RE: Biggest issue facing YOUR IBM i shop?

Heh. Yesterday, a 20 year old kid came by to service the A/C unit here in my
office. He saw me logging onto a customer's machine, and said, "AS/400?
Nice. The company my dad works for had one of those, but they got rid of it,
and nobody likes the new system."

I asked if he knew the name of the new system, and he said SAP.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 9:31 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Biggest issue facing YOUR IBM i shop?

I can't believe I'm letting myself get sucked into this, but:

I promise you, it's not the name.

Let me repeat that, because I cannot stress this enough:

It. Is. Not. The. Name.

Should we all do a better job of educating others? Yes, of course.

But the name is not the problem. I mean, it might be *a* problem, but
it sure as hell is not *the* problem. There are folks who don't know
what an AS/400 is, don't know what an iSeries is, and don't know what
an IBM i is. They don't even know enough about the AS/400 to even
have the idea (rightly or wrongly) that it is an outdated platform.

Conversely, almost anyone with even a modicum of knowledge about the
IBM i knows its AS/400 roots. Some of these folks have a *good*
impression of the AS/400. They *like* the i *because* it is the
latest successor to the AS/400. Others don't like the AS/400, and by
association don't like the i.

If you pin your education campaign (to "outsiders") on the name thing,
you will look like you are slapping "IBM i" lipstick on the AS/400
pig. I swear. (And if you pin your education campaign to "insiders"
on the name thing, you will look like a pedantic... um, well, let's
just say you'll look unnecessarily pedantic.)

Educate people by showing (not just telling) what the i can do. Or
what the AS/400 can do for that matter. (I know someone using
iSeriesPython very productively on his V4R5 machine. And I did not
mix up the 4 and the 5. I know others using iSeriesPython on modern i
boxes.)

I'm not saying that we should be sloppy with the name. But the degree
to which some people harp on the name and go on and on and on is
really not helping (see lipstick, pig, pedant).

John


P.S. I personally have nothing against pigs.