More than 200 people attended the 2011 OCEAN Technical Conference this year in Costa Mesa to hear more than a dozen industry experts give presentations on 35 topics organized along seven tracks. The OCEAN Board, using creative cost-cutting strategies that the federal government might emulate, vastly trimmed its venue expenses of previous years by holding the event on the campus of an urban university for the second time and provided members a full day of training for just over $200. 

"It all came together just in time--as it always does--and we got glowing reviews," said Bob Langieri, conference chairman, who said the total number of attendees was 210. 

"The energy was higher this year, people seemed to adapt to the new university setting introduced in 2010, and both the attendees and the vendors had positive comments at the conclusion," said Carole Comeau, OCEAN Board member. 

The rich curriculum, that included tracks on Power programming, programming strategies, PHP, infrastructure, mobile apps and networking, new technology, and a showcase for vendor presentations, was put together largely by Margaret Matthews, OCEAN Board president, who has been scheduling speakers and presentations for the group for several years. 

Comeau's special conference event, a roundtable of upper-level executives emceed by Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, CIO of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), Los Angeles, and sponsored by Meridian IT, drew nearly a dozen CTOs and CIOs, along with several OCEAN Board members and the press. The roundtable discussion provided attendees an opportunity to share their concerns and ideas on a number of common problems facing the Power Systems community, including server consolidation, social networking, cloud computing, IBM i upgrades, web enabling of legacy applications, and personnel issues, among others. At the conclusion, the group agreed to stay in touch in order to share solutions and discuss common challenges. 

Attending the early-morning roundtable were representatives from Amcor Sunclipse NA; Crowell Weedon & Co.; Penhall International; Chinese Laundry and Cels Enterprises; Signet Armorlite; Irvine Ranch Water District; Kingston Technology; ActiveTech, Inc.; Anna's Linens, and FIDM, among others. 

While featured speaker Paul Tuohy of System i Developer was unable to attend the conference due to illness, his presentation slots were picked up by other speakers, including Allison Butterill, IBM Power Systems application development offering manager for the Systems and Technology Group, and Trevor Perry, chief strategist at Angus Thinks! Other speakers included Brian May of Profound Logic Software—RPG enhancements for IBM i 7.1, XML service, modernize file I/O with data structures, and enhance existing RPG apps with PHP; Aaron Bartell of Krengel Technology—OpenRPGUI (open source RPG user interface), Develop your first Android app, and SureYouCanHavetheKeys.com (a look at a mobile location-aware application using the IBM i). Author Jeff Olen and Zend's Mike Pavlak were there speaking on PHP, and Larry Bolhuis gave four presentations on hardware, DB2, and work management. 

Exhibitors attending the show included MC Press Online, which had its traditional "bookstore" of the hottest IT titles available at a discount, CNX Corp., DRV Technologies, Help/Systems, HiT Software, IBM, inFORM Decisions, Key Information Systems, Krengeltech, looksoftware, Maxava, Meridian IT, MKS Software, New Generation Software, SoftLanding Systems, Symtrax, Vanguard Systems, Vision Solutions, and Zend Technologies.

OCEAN volunteer committee members who helped put on the conference include Kim Hayes, John Kienstra, Lewis Libman, Anne Martinez, Xavier Martinez, Perry Mills, Nirupa Patel, Jorge Sanguinetti, and Garrett Schut.

Chris Smith was the Senior News Editor at MC Press Online from 2007 to 2012 and was responsible for the news content on the company's Web site. Chris has been writing about the IBM midrange industry since 1992 when he signed on with Duke Communications as West Coast Editor of News 3X/400. With a bachelor's from the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in English and minored in Journalism, and a master's in Journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Chris later studied computer programming and AS/400 operations at Long Beach City College. An award-winning writer with two Maggie Awards, four business books, and a collection of poetry to his credit, Chris began his newspaper career as a reporter in northern California, later worked as night city editor for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and went on to edit a national cable television trade magazine. He was Communications Manager for McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, Calif., before it merged with Boeing, and oversaw implementation of the company's first IBM desktop publishing system there. An editor for MC Press Online since 2007, Chris has authored some 300 articles on a broad range of topics surrounding the IBM midrange platform that have appeared in the company's eight industry-leading newsletters. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..