Faculty from regional universities at IIUG 2011 conference.

I know this is quite a late post! But hey, it is "better late than never", right?

The wonderful organizers of IIUG 2011 conference allowed IBM to invite and host faculty members from the regional universities on May 16th, the first day of the conference. We had a good response from the major universities in this area. Six faculty members from five university campuses were at the conference: University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Kansas (Lawrence campus), University of Kansas (Edwards campus), Kansas State University, and Northwest Missouri State University. The faculty members were given a one day pass to the conference which included an invitation to Monday's keynote, conference sessions, demos, a round table discussion with the IBM Informix team, lunch, and dinner. They also had an opportunity to meet with the keynote speaker Dr. David Ferrucci and discuss topics related to education and research in academia.

Dr. Ferrucci (second from left) with some of the faculty members

Following lunch, the faculty members participated in a round table discussion with the IBM Informix team. They were presented with an overview of Informix architecture, Informix usage in the database market, and its role in the IBM Smarter Planet initiative. They also learnt about what IBM has to offer to the academic community and how they can partner with IBM in producing a skilled workforce.

Prof. Praveen Rao from University of Missouri-Kansas City also presented a conference session in which he shared his experience collaborating with the IBM Informix team and the usage of Informix in his classes. He has been offering courses for the past two semesters that use Informix in the IBM Development and Test cloud as well as the Informix Virtual Appliance.

IIUG 2011 conference turned out to be an great event for the Informix on Campus initiative. All the faculty members that attended found it very valuable and are looking forward to collaborating with IBM this Fall. A big thanks to everyone at IBM and IIUG who made this event a great success!!

Informix on Campus in Brazil

Last week, from 05/30/2011 to 06/03/2011, was performed in Campo Grande, MS, Brazil, the first Informix course via IBM On Campus project, named Introduction to Informix.

Students, and Alexandre Marini / Miguel Carbone

The event was realized on SGI - Superintendência de Gestão da Informação - from SEFAZ-MS, with 24 students participating, together with UFMS - Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, one of our local Universities.

Course topics covered the following subjects:

a. OPPENING ON ACADEMIC PROJECT (INFORMIX ON CAMPUS)
b. INTRODUCTION TO INFORMIX
c. VIRTUALIZATION AND INFORMIX
d. INFORMIX ARCHITECTURE
e. DATABASE OBJECTS, DESIGN DATABASE, SQL
f. TRIGGERS / STORED PROCEDURES LANGUAGE
g. INDEXING
h. CONCORRENCY AND LOCKING

Despite our few machines limitation (in lab) to the course, general avaliation was extremely good, since students that would never heard about Informix, considered it a good choice to their database studies area, as one more technology to be aplied on labor market, with several case studies presented in classes, including great companies and industrial utilizations around the world, in their several sectors, and also market comparisons.

Mr Alexandre Marini thought the students, with a great help from Mr Miguel Carbone (thanks a lot, Miguel)!

Mr Alexandre Marini
Mr Miguel Carbone

We appreciate every student participation, and we´d like to congratulate: Mr Pradeep Natarajan, Mss Veronica Gomes (they really helped in every possible ways - time was short), and also send special thanks to Vanessa (Alexandre Marini´s wife), who kindly made some cakes to the students celebrate the last day.

The cakes - students really loved it!
Students on coffee-break. Thanks, Vanessa!

(Some course pictures are also available in our BRIUG community on Facebook! Check it out...)

We hope this is the first Brazilian course, from many others that will come. It´s always a great opportunity to spread our excellent product to students who will be working in a couple of years on our local markets.

Best regards!

Informix Visits Dallas

Hi again! A year ago, I traveled to the SIGCSE '10 conference in Milwaukee, WI to distribute information on our "Informix in a Box" program at the IBM Academic Initiative booth (read here) .

SIGCSE, which stands for "Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education", hosted another conference in Dallas on March 9-12. IBM was still its Gold level sponsor as last year. Again, Informix made a presence by distributing materials on the "Informix in a Box" program at the IBM Academic Initiative booth. This conference is very well visited with teachers from all over the world.

IBM also presented a session on "Can Students Really Develop Software Collaboratively" which talked about using Rational Team Concert (RTC), a collaborative tool aiding the teams to develop software together.

After visiting Milwaukee last year, Informix visited two colleges as a result of that. Let's hope Informix will visit more colleges as the result of the SIGCSE '11 conference in Dallas!

Informix in a Box at Budapest, Hungary (round 2)

Earlier this year (February 1-3, 2011), Informix training was offered to university students in Budapest, Hungary. You can read all about it in this original posting on The Informix Zone.

http://informix-zone.com/informix-taught-budapest-university

Following the success of that session, another one was conducted last week (April 5, 2011). About 20 participants from more than 6 universities, including students and faculty members attended the session. The universities that participated include: Kecskemét College, Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and Óbudai University.