Edit: I am still happy to be part of the community of Champions.
Originally posted February 19, 2019 on AIXchange
Last month, the IBM Champions program announced its honorees for 2019:
The IBM Champions program recognizes and rewards external experts and thought leaders for their work with IBM products and communities. The program supports advocates and experts across IBM in areas that include Blockchain, Cloud, Collaboration, Data & Analytics, Security, Storage, Power, Watson IoT, and IBM Z.
An IBM Champion is an IT professional, business leader, developer, or educator who influences and mentors others to help them innovate and transform digitally with IBM software, solutions, and services.
From the nominations, 635 IBM Champions were selected…. Among those are:
- 65% renewing; 35% new Champions
- 39 countries represented
- 9 business areas, including Data & Analytics (31%), Cloud (22%), Collaboration Solutions (15%), Power Systems (9%), Storage (7%), IBM Z (6%), Watson IoT (4%), Blockchain (2%), and Security (3%)
As always, I’m happy to be a part of the IBM Champions community. It turns out though that there’s a bit more to the story. At last week’s IBM Think conference, I was one of eight new recipients of the IBM Champion Lifetime Achievement award (video here).
It’s an incredible honor, and I only wish I could have been there in person. The IBM Champion Lifetime designation, “recognizes IBM Champions who stand above their peers for service to the community. Over multiple years, these IBM Champions consistently excel and positively impact the community. They lead by example, are passionate about sharing knowledge, and provide constructive feedback to IBM. The Lifetime Achievement award provides automatic re-nomination into the IBM Champion program for the duration of the program, plus other benefits.”
Please allow me to reiterate a couple of familiar points: 1) it means a great deal to be recognized for my contributions and 2) without this blog and those of you who read it, I’m not sure this achievement would be possible.
Yes, I also use Twitter (@robmcnelly) to help inform and educate AIX/IBM Power Systems users, but most of my time and energy is spent posting to this blog. I’m especially grateful to all who frequent AIXchange and share their insights. Thank you, again, for taking time out of your busy days to read what I write.