COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025: Full Schedule

WELCOME TO COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

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.

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

10:30 CEST

Panning for Performance Gold with Visual Explain

Monday June 15, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Analyzing your database environment can provide significant performance riches, provided you have the right tools for the job. Visual Explain fits the bill, but learning to understand Visual Explain diagrams can be overwhelming and difficult. This session provides an introductory look into how to read and analyze your Visual Explain diagrams to find SQL performance gold.

Speakers

Ryan Moeller

Software Engineer, IBM

Ryan Moeller is a software engineer working on Db2 for i, specifically on the SQL Query Engine (SQE) team. He joined the team in the Rochester, MN development lab in 2020. Ryan specializes in SQL, database development, and query performance analysis.

Monday June 15, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

11:50 CEST

Reinventing IBM i: The Journey from RPG to Python

Monday June 15, 2026 11:50 - 12:50 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

As the business landscape evolves, so must the technology that supports it. IBM i remains a robust and reliable platform, but many organizations are looking to extend its capabilities beyond traditional RPG development. In this session, we’ll explore how Python brings new life to IBM i — enabling modern, scalable, and open-source application development without abandoning the platform’s trusted stability.You’ll learn how to run modern Python applications natively on IBM i, integrate them with existing RPG and DB2 systems, and gradually modernize legacy code. Through practical examples and migration strategies, we’ll discuss how teams can leverage Python’s rich ecosystem to modernize workflows, enhance productivity, and attract new developer talent — all while preserving the value of their IBM i investment.By the end of this session, you’ll have a clear roadmap for starting your organization’s journey from RPG to Python and unlocking the next generation of IBM i innovation.

Speakers

Koen Decorte

CTO, IBM Champion, CD-Invest

Koen Decorte is the founder of CD-Invest nv, a Belgian IBM i consultancy with over 30 years of expertise in ERP/CRM and open source development, IBM i platform modernization, and PEPPOL e-invoicing services. CD-Invest is home to several IBM Champions and serves enterprise clients... Read More →

Monday June 15, 2026 11:50 - 12:50 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

14:00 CEST

Git for Beginners on IBM i

Monday June 15, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Join us for a deep dive into Git where you will learn the essential concepts every beginner should know — from basic commands to working with branches and resolving merge conflicts. Next, we will explore what the modern development lifecycle looks like for IBM i developers using Git which includes uncovering how objects get built and what tools you will leverage to develop locally on your PC. We will also showcase how to leverage CI/CD pipelines (via GitHub Actions) to automate builds, generate impact analysis, and even run RPG unit tests.

Speakers

Jesse Gorzinski

Monday June 15, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

15:10 CEST

15:55 CEST

Git, Jenkins and Nexus walk into an IBM i…

Monday June 15, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Ever wondered if you could use Jenkins with IBM i? Guess what, you can! Designing IBM i centric pipelines has never been so easy, thanks to the IBM i pipeline steps plugin. But what about your build artifacts? Seems like they should be hosted somewhere...into an artifact repository like Nexus, perhaps? Join this session to discover why it may be a good idea to build once, store the result of your builds and deploy it many times, to ensure deployment consistency and traceability. And all of this using state of the art open source tools!

Speakers

Sébastien Julliand

Tech Lead R&D, I AND ME - IT TRAINING

Hi, I'm Seb! I am the R&D Tech Lead for i and me - IT Training and Solutions GmbH and an active contributors to IBM i open source projects.

Let's talk about anything related to software development, on IBM i or not, it doesn't mater to me. RPGLE, Java, TypeScript...I love them all... Read More →

Monday June 15, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

17:05 CEST

New Improved Rest API support for IBM i

Monday June 15, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

The Rest API engine for IBM i (IWS) continues to transform and innovate! With the recent move to the Jakarta EE runtime engine a whole new world of possibilities arise. In this session we will review the recent change to support Jakarta EE, what does that mean and how to take advantage of these new features. We will include live demo where ever possible to help you understand how powerful and easy to use this integrated features is. The best part, you already own it and its on your system today!

Speakers

Tim Rowe

STSM - IBM i Business Architect, IBM USA

Tim Rowe is a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM i development and spends most of his time working as the Architect for Application Development and Systems Management. He has been working on the IBM i operating system since 1989. Tim is a frequent author, industry speaker and... Read More →

Monday June 15, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

08:00 CEST

The new age of Agentic AI

Tuesday June 16, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Join us for an in-depth exploration of agentic AI and its transformative potential on the IBM i platform. This session will primarily explore the core concepts of agentic AI, including autonomy, agency, and decision-making, and discuss how these principles can be applied to drive innovation and efficiency for your business. We will examine the current state of agentic AI and its applications. Plus, we will look at some available options for building agentic workflows with your IBM i. To finish off, we’ll provide a sneak peek at some upcoming projects from IBM i development!

Speakers

Jesse Gorzinski

Tuesday June 16, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

10:30 CEST

Living with AI During the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Tuesday June 16, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

We are living through the Fourth Industrial Revolution—a period defined by artificial intelligence, automation, and unprecedented digital transformation. But what does it really mean to live with AI, not just use it? Let’s explore the promises and pitfalls of AI in everyday life.

Speakers

Charles 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 and a proud recipient of the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship Award. Additionally, he participates on COMMON’s Strategic Education Team. Other professional endeavors have included the roles of President and monthly Q&A host... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

11:40 CEST

Introducing the AI Starter Kit

Tuesday June 16, 2026 11:40 - 12:40 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

In this session, we will explore one of the latest offerings to help you deploy and manage AI workloads at scale: the Wallaroo AI Starter Kit! Now, one can stand up a new AI inferencing stack and integrate it with RPG in minutes!

Speakers

Jesse Gorzinski

Tuesday June 16, 2026 11:40 - 12:40 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

14:00 CEST

Build your agentic agile team for your RPG legacy application

Tuesday June 16, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

BMAD is An AI-driven agile development framework with 21 specialized agents, 50+ guided workflows, and scale-adaptive intelligence that adjusts from bug fixes to enterprise systems.

Speakers

Mauro Sanfilippo

Group CTO @smeup | IBM Champion | CEAC Member, smeup

Group CTO @smeup | IBM Champion | CEAC Member | Startup Mentor | CTO @s2capital CVC

I'm CTO for smeup, an important Italian ISV, building enterprise software.
Throughout my whole life, I’ve been having a lot of fun with every single piece of the software development: from microco... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

15:10 CEST

15:55 CEST

Breathing New Life Into RPG: AI as Your Modernization Partner

Tuesday June 16, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Modernizing RPG applications is essential for keeping IBM i environments efficient, maintainable, and attractive to new developers — but manually converting decades of fixed-format code to modern RPG Free can be slow, tedious, and error-prone. In this session, we’ll explore how AI can dramatically accelerate and improve the modernization process.We’ll walk through how AI tools can analyze legacy RPG code, identify outdated patterns, and generate clean, maintainable RPG Free equivalents. You’ll see examples of accurate AI-assisted rewrites, automated refactoring strategies, and techniques for preserving business logic while eliminating clutter and old syntax. We’ll also discuss best practices for validating AI-generated output, integrating modernization into your CI/CD workflows, and building a sustainable long-term modernization strategy.By the end of this session, you’ll understand how AI can reduce modernization time from weeks to minutes, empower your existing RPG developers, and create a cleaner, future-ready RPG codebase without disrupting the stability of your IBM i applications.

Speakers

Koen Decorte

CTO, IBM Champion, CD-Invest

Tuesday June 16, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

17:05 CEST

Exploring Mapepire, the new way to access Db2!

Tuesday June 16, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

What is Mapepire: Mapepire is an open-source client to connect applications to the Db2 for i database. It’s written in JavaScript and built using secure web sockets.Benefits of using Mapepire:The existing JDBC and ODBC clients take on very heavy loads to deal with a lot of things. This makes the client code complex. This complex code leads to significant performance overhead. Mapepire clients are lighter as the server part of them is going to take care of the “other things” like encoding. It eliminates native dependencies on the client side. Also the server, the protocol and client part of mapepire being open source, the task of creating new clients in other languages will not at all be taxing as is the case with JDBC and ODBC due to them being not well documented. It’s easy to deploy in cloud environments and also easy to install and use as it is available to install through the commonly used package managers (of different languages) like NPM, Apache maven, PyPi and also Yum.How can customers use it:1. A server component has to be installed first and started on the server. This can be done using yum.2. Getting started with the client is easy and it’s either starting up a daemon server object that will connect with the server component or an API in case of Node.js which connects with IBM i.

Speakers

Jesse Gorzinski

Tuesday June 16, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

08:00 CEST

Modern DevOps on IBM i - Builds, Tests, and Impact Analysis

Wednesday June 17, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Join me as we explore how to achieve end-to-end automation on IBM i, covering builds, tests, and impact analysis using open source tools (ibmi-ci, Source Orbit, and itest). The session will walk through a practical example of setting up a modern DevOps pipeline in GitHub. Imagine creating a pull request that automatically triggers a build, generates an impact analysis report, runs your test cases, and produces code coverage — with all results sent directly to the pull request for reviewers to see with ease.

Speakers

Sanjula Ganepola

Wednesday June 17, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

09:10 CEST

Mastering Advanced SQL Data Types in ILE RPG: From LOBs to XML

Wednesday June 17, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

Modern IBM i applications increasingly demand sophisticated data handling capabilities beyond traditional character and numeric fields. This technical deep-dive session explores the powerful arsenal of SQL data types available to ILE RPG developers, demonstrating how to leverage CLOBs, BLOBs, and XML structures for real-world business solutions.Through hands-on code examples, attendees will discover practical implementations of Character Large Objects (CLOB) for managing extensive text data, Double-Byte CLOBs (DBCLOB) for multilingual applications, and Binary Large Objects (BLOB) for document and media storage directly within Db2 for i.The session goes beyond basic usage to address performance considerations through LOB Locators, enabling efficient manipulation of large objects without loading entire contents into memory. We'll explore File Reference Variables for seamless integration between IFS files and database LOB columns, demonstrating bidirectional data flow patterns that modernize legacy document management approaches.Special attention will be given to XML_CLOB_FILE handling, showcasing how ILE RPG can natively process XML data structures stored in CLOB fields—a critical capability for web services integration and data interchange scenarios.Each data type will be illustrated with production-ready RPG code snippets, common pitfalls to avoid, and performance optimization techniques. Attendees will leave with immediately applicable knowledge to modernize their IBM i applications, eliminate external file dependencies, and implement robust, database-centric data management strategies that leverage the full power of Db2 for i.

Speakers

Antonio Salcedo

IBM i Consultor, Instructor & Programmer, Common Iberia

I'm a fan of programming in general and ILE RPG in particular. I love movies, going to the theater, reading and listening to (hard) rock music.

Wednesday June 17, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
05 -RHÔNE 3A

IBM i application development 2

10:30 CEST

The Next Level of Integration: Building Hybrid AI-Powered Workflows with n8n and IBM i

Wednesday June 17, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

05 -RHÔNE 3A

This session demonstrates how to move beyond traditional automation by building intelligent, hybrid workflows that leverage the distinct strengths of AI, the low-code flexibility of n8n, and the rock-solid reliability of the IBM i platform.Attendees will witness a live demonstration of how to construct a complete, end-to-end process. We will explore practical, real-world use cases where AI models analyze data directly from the IBM i, and n8n acts as the central orchestrator to trigger complex business logic, send notifications, and update multiple systems. This presentation is designed to fundamentally change how you think about integration, providing actionable strategies for creating smarter, more responsive, and highly automated business processes.

Speakers