Data on Red Hat OpenShift.

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