2015 IBM Champions Announced
IBM has announced the ICS Champions for 2015. Congratulations to a lot of well deserved people! Also, a general thanks to the entire Domino/XPages community, as I am also, it would seem, on this list. I got a nice friendly email congratulating and welcoming me to this group of wonderful people! I am honored.
What Is An IBM Champion?
From IBM 'IBM Champion page on developerWorks',
IBM Champion program The IBM Champion program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community -- and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence. An IBM Champion is an IT professional, business leader, developer, or educator who influences and mentors others to help them make best use of IBM software, solutions, and services. IBM Champions are not employees of IBM.
All in all, a person who "aids the cause", as it were. There are many outlets, writing a blog is just one of them. In case you've been living under a rock, check out these excellent resources:
- Stack Overflow's XPages tag (there are some very smart people who can help answer things, occasionally I do as well)
- many tweet about XPages with hash tag XPages
- the SocialBiz User Group contains many posts from knowledgable people
- and more I probably don't even know of
How Did I Get Mixed Up In All This?
I hope that I was selected (and nominated) because people enjoy what I've been blogging about and not just my ability to properly charcoal grill a turkey ('mmm... turkey'), bake phenomenal cookies ('salted caramel chocolate chip cookies'), my love of coffee "I'm not awake unless I've had enough to kill a horse"), geeky board games ('H.P. Lovecraft inspired board games are pretty awesome'), love of my dog ("we've been meaning to try skijoring"), enjoyment of Dr Who ("yeah, we're a Whovian house"), developer-crush (think man-crush) of Jesse Gallagher ('Jess likes structured code, I like structured code... we could be twins!'), or my love of coffee ('did I mention I like coffee?'). My attempts have been to reconcile my day job as a staffed Domino/XPages developer (which ought to entail more than just "business as usual" development) and my passion for many "new and modern web things". That list includes AngularJS, Bootstrap3, NodeJS, and RESTful API development. All these passions (except for the NodeJS bit, I'm getting to that, but it will be a series for next year and may cause some minds to implode) should be well known to any who read my blog with any frequency, and I hope I've increased either an understanding or thirst for knowledge of those who read my blog. As with any task which requires ingenuity, which follows the form of problem solving (the very cornerstone of being a good developer) is to understand and use the tools that one has available. It is my sincere hope that my ramblings can either enlighten, inform, or spark that which helps you, my fellow developer, to do better business and maybe even make your life/work easier.
If you want my crazy ramblings about life, mixed in with some development stuff and most things-geek, read my tweet history.
Stay Tuned
So, good things to come. With the holidays coming up, and January fast approaching, it's crunch time on my part. My chalk talk session is staying within the first page of results for voting, so I'm building up my application, documenting, and setting up my presentation so I can show it off both here and capstone it next month at IBM ConnectED 2015!
[shameless plug] If you haven't voted for chalk talks at IBM ConnectED 2015, go do so! Voting ends on the 5th. [/shameless plug]
