This blog post is obsolete, but left in place for historical purposes. IBM deprecated the developerWorks site on March 31, 2020 and the information there was migrated to IBM developer or Support web sites. Refer to IBM i Technology Updates Have a New Home for the updated information.
Hello and thank you for reading this “i Can” blog thread, where I’ll share an update on our plans and progress for IBM i on developerWorks. As the IBM i developerWorks content manager, this topic is near and dear to me.
Three years ago, the IBM i team launched an effort to establish an improved presence on IBM’s developerWorks website. The primary focus of this effort was to explain IBM i technology to our customers.
The overall strategy for explaining IBM i technology can be understood by a simple 1-2-3:
1) The IBM i developerWorks Technology Updates wiki will contain details about IBM i enhancements.
2) The IBM i developerWorks Zone will provide a useful landing page for anyone seeking technical details related to IBM i.
3) Where it makes sense, IBM i products will establish wikis on developerWorks as a lightweight approach to sharing technical details.
A key concept is to understand that these three elements augment existing resources. The Technology Updates wiki bridges the gap between the RFA (announcement document) and IBM InfoCenter (books). The i Zone website makes it easy to find details and communities for IBM i. The dW wikis are uniquely oriented to a technical audience and complement the detail that can be found on IBM Power websites.
If we focus solely upon the Technology Updates wiki, we can see how it has quickly matured as an important resource for IBM i customers and partners. This wiki gets updated when technology enhancements are delivered. With the IBM i 7.1 adoption of Technology Refreshes (TRs) as a strategic mechanism for delivering hardware, firmware and virtualization enhancements, the Technology Updates wiki is “the place to go” to discover details on TR and software enhancements delivered by the IBM i operating system on the same timeframe as TRs.
Pick the topic, whether its Java, TRs, database or many others, and you’ll be able to easily navigate to the important details. You can even choose to optionally subscribe to specific areas of the wiki, enabling a way for IBM i to push details to you on those topics you want to follow. Lastly, in three short years, we have added 345 fact pages within this wiki, which is a testament to the amount of detail that is contained within this IBM i resource.
The IBM i customer community spoke and we responded. They wanted to see IBM i featured as prominently as other IBM product offerings. Since 2011, IBM i has been easy to find on developerWorks. As the slide shows, “IBM i” is listed as a Technical Topic. When chosen, the user is brought to the i Zone. This zone contains IBM i technical articles and pointers to key resources. We typically publish a new article twice a month and have racked up 122 unique articles since recommitting ourselves to developerWorks as a strategic venue for engaging customers and enabling successful adoption of new technology.
Simply stated, to adopt technology, our customers need to know it exists, the value it can provide and how to use it.
The IBM i product specific wikis have grown over time. Some of those listed in the slide are newcomers and others have been established for a long time. The takeaway is that these wikis exist and cover details beyond enhancements. I encourage you to review the list and find those that are relevant to your daily work on IBM i.
Dawn, thanks for allowing me to provide this update. The journey so far has been well received by customers and IBMers alike. As always, we’re interested in your ideas on where we can do more in this space.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.