commoneuropecongress2026

An introduction to techniques and exercises to help you look after, develop and use your voice effectively for public speaking. This practical overview offers advice and tips for handling nervousness, correct breathing, tone, creating vocal variation etc. to actively engage with your audience .

An in-depth practical session to develop and build vocal delivery and confidence for public speaking. Following the content from part 1, this session allows you to practice the exercises and techniques using speeches and texts in a group environment and receive feedback on your 'performance'.

As organizations across Europe continue to rely on IBM Power for mission-critical workloads, a growing skills gap is making it harder to maintain, modernize, and expand these environments. This roundtable will bring together practitioners, partners, and industry experts to discuss the current state of IBM Power talent across Europe, the root causes of the shortage, and the real operational risks it creates for enterprises.

* User groups exist to educate, connect, advocate, and modernize the IBM i community.
* Joining one accelerates your learning, expands your network, and increases your
strategic influence.
* Creating one fills a critical gap, builds local capability, and positions you as a leader in
the ecosystem.
This session is targeted at non-member and members of user groups. Ranga will expand
each of these 3 major parts of the presentation by giving key criteria of each of these
traits.
Creating a user group is essential for the European geographies where IBM Power (IBM
i, AIX and Linux) user groups do not exist or are phasing out. Fostered by European user
group mentors from other geographies will help to expand the IBM i community.
Taking leadership will show the attendees how to foster a user group community
helping to enhance their own and their members’ careers and improving the platform in
fine. This will also help them to join the Common Europe Advisory Council and obtain
recognition as IBM Champion.
Comments
IBM i user ecosystem direly needs expansion to sustain this all powerful, fully integrated,
best platform for small and medium enterprises. As Common Europe, we need to
enhance the community and Ranga with his very long experience will continue bringing
his yet another small stone to this magnificent edifice.

Introduction to BRMS, tapes, policy and locale saving

Thinking about that next move?  Want to be a manager or team lead, but not sure if it's for you?  Come hear about my career journey and what I have learned since taking that step.  You'll understand what you'll need in your toolbox to make that step, what it may be like for you in your organisation and discover if you've got what it takes to lead people or if you'd just prefer to stay technical.

While we did a lot of Projects in the past two years where we used various AI Technologies in different ways, we also created a little tool that is able to convert your 5250 Display Files to html and then create React components out of that as well as other target UI Frameworks.
Some might say that is not that hard, because 5250 DSPF DDS is not that complicated and you are right. Back in 2009 I already created a converter Tool that converted 5250 DDS to Microsoft XAML for using that within my c# programs.BUT - the difference of this tool is, that it includes the RPG code into the transformation process.
Why? For example think about pressing F4 button in a 5250 screen. Where does the Data come from? How does the 5250 DSPF knows what to do?That is handled in the RPG / Cobol program in the background in one way or the other and the tool covers that with little to no manual effort.
The Tool I show you combines the DDS from the DSPF with the RPG logic and uses both information to create the result.The result can be a React App or a Flutter App or an Angular App or .... whatever you want - OK - maybe no Windows Forms ;-)
Learn about using different technologies to modernize your old stuff like 5250 DSPF with RPG or Cobol or transform it to something totally new.Learn a little bit about modern UI Frameworks like React as well as how you could and should use AI technologies to reach your goals in a much faster and better way.You will also see what is coming next with this approach we do like reusing all your (old) RPG Code without (or only little) effort to adapt.We are working hard on making things easier and faster for everyone and bring you into the present and a bright future.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, technical expertise alone is no longer sufficient for success. Professionals must complement their hard skills with strong interpersonal and adaptive capabilities to thrive in client engagements and leadership roles. This session, From AI to EQ: 10 Ways to Elevate Your Professional Skills, explores practical strategies to elevate your effectiveness as an IT professional or technology leader. We will cover ten essential techniques, including active listening, empathy, positive facilitation, whiteboarding, AI literacy, delivering compelling presentations, conducting peer reviews, preparing executive briefings, understanding leadership styles, and practicing emotional intelligence. Attendees will gain actionable insights and tools to communicate with clarity, foster collaboration, leverage AI responsibly, and lead with confidence. Whether you are engaging clients, presenting to executives, or guiding teams, these skills will help you make a lasting impact.

After decades in the IBM i community, and through hundreds of conversations with developers, leaders, innovators, and business owners, clear patterns have emerged.
Not just about technology, but about the people, purpose, and what truly sustains this platform across generations.
With real stories, hear a unique perspective on the human side of IBM i, and what it takes to carry it forward.

In 2026, encryption is no longer optional - it is a mandatory requirement for compliance, security frameworks (like NIS2), and protecting sensitive data. Yet, for many administrators, the world of certificates and the Digital Certificate Manager (DCM) can still feel intimidating.This session is designed to take the stress out of TLS.
To understand why we are doing this, we start by adopting a hacker's perspective, analyzing unencrypted network traffic to see just how exposed clear-text connections really are.Once the risk is clear, we build the solution using modern tools. We will demystify the jargon - explaining what Certificates, CSRs, and CAs actually are - and show how to leverage the new Navigator for i alongside the DCM to manage your security environment effectively.
Finally, we put theory into practice. We will walk through handling certificates from all common sources: whether you need to create a Local CA, import an existing Corporate/Windows Certificate, use a purchased Public Certificate, or automate everything via Let's Encrypt. We wrap up with modern operational tricks, such as securing Host Servers and monitoring certificate validity using SQL.Key Takeaways / Learning

Objectives:
1. Understand the Threat: See firsthand why "clear text" is a security breach waiting to happen by looking at network traces.
2. Master the Terminology: Gain a solid grasp of certificate concepts so you can navigate the DCM and Navigator for i with confidence.
3. Implement & Harden: Learn how to introduce encryption to your system and secure critical endpoints like Host Servers and Web Servers (regardless of the certificate source).4. Modern Operations & Automation: Discover how to leverage Let's Encrypt for free, automated certificates and use native SQL services to prevent expiration outages.

Legacy IBM i applications run the world’s most critical business processes, yet most modernization projects stall because of missing documentation, vanishing RPG/COBOL expertise, and the terrifying risk of touching production code.

In this session we demonstrate our No-Touch Modernization approach using IBM Rational Open Access Handlers to kickstart your modernization. You’ll see live how we bring proven legacy business logic to the browser — fully functional and ready to be optimized
 — while the original RPG programs remain completely untouched.

We’ll show how we automatically extract real business logic, generate clean documentation and AI-ready artifacts that dramatically reduce token costs and hallucinations in LLMs. 

Most importantly, you’ll see how automated GoTo removal, integrated testing, and Agentic AI work together to move beyond rewriting individual programs to truly modernizing end-to-end business processes.

Stop guessing. Start modernizing — safely.

Learning Objectives:

Recognize the hidden risks of modernizing code without modernizing the underlying business processes.

Demonstrate how IBM Rational Open Access Handlers enable a true No-Touch modernization strategy that keeps proven RPG business logic untouched while making it available to modern frontends and AI tools.

Generate clean, accurate documentation and AI-ready artifacts from legacy RPG code that significantly reduce token costs and hallucinations in LLMs.

Build a structured modernization approach that combines automated GoTo removal, integrated testing, and Agentic AI to move beyond rewriting individual programs toward truly modernizing end-to-end business processes.

IBM i clients around the world in industries such as retail, distribution, consumer products, and more continued to innovate throughout 2025. These organizations leveraged open source technologies and infused AI into their business processes to modernize operations, automate routine tasks, and boost productivity in new ways. From smarter automation to cloud optimization, IBM i continues to evolve as a platform for innovation and growth. Join Steve Will, IBM i Chief Technology Officer and Distinguished Engineer, to explore how clients are using IBM i to modernize, integrate AI, and drive digital transformation. You will leave the session with new ideas to advance your business, practical examples of AI-driven innovation, and inspiration to take your IBM i strategy to the next level.