Brandon Paterson, Worldwide IBM i Product Marketing Manager for IBM, announced yesterday IBM’s initiative to recognise user groups, forums, events, and individual persons, who have and continue to support, advocate, teach or advice people, and companies, about our beloved IBM i & POWER systems, by starting a Digital Badge program, whereby you can take an online certification exam to receive an IBM i Community Badge, so you can show off to your friends, colleagues and peers, that you are an IBM i Community hero.

As Brandon explains in his announcement yesterday;

The success of IBM i is directly related to you and all the effort and passion you put into the platform. The many user groups, events, advisory councils, online communities and more are why the platform continues to grow 31 years later. 

Now, we want to recognize you for that success, encourage you to do even more, and help you advance your career through the advocacy that you do. Digital badging is the new certification exam, and badges show off the skills you have to your colleagues and peers.

This is why we created the new IBM i Community Badge Program. The program has 3 levels of badges based on the amount of advocacy and activities you do, and the requirements increase as you progress to each level.

The full article/announcement, containing details about the different levels can be seen here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introducing-ibm-i-community-badge-program-brandon-pederson/?published=t

Community Recognition

On a personal note, as someone who works with user groups, including i-UG (UK), it is nice to hear that IBM is at last recognising the effort of people in the IBM i communities. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that people who run user groups, community forums, etc,  do it to be awarded, far from it, knowing what free time, effort and dedication people give to organising meetings, events, or writing technical articles etc, it is very time consuming. Over the years I’ve learnt they do it because they are passionate about helping people, by teaching them how to use the platform to the best of its ability, and where possible, what changes to expect in the future. Without their dedication, the communities wouldn’t exist. Let’s hear it for our unsung heroes.