Mark Batchelor, IBM’s System i director for the UK, Ireland & South Africa, has been confirmed as the keynote speaker of this month’s Rochester Roadshow in Brighton. His topic will be the “Status of the System i marketplace and is my investment safe?”.

Batchelor’s presentation will kick off the two-day event at Brighton’s Old Ship Hotel which takes place on Tuesday, October 30, and Wednesday, October 31. IBM midrange veteran Nigel Adams will start proceedings on the Wednesday with a session entitled “System i -- what is the future?”.

The first day’s seminars have been broken into two streams, one aimed specifically at database administrators and developers, the other at system developers. IBM Rochester’s Rob Bestgen will speak on DB2 Web Query and various aspects of the System i’s “second database” MySQL, as well as wider DB2 topics such as application modernisation. Meanwhile, IBM Toronto’s Alison Butterill is set to present sessions on the System i Developer’s Roadmap, IBM’s Refacing tools and WebSphere Development Studio.

The next day’s seminars are broken down into streams for ops managers/tech specialists and, again, developers. For the former, there are sessions on HA, BI and single sign-on. For the latter, discussions on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and how it fits with RPG, plus sessions on both application and web development.

There’s an expo running alongside the conference featuring IBM and a number of its System i business partners and ISVs, including UK stalwarts such as Quattro Consulting, Utilities 400 and the Blue Chip Group.

As we reported last month, readers on iNEWSWire UK can attend the events for a bargain price, paying only the same fee as COMMON UK members.

The fee is £349 for members of the System i user-group and £499 for non-members. However, by filling out the event’s booking form and entering the code “isnet” in the “cost code” field, our readers can attend at the COMMON UK member rate. There’s also £100 pounds off individual one-day passes.

The full two-day fee include one night’s accommodation, breakfast, lunches, session papers and the conference dinner on the Monday night. The conference itself boasts over 20 cutting-edge System i-related sessions.

For more info, see: the event's website or phone the COMMON UK System i user-group on 020 8518 5110.

Seamus Quinn