i-UG i-Power Conference 2026

Before heading off to your elected sessions, start the day with a tea or coffee along with a Danish Pastry or a signature i-UG bacon roll.

Why not take the opportunity to introduce yourself to other delegates & industry specialists.

Following on from his session at the last i-UG conference, "Did a recent unfortunate event at JLR (Jaguar Land/Rover) resonate with anybody?|, at the last i-UG conference, Eddie has been asked back to put some more meat on the bones of the highly effective and largely 'FREE' IBM SafeGuarded copy, Ransomware protection solution from IBM.

Eddie pointed out that this well matured and highly effective IBM offering would have saved JLR many, many millions of pounds and allowed JLR to return to production in a fraction of the time it actually took them?

In this follow-on education session, Eddie Chaffin of ABP will show how ABP Food Group has successfully implemented IBM's SafeGuarded Copy solution, and show you how to go about implementing the sam on your system. You will be able to grab immutable copies of your whole system at scheduled times in the day (Without interrupting production), 'roll back' to any one of these multiple daily points before the Hack or Virus kicked in! It looks like sorcery, but it is REAL.

So successful has the solution been, and so incredible the compression and therefore the space saving been, that ABP now uses the same technology to do scheduled backups, test upgrades within minutes and, if necessary, roll back to the previous image in minutes too. At will, you can run up new partitions and enable testing whilst the production just carries on.  We can even test restore recent hard-copy backups for verification... all without interrupting production.

This is standard IBM software and you can have it too...

For this session, attendees will need to bring a laptop that they can install software onto.  You will also need to create and IBM account to allow for software download

In the morning: IBM Bob
Hands-on workshops demonstrating some of the capabilities of our AI powered Software Development assistant. General examples of using IBM Bob throughout the Software Development Lifecycle. Guided examples using a mix of RPG code and development styles. A chance to experiment further with the tools (and potentially their own code if available).

In the afternoon:  watsonx Orchestrate
Hands-on workshop covering the IBM Agentic AI platform developing tools that can interact with other systems.Utilising existing AI Agents as part of a business workflow.Generating new Agents and Tools to perform a specific task that is unique to a business.[For this session, attendees will need to bring a laptop that can connect to IBM SaaS offerings]

Bring it all together:
Using Bob to create AgentsCombine learnings from the previous two sessions and use IBM Bob to develop new AI Agents.Use the appropriate Modes within Bob to generate an Agent based on natural language prompts.

Adopting AI-based Assistants and Agentic AI tools in your organization? While these technologies are enticing and extremely powerful, the need to consider security during your AI projects is something one must not forget. During this session Scott Forstie and Carol Woodbury will demonstrate the power of using IBM Bob for IBM i security tasks. In addition, they’ll discuss the security safeguards and proper configurations you’ll want to consider when implementing AI. The afternoon session will be full of hidden gems. Come discover this trove of features that are sure to enhance your day and make your life easier.
Come to this workshop prepared to fully immerse yourself into the scary realities, and amazing capabilities that are awaiting your attention.

SQL is much more than a query language. Besides querying and manipulating data in database objects and generating those database objects, SQL also provides all kinds of commands and constructs, for writing and executing SQL Routines, i.e. programs and functions. With the SQL Programming Language, Stored Procedures, Triggers and User Defined (Table) Functions can be written, without knowing anything else than SQL commands!

Back in April 2021 the Query Supervisor was announced in IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 10. This tool is part of the SQL Query Engine. Maybe you have heard about it and started using it, most likely you only heard about it and never had the time to give a good look. After attending this workshop, that will change as this tool is perfect to detect and handle run-away queries. During this workshop you will learn what this tool can do and how to get started. With the knowledge of this tool under your belt you will get back control and will be able to avoid long running queries jeopardising your LPAR.

Join us for an enjoyable evening of information and fun at this year's Gala Dinner.

The Gala Dinner is hosted by i-UG Chairman Mike Ryan.
During a 3 course meal we will hear stories from the Gala Dinner sponsors:

We end the Gala Dinner with an update from our friend Jacqui Garrad Museum Director at the National Museum of Computing (T.N.M.O.C)

As usual the evening will involve lots of fun.... and a few surprises along the way.

After, join us in the Event Foyer Bar for even more networking opportunities.

For those of us who want the evening to last a little longer, join us in the the foyer bar.