The day started out with me substituting for another speaker, who had a family issue to deal with. The session went well, and honestly considering the circumstances I don't think I could have asked for much better.

The Expo was full steam ahead today, and spending a fair amound of time at the iSociety booth signing up new members I had the chance to see Quadrant Software's entertainment for the Expo this year, Las Vegas-based magician Simon Winthrop.



Pretty cool stuff.

I am in Nashville, TN this week attending and speaking at the COMMON Annual Conference and Expo. Since undoubtedly there are some people out there who may see this and not know what the heck COMMON is, this is a user's group for IBM midrange computer systems - specifically systems based around IBM's i5/OS operating system.

The event started today (Sunday) with a summary of some of the week's events, some opening remarks from IBM and presentation of awards from the previous conference in Anaheim, CA. The good news this time around was that my friend Larry Bolhuis and I were awarded Best New Session and a gold speaker medal from our session "Pimp my i: Extreme System i Engineering."

Larry and I work on the Frankeni.com project along with Jim Oberholtzer.

So tonight we have the Expo reception which is where I am now. We have some exciting things going on this week.

- Kevin.