At 65, COMMON Keeps Growing
Manzoor Siddiqui, COMMON’s executive director, assesses the state of the IBM Power user group ahead of its largest event of the year
COMMON turns 65 this year, and even at that distinguished age, the IBM Power user group is still trying to get bigger and stronger.
“For it to have survived and thrived and evolved over the years, I think, is a great testament just to this community itself,” says Manzoor Siddiqui, COMMON’s executive director.
Having spent 18 years with the organization, including the past 10 as its executive director, Siddiqui knows as well as anyone that understanding the needs of that community is key to COMMON’s continued success. “I mean, we’re a community-driven organization,” Siddiqui says. “Our leadership, our committee members, our board members—they’re part of the community and they’re volunteers.”
And to keep a good thing going, they are focused on continued expansion. “COMMON has been growing globally the last couple of years. So one of our goals has been to just continue expanding that, taking a look at more options and seeing where the underserved markets are and what COMMON can do to help bridge some of that gap,” Siddiqui says.
‘Rock Star’ Treatment in India
This past February, COMMON staged its first in-person conference in India. Featuring speakers from both the U.S. and the sub-continent, the event “was a great success for us,” Siddiqui says, noting that it presented the chance to get acquainted with a “a much younger” community of technologists than in their traditional territories. “They’re hungry for education, they’re hungry for knowledge and learning.”
That was especially noticeable after the event’s education sessions. “One thing we saw was that after every session, the speakers would just be clamored by half the class who just want to talk more or learn more, or ask, ‘Hey, how do you do this?’” Siddiqui says. “… I think the speakers were kind of blown away by it because they were almost treated like rock stars.”
That enthusiasm also brings a willingness to experiment, giving the rest of the IBM Power community a chance to see what works and what doesn’t. “In India, we had some attendees come up and share what they’re doing in technology,” Siddiqui recounts, “and it’s just very vastly different, because they will try anything experimental and figure it out.” He acknowledges that this greater appetite for risk has something to do with a smaller scale of operation, but “it was really interesting to see some of the success stories that they’ve had there.”
More Content, New Approaches
COMMON’s recent international expansion, which also includes Japan and Latin America, has coincided with an increased focus on online educational content, now offered in Spanish, German, French and Japanese.
“Especially after the [COVID] pandemic, we saw a lot of need for education and content and expertise, not only within our traditional areas that we serve,” Siddiqui says. “… We’re seeing a lot of demand for people just wanting to re-up their skills or just become current with skills at a global level.”
On the heels of this shift, COMMON is staring down another inflection point. “I would say we’re at another point of change in the organization’s history, where the majority of who our traditional membership is or was is likely going to retire in the next five to 10 years,” Siddiqui says.
Taking place in Anaheim, California, May 19-22, POWERUp will present an opportunity to embrace a new generation of IBM Power users. “Our goal,” Siddiqui says, “is to make it the biggest and baddest IBM i community event in the world, so we’re kind of redefining what that looks like.”
That redefinition includes less education sessions and more opportunities for one-to-one engagement. Overpacking the conference days with presentations, Siddiqui explains, can hinder those opportunities to connect. “If you go back to what COMMON is, we’re a user group,” he says. “And the way user groups work, and where the value comes, is really from the people talking to each other.”
POWERUp organizers are encouraging attendees to connect beyond the professional level. This is exemplified by a new program in which COMMON members trade pins based on their personal interests. “We’re going to be in Disney with POWERUp, and that whole pin trading thing is a huge cultural thing with Disney fans themselves. So we’re trying to do something like that with COMMON as well,” Siddiqui says.
Embracing What’s Hot
From the outside looking in, one good way of assessing the interests of the IBM Power community is to look at the scheduled sessions. This year, there will be at least a full track of AI topics. “AI is still a huge thing,” Siddiqui says. “… I know the education team has had to reject quite a few sessions on AI because we can’t just do all AI.”
Visual Studio coding is also well represented on the presentation schedule, “and there’s always a demand for the traditional programming, sysadmin sessions as well,” Siddiqui observes. To satisfy other areas of demand, COMMON is adding a storage track to this year’s POWERUp, along with a new track covering “adjacent technologies” that IBM i users may be utilizing. This addition, Siddiqui says, marks “the acceptance that everything’s not just IBM,” and that IBM Power technologists also work in hybrid environments.
It’s these kinds of considerations that can help COMMON expand its membership, Siddiqui says. “Some of the largest companies in the world are running IBM i, but that’s not the only thing they’re running,” he says.
No Retirement Plans
While COMMON’s 65th birthday presents the opportunity to take stock of the user group’s long history of accomplishments, it’s also a good time to look ahead. “I take real pride in what the organization’s done, and I feel a real sense of responsibility to make sure that it’s around for the next 65 years,” Siddiqui says, “because I think the value of the organization is really the people itself.” The question, then, is, “How do we continue delivering value to the members in the community, no matter where technology takes us.”
COMMON may not be able to control where the technology goes, but it does have a say in the kind of community that forms around it. “We just need to be poised to make sure that we have the resources as well as the leadership to meet those needs.”