System i Developer, the consortium of educators focusing on IBM i development technologies and producers of the RPG & DB2 Summit, has announced the retirement of founding member Skip Marchesani effective January 1. Marchesani earned his reputation as a leading authority in database best practices and SQL for IBM i over a 43-year career that spanned from IBM’s System/3, System/38, and AS/400 to the current IBM i on Power. He is known throughout the IBM i community as a skilled instructor and mentor.

"I love teaching database and interacting with Summit attendees, but my SiD responsibilities have reached the point where they are impacting family time and other things my wife and I would like to do. Retiring from SiD was the only practical way for me to have more family time and be able to do the other things,” says Marchesani. “I’m looking forward to being at the spring 2012 Summit as a guest speaker, but it will be a bittersweet experience. As much as I want more time to pursue other interests, I will really miss being such an integral part of the Summit family on an ongoing basis.”

In addition to accepting speaking engagements, Marchesani will continue to work as an independent consultant and collaborate with System i Developer on special events.

According to Marchesani, he and partners Susan Gantner, Jon Paris and Paul Tuohy started System i Developer in 2006 after the industry’s traditional conferences began shifting focus away from development topics to broaden their curriculum. The goal of System i Developer was to ensure that RPGers and database engineers would continue to have access to quality education geared to their specific needs.

Today, the System i Developer partners organize two RPG & DB2 Summits and one SQL-oriented event on an annual basis, speak at conferences and user group meetings, produce several eLearning courses, participate in online conferences and forums, and contribute technical articles to all of the major IBM i news media.

Susan Gantner speaks of the change with mixed emotions. “Skip has been a close friend and colleague for more years than either of us would admit. He's smart, fun to work with, organized and knows how to get things done. Even though we will miss his day-to-day contributions to SiD—and the Summit attendees will certainly miss him—it's easy to understand his desire to cut back at this point. He’s really into a home renovation project on a beautiful lake in Vermont, and that’s just the first item on his wish list for retirement. I need to remind myself that he won’t disappear from our lives, and we can look forward to working with him on special events.”

Marchesani started with IBM on June 17, 1968, directly out of college. Much of his IBM career involved working at the Rochester Development Lab, where he was involved with various System/38 projects and the development of the AS/400. He was also part of the team that taught early AS/400 education to customers and IBM lab sites worldwide. After retiring from IBM, Marchesani continued consulting, teaching and speaking for IBM i-oriented user groups and technical conferences around the world. Skip is an award winning COMMON speaker and has received their Distinguished Service Award.

In addition, Marchesani partnered with the legendary Al Barsa and others to produce the AS/400 Connections Conference before partnering with Susan Gantner, Jon Paris and Paul Tuohy on System i Developer and the RPG & DB2 Summit. Marchesani is author of the book DB2/400: The New AS/400 Database.