IDUG Db2 Table Talk
IDUG Db2 Table Talk
The Pit - with David Simpson
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In this episode, we chat to David Simpson about his career, wherein he gives some terrifying advice to would-be speakers... Face the Wall... in The Pit.
Learn more about IDUG, the International Db2 User Group, at www.idug.org.
Hi everyone, thanks for joining us. Today is iDock Podcast, where we speak to some great people in the DV2 community. I'm Doctor Cardage.
SPEAKER_04And I'm Julia Coster, and we represent the iDug Content Committee. We hope you enjoy today's edition.
SPEAKER_02And welcome to another exciting, fun-packed episode of DB2 Table Talk iDug's podcast. With us today is David Simpson. Julia.
SPEAKER_04We are really excited to have David with us. He is a big star in the DB2 community. Many people will know him already. He's been an IBM Gold Consultant, IBM champion. You're on the iDUG Content Committee. You've written so many articles. You've presented so many sessions at iDUGs and various regional user groups. You've been the best speaker. You're in the iDUG Speaker Hall of Fame. Basically, you're pretty awesome. And now you work as a DBA.
SPEAKER_00I I do again. Everything comes back around. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been uh fun to listen to the interviews you've done so far and get the human side of DB2, uh, the backstory of all these people that we know so well. So I appreciate what you guys do. After all that, you've reached the top, you know, DBA. But I'm back to DBA, yeah. Uh the thing I started doing in 1997.
SPEAKER_04Is that when you started 97?
SPEAKER_00So what's so I actually I started out as a COBOL programmer in uh '93, fresh out of college. DB2 was relatively new in the shop I was in. Uh I consider myself, I think, one of the second generation of DB2 people in that it I think we were on version 2.3 when I started. And the place I went to work for out of college was just migrating their whole system of record from B Dam, which I don't know whether either of you remember BDAM. Um it's older than VSAM, right? Very, very low-level uh needs assembler access routines and all of that, uh, straight into DB2. So they were converting from like 60s technology to 90s. And so that ver this DB2 migration was in progress when I started there. So there was really no choice but to uh embrace this db2 thing and figure it out. And you know, kind of quickly became one of the DB2 go-to people on that team just because you know, uh learned it out of necessity and eventually became a DBA in that same environment a few years later.
SPEAKER_04Very cool.
SPEAKER_02So I guess you've seen in your career, you've seen a lot of changes in the technology. Um, what do you think have been the big standouts in DB2 functionality?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there's there's been so many. It's really, I mean, it's the same core product that it was in 1993, but uh you know, one of the big ones that I encountered kind of uh in the late 90s was something as simple as like the dynamic statement cache, right? Where we were in the process of introducing distributed what we called at the time client server uh applications into the environment. Um, we had some like Visual Basic and some Power Builder, if you remember what that was, in addition to Java as it became a thing. And all of that was dynamic SQL coming up into DB2 and non-cached at the time. And so every statement went through a full prepare every time, and it just really limited how much work you could push through uh a db2. So I look at that as you know, there's there's a million of these, right? But there's that was one kind of major step forward that made things possible that just were really difficult before, which is supporting a very large distributed workload, which made DB2 and the mainframe a player, you know, for a whole new bunch of applications. All the stuff I wrote at the beginning was COBOL, right? CICS COBOL batch. But uh opening the door to the distributed world, which of course is you know more traffic for a lot of shops now than than the traditional workloads on the mainframe. And that I don't think would be possible without the dynamic statement cache that came around version five or so.
SPEAKER_04Cool. I think you might be the first person to have mentioned that actually when we've asked this question. So that's quite interesting. And I think it probably says a bit about your main areas of focus that you've had because you're a real performance king, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00Again, out of necessity. Uh yes. Uh one of the things that happens to you. Well, you've both, I think, been DBAs, right? One of the things that happens to you is people bring you uh their problem statements um and say, you know, this happened to me yesterday, right? Where somebody's saying, This is hitting the governor, I need to make it run. And so you work on the SQL. Later in my career, I did a lot of uh instruction, uh, you know, did a lot of teaching, and you would teach a performance class. And if you know, about one day in, people would start bringing you their queries, right? Just okay, you you you think you know something, uh, see if you can make this work. So which is always a challenge, right? Because you don't know their data or their environment or what the tables or indexes look like. You just have this 10-page SQL statement. But yeah, so it's been fun. Uh, that has been one of the things I've enjoyed is trying to get to the bottom of SQL and uh and make it make it work well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And you mentioned that you you were an instructor, which I forgot when I was introducing you. But was there something that made you feel that you were ready, like it was time to become an instructor, or was it just one of those rocky ideas that you had over a few drinks and then when you were sober, no one back down?
SPEAKER_00I was thinking about that in kind of preparation for this. I actually became an instructor first for the company formerly known as Platinum Technology in 1999. And I applied for that job, and I don't remember why, because I remember they brought me out to uh Scottsdale, Arizona, and they said prepare uh, you know, a little presentation, like a five-minute presentation, so that the people who were interviewing me could kind of watch me present. And I was not a presenter, I had never spoken in public before. Uh, I remember it was the first opportunity I had to crack PowerPoint, you know, back this is how old that was, how long ago this was, right? And I put together, you know, probably 10 slides, and they were they didn't care what the topic was, they just said pick a topic. I don't remember what I did, I think it was some BB2 SQL related thing. And a bunch of people watched me do this at the end of this day-long interview, and they uh it was not pretty. Um, it was they had all kinds of feedback for me. Um, and so Julia, you asked about why did you think you could do this? I went away from that interview going, I can't do this. That that's you know, I I don't know what I applied for this for. I don't know why I thought I could do this. Um, but they apparently uh saw something that I didn't in that moment. They decided I was teachable, I guess. And so they put me through their train the trainer program that they had and got a lot of great feedback, uh, learned a lot from those people. You know, you can learn a lot by trying something you you aren't good at and letting people critique it. And so that was kind of unintentional. Like I said, I don't remember why I applied for that job or why I thought I could do it, but it ended up working out.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think you're right there. They obviously could see something because what we see from you now is such an inspirational speaker because you are so fluent with your your knowledge and and the way that you can explain things is just kind of next level, really. So yeah, well done, Platinum.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for for my very short career at at Platinum, they they did uh they they taught me that I could do that. Uh, and that was something I think for IT professionals of any technology, just the ability, you know, the taking the time to learn how to communicate is so valuable because so many of us can't, right? Or um have great technical knowledge, but have trouble communicating uh with management and and others. And I think for me early in my career, that was invaluable. Um, yeah, and even my kids, as they go, you know, they they talk about taking speech class in high school, and none of them wanted to. And I was I was always encouraging them to do that and overcome that fear we all have of public speaking. Um, because it'll, you know, no matter what your career is, it's it it will help you, right?
SPEAKER_04It will. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Was it after your short stint there that you you went on to work with Tony?
SPEAKER_00Uh so there was there was a gap there. I I worked with Tony uh at Themis. Uh there was a job in between where after I was done at Platinum, I went to work for one of the credit bureaus here in the US back to being a DBA. So I've had a couple of refresh your knowledge. Trying to leave the I keep trying to leave that uh you know role where I have to be uh available at 2 a.m. and end up right back there again. But uh yeah, so I went to work uh uh for one of the credit bureaus in Chicago, which is where I met Dan Luxetic and Susan Lawson and uh Richard Yevich uh was was there for a brief time. Terry Purcell was, I mean, that was I I met all the superstars uh at this place. Yeah, they were all on site. And uh the interesting thing about that was when I first went there, they were also migrating from B Dam to DB2. Um I never yeah, well, not really, but I never thought I would see that happen again. Um, and uh I got to watch it go by a second time. So that and that was I think where I really you were talking about kind of developing the expertise of SQL and SQL tuning. That that's really where that got uh deeply ingrained in me because the sequel they were writing there, uh, you know, credit bureaus keep data on everybody, you know, in our case in the US, and have to assemble it, you know, with these crazy queries. So SQL tuning was was critical. Um that's I think where I got good at it. Of course, you know, working with Dan Luxich and Terry Purcell didn't hurt.
SPEAKER_04So that must be some really great minds. Yeah, but also kind of fun.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It was like we never um when they needed training, like when there's a new release of DB2 coming up, you know, we just have Terry or Dan stand in front of us for a few hours and and talk to us. Uh yeah, it was unbelievably uh career shaping, right? Just getting to know those guys and learn from them. Um Susan and Richard too were were there helping design this you know db2 system out of you know, again, file structures from the 60s. So it was uh yeah, very formative. Uh and so it was after that that I uh well it was it was actually iDug of 2006. The shop I was in had just migrated to version eight. You guys probably both remember version eight. Yeah, it was a challenging migration. Um we were one of the first to do it in the US, and we realized that after we did it, right? So it it was it was one of those releases where you know they they they were doing an awful lot of things that needed to be done, like the Unicode catalog and the 64-bit addressing, but but just getting there was um there was a lot of change that you were absorbing. It was the first time we had compatibility mode or conversion mode or whatever we end up calling it now. Um, and so what I did was I put together my experiences since we were one of the first shops in the US to do this, and I presented it at the local Chicago user group. Cheryl Larson was kind enough to invite me to present there, and from there I presented it at iDug 2006 in North America, and I think it was in Tampa, and it was very well received. Uh, it was, I think, just not not because of anything, any special knowledge I had in particular, it's just that I had survived, right?
SPEAKER_03And I had the notes.
SPEAKER_00Um Right. And I kind of gave everybody the pain points, right? This is uh these are the things you should look out for when you're migrating. And I wasn't even concentrating on new features or any of that that you often hear in you know, new new uh release training. I was just like, this is this is what we had to do to make everything continue to function, right? And uh a lot of people really appreciated that. That ended up winning me a Best Speaker Award at iDug, which allowed me to give the presentation again for the first time in Europe in Vienna in the fall of 2006. Uh, and it was also very well received there. So um that that is kind of what catapulted me from you know uh DBA that nobody knew about to uh you know some someone at least that uh people knew at iDug. So um, and again, from that, from ID, the relationships at iDug have just been great to cultivate over the years and just just really enjoyed that community.
SPEAKER_04You've been involved with iDug for a long time now, and you do a lot on the content.
SPEAKER_00I I think I went to my first iDug in 2002, so yeah, 20 plus years now. Um, and yes, uh it Dan was kind enough to invite me to join him when he was kind of reforming the content committee back in about 2013 or 14. And so I've been on the content committee since then, just kind of helping recruit and cultivate uh you know content for the website, including articles and well, and what you guys are doing right now is part of that too, right?
SPEAKER_04Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So you really were um standing on the shoulders of giants working with those uh those famous absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was fun. Uh I you know, when I first went there, I didn't even know uh that they were famous, but uh I figured that out pretty quickly. And uh, you know, people like Terry and Dan were just becoming famous at that point. Uh so yeah, like you said, I got to ride those coattails a little bit, got a lot of great help learning how to put together a presentation, present it. Um, uh those guys had been doing it for a while by that point. And then you got to work with uh Linda Closen as well. Yeah, Linda, um, she is one of the very first generation DB2 people. She claims that she became a DB2 expert by losing a coin toss in 1986 or something. Uh, you know, all the system programmers have this new thing they have to install, and they they tossed a coin to see who would do it, and uh she lost. But then she made a a really great career out of uh out of that too. So yeah, she was uh you know, obviously a great source of knowledge and history of db2 to work with as well. I what I did want to talk about too. I you you guys interviewed Dan Luxetic uh back uh oh maybe a year or more ago. Um, and he told a story, I think, about coming out of a conference room or a meeting with the CIO who had just been hired and didn't know anything about mainframes. Yes. Um and then he he comes out and you know, there's all the people you know waiting and to ask him, you know, what happened. And uh yeah. So I was in the background of that story. We uh I was one of the ones asking him what what does all of this mean? And uh we didn't know. So yeah, he it was an interesting exercise in, you know, kind of dealing with management that's not always mainframe savvy or friendly. Yeah, we we go to the cloud because it's the cloud now, right? We'd we forgot why.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because we know that it's not cheaper.
SPEAKER_00You know, it's funny. Uh one place that I was recently, they actually even stopped talking about because it's cheaper, because it was pretty clear, you know, with the first four A's that it wasn't. And there's a lot of great things you can do in the cloud, right? But uh a lot of the lift and shift work that goes on, you end up on a more expensive platform with you know less reliability, less scalability than the mainframe gives you kind of out of the box.
SPEAKER_02So uh you were recently on the IBM C Day. How do you think the recruitment of or the marketing of uh the mainframe platform as a platform is going with our younger element?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is something that I think is changing an awful lot just in the last few years. I've joked that I'm always seem to be the youngest person on any team that I'm on, which is kind of funny because I'm not young, uh, right. But uh the mainframe talent pool is aging. And there's a gap, I think, between about my age and about people that are coming out of college right now, uh, where the mainframe wasn't part of their education in whatever their formal education was. It may or may not have been in part of the environments that they work in. Uh, and we we just don't have a lot of people in that age group that are working on mainframes. I feel like that's changing. The Z-Day was a great example of that, right? Where you got to see uh a bunch of young talent taking on the mainframe and learning it. The place I work now has an apprenticeship program where we we get young talent that's been kind of pre-screened for the the basics of what it takes to be an IT professional, but also have interest in mainframes. And that's been really successful, not just for DB2, but for all of the mainframes. So uh I think that's changing in a good way. We're gonna need another generation of people to support all of this going forward. And uh it's good to see that it's finally being cultivated.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think you're right. There has been an increase in the last few years, and people are finally kind of realizing that we need to do something serious about this this potential problem. So it's it's great that that you're seeing it and and that that it's happening where you're working. It's you're you mentor the the younger folk as well, don't you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so well, our whole team is responsible for you know, we kind of rotate the various disciplines because at least in our apprenticeship program, they're not assigned to a particular technology right away. So they're gonna be on the mainframe, but they do a little bit of time with storage people and they do a little bit of time on ZOS Sysprogs, and they do a little time with CICS, they do a little bit of time with us. So we're all involved in mentoring them. It's been really rewarding to see uh you know young folks really catch on and and embrace this technology that they're certainly not used to, right? They're not used to uh a TSO screen, but we can train them to do it.
SPEAKER_04So uh that's yeah, and it's such a great idea for them to get the exposure of all of the different elements and and components that make up the complete system.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I kind of wish I had had that, right? Like nobody took me to all those places and introduced me to all those people. I had to kind of pick it up piecemeal.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, but now they've got those contacts, so they've already got like the the links there with with those people. So when they've got a problem in the middle of the night, they're not speaking to a stranger, they're speaking to someone that they know and and they can they can interact with with some ease, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a great project, the uh the IBM Z Day and Z Explore, just to get the mainframe as a platform out there. And I know it's becoming really popular among students and that are different universities that are setting up mainframe societies or mainframe clubs. Uh it's good news.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I was one of the last people to get that as part of my college education. Uh, we had a COBOL class in college, and uh, I remember I actually found those listings years later that were produced by this, and it was inline, you know, it was an inline compile in the JCL, right? It was compile link and go. You compiled every time you ran the program just because that was an easy way for them to not have to teach us JCL. Um uh so it was really it was kind of an afterthought, like you might encounter this mainframe thing, it's probably going away, right? But uh you should know a little COBOL. But of course, that for me was critical. You know, that was what I did for the first several years of my career is work on COBOL and did have to learn JCL eventually.
SPEAKER_02Yes, always handy. So, what does David do to put his feet up? What does he do when he uh kicks his shoes off and turns in some work?
SPEAKER_00So that is changing uh, you know, as my life changes a little bit. I ended up taking a new job and moving across the country to Denver, Colorado, one week before the pandemics hit, which is not a good time to make lots of major changes in your life. Uh but uh yeah, I moved across the country to take a job that had to be here in Denver. Um, and then a week later it didn't have to be anywhere in particular. So that was interesting. Uh my oldest daughter who lives here in Denver, so it's been great to be able to spend time with family. We do uh, you know, we've embraced Colorado, so we do a lot of skiing in the winter. Um trying to be more outdoorsy than I naturally would be because it's such a great uh atmosphere for that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so ski season is coming here. Looking forward to that for sure. Uh recently had first yes, it is. It's literally, you know, within an hour you can get to some of the best skiing in the world. Uh it's really great. Recently had first grandchild. She lives here nearby in Denver, so we're that's taking up uh a fair amount of time too, which is just outstanding. Yeah, great to be there to see that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah, so family's taking up pretty much most of your time. Uh uh quite a bit these days. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04We we've uh we've got to ask, are you musical? Because we've spoken to a lot of people in the iDug community and there's a lot of musicians.
SPEAKER_02Are you an Elvis impersonator like Kurt or
SPEAKER_00I'm not Kurt. No, I'm not Kurt. I'm not Dan. That is really interesting how that's sometimes correlated. That is not true with me. Um, one of my four children is musical, and we don't know where it came from. Um, so no, uh, no, I'm really not. I enjoy listening to music. I was on the Dan Luxatic podcast years and years ago when he was doing a kind of a solo podcast, and he brought his guitar. I think we were sitting in his hotel room in Philadelphia just talking about some DB2 feature, don't know what. But he was playing the guitar and singing, and you know, I I applauded at the end, but no, uh that that particular thing didn't follow me.
SPEAKER_02That was his DB2 cocktail hour, wasn't it? That he did with Susan.
SPEAKER_04That's the way to do a podcast, not over Zoom.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah. When I didn't know it yet, I had one best speaker, but he he brought a big they had a party, they rented out the penthouse of this hotel, and they had a party and they had a rotating panel of people to come talk to them. And uh uh I was one of those guests, which was kind of fun. Yeah, and then uh the the second the one I did where he was playing the guitar, that was later. I think he was doing it solo uh at that point. So yeah, it was but he's a fun guy, you know, always uh always interesting to hang with him uh whenever we're in the same place.
SPEAKER_04Did I read that you speak French?
SPEAKER_00Is that on my LinkedIn? I no I shouldn't I shouldn't say that I do. My my mother was a French teacher, so um, and I took French in school, so I probably used to know more than I do now.
SPEAKER_04Um I find that as well. The more I learn of something else, that it seems to be the French that leaves my head and others. Pushes something else out of the bench. Yeah, something gets pushed out.
SPEAKER_00You're a you're a Spanish speaker though, right?
SPEAKER_04That's uh Well, a little bit, but again, that's also being pushed out by REST APIs and other things that I'm learning.
SPEAKER_00I find that uh every year that goes by, new information requires something to leave, and I don't get to pick what it is. I joke that all of the uh lyrics to uh you know take on me by aha are still in my head, um, and I can't get rid of them. But important stuff gets pushed out every day. Uh including including a lot of French.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is important things like aha lyrics that are like locked in its own buffer pool pages that they will never they are pinned, yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're pinned in memory. Yeah, can't get rid of them.
SPEAKER_04The other day I managed to do the rap for Fog on the Time, which is a Paul Gascoigne rap, which probably doesn't mean much to many people, but it's something that I learned as a teenager, and I can still just do it, and I really have no need to do it.
SPEAKER_00No use for that, right? But it's there forever. I I'm I'm confronted a lot by co-workers now with a thing that I did last week that I I have no memory of. Um, it's fun. I'm I'm I mean, the part of that is you know, you've learned a lot of things over the years, right? And that that helps uh it's all good stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's even worse when you you say you write code and then after a while you look back and you think, oh, that's awful.
SPEAKER_01Who on earth wrote that?
SPEAKER_02Who wrote that?
SPEAKER_01That's my name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I was looking at a Rex the other day and it had my name at the top, and I had no memory of writing it. This is pretty cool. I'm glad it exists. Who wrote it? Uh no, it was me. Cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And in in terms of learning new things, with all of the developments and the exploitation of AI and machine learning, we've all been seeing it and kind of getting a bit excited about it. What's happening in the real world? What are you seeing with your systems? Is there much happening yet, or where do you think the opportunities are?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you asked me earlier for you know what's a pivotal moment, you know, or a new feature or a new thing that kind of uh was important in at least in my career. And I mentioned one, but another one is certainly um IDAA on the mainframe uh with DB2. Uh just coupling your analytical workload to the transactional system and allowing people kind of instantaneous analytical access to your system of record. I don't know another platform that has that as tightly coupled and easily accessible. So you talk about AI and machine learning and you know, all of that being able to be directed with SQL against your operational database, at least, you know, for all appearances against your operational database, has been huge. Last two places I've worked have have been uh using IDAA pretty pretty extensively for that kind of thing. You both mentioned working at a bank before, fraud detection at the time of uh of a transaction is is huge.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. So not waiting for the data to make it into the data warehouse a day or two later and then do your analytics on it, but be able to work on it right out of the system of record is uh yeah pretty big.
SPEAKER_04I think that's uh so for those for those people that are already using IDAA, SQL data insight seems like the next logical step.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's something I've I don't have a lot of experience with yet, but uh like you said, always learning.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00But I have been uh an IBM champion for almost 10 years now. That's been super helpful in just uh maintaining connections in this world and and outside of the just pure DB2 world as well. Um I think that's a a great program that you know is always recruiting new people as well. I'm looking forward to some of this new talent that we talked about uh making their way into that uh program eventually.
SPEAKER_02You have to keep abreast of what's going on and just pump up content and get get your name out there and be a thought leader.
SPEAKER_00And it's not hard to do, especially um if I can make a small plug for the content committee that all of us are a part of, right? Um it's you know, some of those articles are pages and pages long, go into great detail. And uh, especially in the early days, we published a lot of like two-paragraph articles, like, hey, look at this neat thing I found, right? And uh I think that's great too, right? That's not everything has to be a deep dive.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So writing a two-paragraph article about a neat thing you found is is really easy, and it's a great way to get your name attached to something that people will see. And uh we'd be happy to consider publishing it, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think it's the same with the IDO conferences as well, but I think we're we're so interested in the user experiences and what people have actually done with things rather than just the theory.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's one of the things I love about IDO is you know the number of spots reserved for user presentations where you're kind of you asked, you know, what's it like in the real world? And that's the stuff I love to hear. Yeah, of course, it's great to hear from you know the lab and everything too, uh, about what's coming and what they're working on. But yeah, boy, what how does this actually work when you install it is invaluable.
SPEAKER_04Um I think a lot of the time those of us in the real world, uh unfortunately not me anymore, but um, when I was in the real world, everything that I would hear at conferences about what's what's coming soon, it was at least five or even more years away for for me to even consider. But things that have been out for five years already, tell me about those because now they're just like becoming something that I can actually work with. We've got approval to look at something that's new, five years old.
SPEAKER_02So you've got 30 plus years of experience as a developer, a DBA consultant, an instructor. Looking back over your career with the experience that you've gained, what would you tell your younger self just starting out? Which I think basically could be applied to any other newbie who's starting in mainframe as a career.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of the things I tell the people that I mentor now, because there's lots of uh, you know, IT is bigger now than it than it used to be. Uh, I remember when I was first a COBOL programmer, I needed to know three things. I think, you know, I need I learned COBOL, I learned some CICS, and and DB2 was new in our shop then. So I learned some DB2. Um, now if you think about what a developer needs to know, you know, let's say they're Java, right? They need to learn a bunch of frameworks. Um, the database is just uh almost an afterthought, right? Uh it's one of the 27 things they have to understand. Um so just especially as the world gets more complicated and cloud adds a whole nother level of complexity to the applications that are being churned out now, be willing to learn new things. And it doesn't have to be limited to the mainframe, right? I think to anybody coming out now with a mainframe background, that is a thing that's not easy to obtain, right? So you put you keep it as a tool in your toolbox, even as you learn other things. The fact that you know how to log on to a green screen and run a piece of JCL is never going to hurt you in your career. Uh, you know, whether you're a pure mainframe developer, DBA or whatever, or um it's it's one piece of your environment, you know, embrace that. And that is something I picked up in my career more um more by trial and error than than anybody told me to do it. Uh, but just the willingness to learn new things is kind of what got me into DB2 to begin with.
SPEAKER_04So that's really good advice.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, great advice. So you've been presenting at many conferences. Have you got any war stories or embarrassing moments that you could share?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So when I was first hired as an instructor back in my platinum days, they brought me out to Scottsdale, Arizona to kind of learn to be a presenter and they put me in this room that they called the pit. And you gave a part of your presentation to a wall, and there was nobody in there most of the time. You were just practicing the stuff they had taught you, give the presentation over and over and over. And then various people would come in and sit and listen and critique it, and then they would leave, and another person might come in, and then a lot of times there was nobody there. And uh I was, I think, talking about DB2 packages. And this guy who has no mainframe background comes in and sits down and he's listening to me. And about 30 seconds in, he says, Just stop, stop, you're boring me to death. And I said, Well, the it I'm talking about db2 packages, right? It's not it's not an interesting topic. And he said to me, and I'll never forget this, when I was in the Navy, I had to teach classes on how to fill out government paperwork. He said, Whatever you're talking about is more interesting than that. Anything can be made interesting if you yourself are interested in the topic, right? And that was uh that was a turning point for me, just in in learning how to, you know, deal with public speaking and presentations. You got to look for an angle on anything that'll make it memorable, even if the the subject matter itself is not the most interesting thing in the world, that the presenter can add some value to that by making it interesting and memorable. So yeah, tell telling it a guy telling me that uh my presentation was more boring than government paperwork was uh was a moment.
SPEAKER_04But the way that they the way they had you practice your presentations against a wall, that that feels by yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00But I will I will say it no, um, it was terrible, but um at the same time, really, really helpful, right? Because I think sometimes we're our own biggest critics. And if you sit there and talk to yourself for an hour, you're gonna find a lot of the flaws in in what you're doing. Um, and if you yourself start to get bored, then you know you know that whoever is trying to listen to you will be bored. So it was gut-wrenching, right? Especially when random people come in and and start telling you what you're doing wrong, but also really, really helpful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess it was a great lesson to learn in preparation for speaking at iDug. Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I would have never tried to speak at iDug if I hadn't already built some confidence in other ways, right? Yes, the pit. The pit was a formative moment, uh, for sure. It only lasted a couple of days, um, and I was glad when it was over. But uh it was it was very formative.
SPEAKER_04I feel like that's something that I I want to try. It's like switch everything off and just practice speaking without any distractions and just focusing on the the topic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had slides that I was going through and the slides were on the wall. Um, that's another thing they they that you once you see this, you'll you can't unsee it. Um, how many presentations do you go to where the slides are driving the show? Right? Where the slides say a thing and then the user or the the presenter reads the slides to you. Um and the the pit people called that being dragged by your slides through a presentation. Um, and that's something I've always been um tried to be cognizant of since is the slides are there to help you tell a story, right? But you be in front of the slides. You already be talking about the next slide when you flip to it, right? Not look at the slide and then read the slide and then look at the next slide. That came out of the pit experience as well. It's just it every once in a while, you're being dragged by your slides again, you're just reading bullet points, right? Or hopefully they're they're there to back you up and not the other way around.
SPEAKER_04Wow. Yeah, that's uh that's me. I'm very guilty of that, I think.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think all of us are, and then once you kind of try and learn to not do that, then you're gonna see other people doing it all the time. Um but I think it's one of the big differences between, you know, an interesting presentation and one that's not, whether the you know the topic is interesting or not, is is the speaker out in front of it? Right? Are they interested in it themselves? Or are they just reading reading material?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Someone once told me when I was starting off in presenting, is that most of your audience can read. Yeah. So don't read the bullet points for them, just use them as something for you to tell stories around.
SPEAKER_00And you better have you know the experience to fill in the gaps between the bullet points, right? That's what they're there for. Yeah, everybody can read. And you guys are both great presenters too. So I enjoyed sitting in both the presentations that both of you have done. There's there's a variety of people out there, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I've got five days to practice before my session at IDOG. So I'm gonna try and take on board some of this and see if I can make it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if you if if you go into a room and close the door and just do it to yourself, uh it's amazing how much you learn. It's not a fun experience or easy, but um, I I think it can make you better. Um and that was certainly true for me.
SPEAKER_04I guess your gaps just become glaringly obvious. They're screaming at you that's like, you don't know this.
SPEAKER_00Because you're the only one there to see them.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00And if you're really brave, you know, ask random people to come in and critique you for a few minutes at a time for the true pit experience.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm not sure I'm ready for that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that that reminds me of the uh Phil Granger episode where uh on on our podcast where he said his wife was invited to listen to him present. That's a good one to go back to.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04I don't think she was particularly complimentary, was she?
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think our worst critics are probably, you know, in our families. I did do a user group once, uh, I think it was in Baltimore, and my daughter had come with me. I think she was eight, and she sat at the back of the room with the sales reverum Themis, where I worked at the time, and watched me present. And uh, I don't think she was terribly impressed either.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a tough crowd.
SPEAKER_02Well, this uh brings us to the end of uh uh another episode of DVG Table Talk. Thank you very much, David. Really enjoyed this conversation. Um, this is being recorded a few days before iDugimia 2024 in Valencia, and we hope to see you there.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me, and thanks for doing this. Uh, like I said, I think the getting to know the people that we interact with and read their material and see their presentations, getting to know a little bit more about their backstory and uh and uh the human side of DB2 is has been great.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for doing what you do. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_04Visit iDog.org for the latest DB2 community news, information about events, and all of our technical content. Tune in again soon for the next podcast at idog.org forward slash podcast.