Re: COMMON advice

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Justin,

Glad to hear you'll be at PowerUp18!  (The upcoming COMMON conference.)

I definitely recommend going into the personal grid tool on 
(powerup18.sched.com) prior to the conference and marking the different 
sessions you're interested in attending.  Build a schedule for yourself 
and print it out and carry it with you so that you know where you need 
to be at given times.... otherwise it can be bewildering.

I strongly recommend setting aside time for the expo (both for social 
reasons, and to see what is out there for products, even if you don't 
need them today, just knowing they exist can be extremely useful in 
future projects) The expo is not open at all times, to be sure to plan 
time when it will be open.  There's a lot of cool stuff going on.

I also recommend reserving time in the evenings for the social events. 
Just networking and meeting people can change your life and career. 
Literally.

If you try to schedule something during every single hour slot, you'll 
probably end up getting burned out quickly, so I also recommend taking 
time for breaks.  What I usually do is plan topics that sound 
interesting, but aren't really important to me.... and then if I'm in 
the mood, I'll go.  But, if I'm tired and could use a break, I'll skip 
that session.

-SK



On 4/11/2018 1:01 PM, Justin Taylor wrote:
> This morning, our Windows manager dropped a COMMON brochure on my desk and told me he wants me to go.  After I fell out of my chair, I began looking at the sessions.  I've been in this business for a long time, but I've never been to a conference or any kind of training.  I'm hoping to solicit some advice on what sessions to attend.
>
> We're a 2.5 man shop running mostly 5250 apps on a 720.  I'm both a dev and the admin.  My primary dev role is connecting IBMi with non-5250 clients, originally via Db2 stored procedures (RPG & SQL) and now mostly webservices (DIY RPG CGI & CGIDEV2).  I have about a dozen web apps done using CGIDEV2, jQuery, HTML and JS.  I know some Java and have a couple of Java utility apps.
>
> I'd like to attend every session, but that's not really possible.  So I'd love some help narrowing down the choices.
>
>
> TIA