COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025: Full Schedule

WELCOME TO COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

Don’t forget to reach out to your local country user group to get the discount code for the congress!

Common Europe, in collaboration with Common Sweden, is delighted to be holding its annual flagship event, Common Europe Congress, in the friendly city of Gothenburg offering extensive education, networking and relaxation opportunities. It’s also a great opportunity for exploring the city… so why not take a family mini-break as well.
Congress education areas targeted are IBM Power hardware, Application Development, Advanced RPG, Open Source tools and Languages, System Management, Db2 and SQL, IBM Storage, IBM i services and microservices, Security and Compliance and much more.
There will be two AIX / Linux tracks, to emphasize the Power Systems character of Common Europe.
Top IBM Business Architects and industry experts have already agreed to share their knowledge on the latest announcements, customer cases as well as practical subjects.
The congress content includes:

3 ½ days of latest education delivered by top IBM and industry leading speakers punctuated by large breaks offering maximum networking,
Three-hour in-depth workshops, 60 minutes’ education sessions and solution provider’s special slots,
A Solution Providers’ Centre open for 2 ½ days with top European and worldwide technology companies at their booths presenting innovative practical solutions that will enhance our solutions,
A Congress Dinner in the hotel with live entertainment.

We have negotiated special room rates in the Congress hotel itself,
The Common Europe Organization Team looks forward to seeing you in picturesque Gothenburg.

You will be able to validate your attendance (Check-In to sessions) using your personal schedule.

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08:00 CEST

Modernization Without Madness: The Practical Guide to IBM i Application Transformation

Wednesday June 4, 2025 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

07 - R18

A comprehensive roadmap for transforming legacy applications into modern, maintainable systems without disrupting business operations. Through real customer case studies and hands-on examples, learn how to strategically modernize RPG applications using incremental approaches, modern tooling, and web technologies. Discover proven patterns for breaking down monolithic applications, implementing APIs, and introducing modern UI frameworks while maintaining the reliability that IBM i is known for.

Speakers

Koen Decorte

Owner and CEO, IBM Champion, CD-Invest

Koen Decorte is owner of CD Invest, an international IBM business partner with offices in Belgium andSpain. CD-Invest is specialized in innovating and modernizing IBM i applications.Koen studied philology and computer linguistics.His focus is mainly on integrating and using open source... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
07 - R18

Strategy

10:20 CEST

Live Demo of how to create a Webservice from your existing 5250 Display programs within a few minutes

Wednesday June 4, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST

07 - R18

Very often you get the task to create a Webservice for a brand new mobile App, Web App, Cloud solution or whatever and use existing Data that is already available on your IBM I for decades. Maybe you should ìonlyî grab some data and show it or ñ even worse ñ you should also save and proceed data on IBM i.

When you start to find out where the data comes from or goes to you often stumble over one or multiple old (or very, very old) RPG programs that collect a bunch of data from old physical files and mix them up and again and again and then show the result on the screen or processes the input.

Another task is to optimize existing processes where your users need to enter data in multiple 5250 programs and enter the customer or article number many times.

To modernize these backend stuff normally takes a lot of time such as weeks or months. If you want to go the step by step approach or need to get up and running with your modern app very quickly the way you will find in the live demo will save your life.

See and learn how you can create a modern Webservice that receives and returns JSON and ìremote controlsî your 5250 application to grab Data from within your existing 5250 programs (even RPG-II from the 70ís) or enters the data like the user did it before.
All that is done in RPG or Cobol (ILE CL, c or c++)!!!
You even donít need the source code of the old programs.

You will learn when this approach makes sense and why and what you can do with it to optimize existing processes, document old stuff and moreÖ

Speakers

Markus Litters

CEO, i and me - IT Training and Solutions GmbH

I start working with IBM POWER Servers and IBM i since I was 19 back in 1990 when it was called IBM AS/400 and from the beginning I was focused on Integrating the System with everything else (first of all DOS PC's, then Windows PC's and HP Unix and so on) and to modernize the existing... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST
07 - R18

IBM i App Dev

11:30 CEST

The Zero-Code Revolution: Natural Language Processing Takes Over IBM i

Wednesday June 4, 2025 11:30 - 12:30 CEST

07 - R18

Examining a future where traditional programming on IBM i is replaced by advanced NLP, allowing systems to be managed and modified through conversation alone.

Speakers

Koen Decorte

Owner and CEO, IBM Champion, CD-Invest

Wednesday June 4, 2025 11:30 - 12:30 CEST
07 - R18

IBM i App Dev

12:40 CEST

TBD

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:40 - 13:05 CEST

07 - R18

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:40 - 13:05 CEST
07 - R18

Solution provider

14:05 CEST

Serverless architecture and RPG?

Wednesday June 4, 2025 14:05 - 15:05 CEST

07 - R18

It sounds like an oxymoron - serverless architecture is normally said in conjunction with frameworks like FastAPI in Python, Spring-boot in Java or LoopBack in Node.JS. But what about RPG? Can you leverage the same features in ILE? ñ of course you can! The ILEastic framework was made exactly to be a player in the world of microservices and serverless architecture ñ and even better: it is 100% open source. If you need to modernize your RPG code and make it available as services on the web ñ If microservices is a business strategy or just curious about tools like yum, git and gmake? ñ then this session is for you.

Speakers

Niels Liisberg

Chief Software Architect, Partner & IBM Champion, System & Method

Niels has developed IBM i middleware used in numerous applications worldwide. He is the architect of the IceBreak application server for IBM i. Over the years he has contributed to the IBM i community with presentations, demos, and loads of open source: ILEastic and noxDB to name... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 14:05 - 15:05 CEST
07 - R18

IBM i App Dev

15:20 CEST

Cheat Sheet to Demystify AI

Wednesday June 4, 2025 15:20 - 16:20 CEST

07 - R18

Letís discuss the alphabet soup that is AI and see how all the parts fit together.

Speakers

Charlie Guarino

CEO & IBM Champion, Central Park Data Systems

Charles Guarino believes in the “power” of IBM Power Systems. His career reflects his dedication and interest in bringing the platform and its solutions to others and as a result has been recognized as an IBM Champion.He is a member of COMMON’s Speaker Excellence Hall of Fame... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 15:20 - 16:20 CEST
07 - R18

IBM i App Dev, AI

16:30 CEST

Data analysis on IBM i: Alternatives to DB2 Web Query with a focus on Apache Superset

Wednesday June 4, 2025 16:30 - 17:30 CEST

07 - R18

While DB2 Web Query has been a valuable tool for reporting and data analysis on IBM i, modern needs for data visualization and interpretation call for exploring alternative solutions. This session highlights powerful options, with a particular focus on Apache Superset, an Open Source platform for data visualization and exploration.

We will explore into Apache Superset: its key features, architecture, and use cases on IBM i. You will discover how this solution can transform your data into interactive and intuitive visualizations while seamlessly integrating with your existing ecosystem.

Additionally, we will see other Open Source and commercial options available on the market, their respective strengths, and criteria to help you make an informed choice based on your organizationís specific needs.

This session is designed for data professionals, decision-makers, and developers looking to adopt modern, powerful tools to maximize the value of their data.

Join us to learn how to embrace next-generation solutions while preserving the richness and reliability of your IBM i environment.

Speakers

Gautier Dumas

Director, CFD-Innovation

Gautier DUMAS has been involved for 10 years in conducting numerous development projects implementing web technologies in the IBM i environment.A PHP specialist, Gautier is interested in various modernization approaches involving Open Source technologies. It is in this dynamic that... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 16:30 - 17:30 CEST
07 - R18

IBM i App Dev, Strategy

20:00 CEST

Congress Dinner

Wednesday June 4, 2025 20:00 - 23:00 CEST

07 - R18

Wednesday June 4, 2025 20:00 - 23:00 CEST
07 - R18

Break

COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

From €204.79