DevCampTivoli

Our esteemed competitors at IBM Tivoli are organizing a BarCamp focused on the use of ITM for BSM. Should be very interesting if they manage to convince a good group that this is a valuable way to spend a weekend. BSM on Tivoli seems like an ambitious topic for a “getting your hands dirty” kind of session since by definition BSM involves managing complex systems and solving the needs of the kind of people who don’t necessarily attend BarCamps. Very different from the more typical BarCamp environment in which people bring code (typically open source) they know in and out and try to get these projects to do things that they themselves plan to make use of.

Just setting up a realistic (even if fake) environment to get your “hands dirty” on can take a lot of time. Long downloads and complex installation procedures aren’t your friends when you only have a few hours (and when participants don’t have to stay in the room if they’re bored). It will be an interesting challenge for the organizers to decide how much (if anything at all) to prepare ahead of time while keeping the whole thing open and participant-driven.

My guess is that even if they don’t get a lot in terms of BSM insight per se, they will learn a lot about the ease of installation, integration and extension of the various products involved and how to increase it, which will be beneficial all the same. Good luck to Doug, John and the other participants, I think you’ll do well and I hope you’ll achieve even more than I predict. Kudos for the initiative.

Of course the real challenge only starts after the BarCamp: it is to take the lessons back to the mothership…

And for those who say I only speak critically of IBM on this blog, this post is the proof that you are as prejudiced as a WebSphere architect. ;-)

[UPDATED on 2008/01/17: Make sure to read John’s clarifications in the comments section, including the link to BarCampESM which is happening this coming weekend in Austin. I hadn’t heard about it before.]