It has been a decade!

Saturday was the tenth year anniversary of this web site. IMHO that is a remarkable milestone. I have seen other IBM i related web sites and YouTube channels come and go in that time, as people do not appreciate the effort it takes to research, write, and publish content on a regular basis. I am not sure how long I thought I would write, I guess it was until there was nothing more about IBM i to write about. Fortunately IBM has obliged and this decade has seen more additions and changes to our favorite operating system than any other. Long may it continue.

On a personal side it has also been a surprising year. In April at COMMON's PowerUp2023 I was presented with the "John Earl Speaks Scholarship" for 2023. I was genuinely surprised when I was called up to receive this award. I want to thank the COMMON Education Foundation for considering me worthy for this.

Recognize a member of the COMMON community that exemplifies John’s dedication to helping the i Community grow. Community scholarship page on COMMON website

It has been wonderful to be recognized as an IBM Champion for Power for a third year too.

I have also been spending my time presenting to various user groups and conferences. In the past twelve months I have presented to or at 18 local user group events, six of them in person. It has been a wonderful experience to meet everyone and have the opportunity to share my experience and knowledge.

User Groups
ASEAN, Singapore (2) COMMON, USA (2) IMUG, Tennessee i-UG, UK MAGIC, Virginia (2) MITEC, Michigan	OCEAN, California (2) OMNI, Illinois SEMIUG, Michigan (3) TUG, Canada WMCPA, Wisconsin WMSUG, Michigan (2)

If you are a member of a local user group and you would like me to talk to your group contact me.

Every year I always give my five favorite posts, these are they in no particular order:

• Using TO_CHAR to format timestamps
• RPG concatenation BiF for arrays
• Using SQL to get information about Journal Receivers
• Creating a reusable SQL View for a spool file
• Using SQL to check for level check, reuse deleted, and file size

I am sure you have your favorites from this year too.

Before I end I need to thank some people:

I need to say a big "vielen Dank" to RZKH. Without their generous help and support I would not be able to write this blog.

And to all of you. I very much appreciate the ideas, feedback, and encouragement from y'all (I can use that as I now live in Texas) you send me. It keeps me going during those late nights I am writing next week's post.

Here starts another year of RPGPGM.COM!