DB2 on Campus at CASCON

Barely settled from my DB2 on Campus tour in Italy, I was able to get in through the cracks at the last minute, sharing the IBM Academic Initiative booth with Pat Moffatt at this year's CASCON 2008, Oct. 27-30, at the Sheraton Parkway Convention Center.

We had interested profs and students from the following universities and colleges:

Athabasca University

Georgian College (I will be presenting the DB2 on Campus program to this college at the end of Nov., 2008, and Pat and I will be going to this college again in Dec., 2008, to conduct a DB2 Certification event. Pat has been working closely with this college for a number of years and now that they have integrated appropriate DB2 content into their curriculum, we are able to provide this value-added service: a testing event at the college.)

Queen's University

Ryerson University

Seneca College

University of Alberta

University of British Columbia

University of Ottawa

University of Toronto

We even had some interested high school teachers (from Richmond Hill and Toronto School Board) asking whether they could introduce DB2 in their computer science courses.

A fair number of profs and students were also interested in the same programs for Eclipse, Rational, and WebSphere products. Almost everyone was interested in the Search for the XML Superstar contest that's starting on Dec. 1st in Canada.

Everyone who stopped at our booth was asked to complete a short survey, ranking the following words based on how they would describe the relative knowledge of a job role working with IBM software:
--"Professional Certification"
--"Academic Readiness"
--"Academic Qualification"
--"Academic Recognition"
--"Qualification"
--"Certification"

Thanks again to everyone who visited our booth and participated in the survey! If you are interested in the Academic Initiative program or the DB2 on Campus program and would like a DB2 Certification event or a DB2 on Campus presentation at your university, college, or even high-school, contact us at db2univ@ca.ibm.com or visit our web site at ibm.com/db2/express/students.html. You can also visit the student community Web site at db2oncampus.org.

If you are interested in more information about the IBM Academic Initiative, visit ibm.com/university/data.

Learn more about certification at ibm.com/software/data/education/cert.

Cheers, Agatha Colangelo