Re: Penton Media Ceasing publication of iProDeveloper & Power IT Pro

On Wed, 2014-04-09 at 07:44 -0400, Steve Richter wrote:

all of the industry pubs, with the exception of Timothy Pricket Morgan at
IT Jungle, are not very interesting these days. I would like to read about
which vendors are ripping off their customers and which do not. Who
provides great tech support. Interview retired IBMers for their perspective
on what is going on now and recount projects they worked on. Ask people
about user group sessions they have liked. Research shops to find out what
they are spending their money on. What it actually cost to upgrade to a
720. New techniques that programmers are using that simplify their apps or
save time. Review the ebay market from time to time and interview the
established sellers. Report salary and contractor rates people are getting
around the country and international. Report to the reader the company
names and locations where ibm i is being used. News like that would
interest me.

-Steve

Totally agree, especially with respect to the last point.

In the UK there used to be a book called "the computer users year book"
a typical tomb of statistical research that listed various companies,
systems, and who used what, and by location; it was a mine of
information, especially useful when job searching.

With the demise of "computer weekly (uk) [some years ago]" the number of
advertised "rpg" (the only real way to search for "400" jobs since it
became the "i" as most search engines just ignore single letters) has
seemingly fallen dramatically in non banking/insurance areas, it used to
have a huge following in manufacturing, and maybe still does due to its
core link of transaction based workload beain easy to tie to transaction
based nature of stock/delivery/bom/pick lists, etc; but if so its hidden
away from prying eyes on the internet.

Jon