"Satisfy internal customers" and "keep the skills current" were top member-priorities in 2010. 

COMMON Europe is now conducting its sixth global Top Concerns survey. It is a strategic feature of COMMON Europe to reveal IBM i community concerns and sharing them with members, IBM, and its channel partners to seek best of the breed IT infrastructure and solutions and to set the agendas of future conferences. 

The 2010 survey showed that “satisfy internal customers,” “data security is a business risk", "ensure IT security and continuity," and "keep my skills current” were the global top priorities. They were followed by "attract the younger generation to IBM I," "fast application development" and "ensure high availability." Full results from last year are available at the COMMON Europe web site www.comeur.org. 

The survey relates to security, application development, infrastructure issues and cloud computing. There are demographic questions, an open space for writing a golden concern, and questions on current economic and POWER / IBM i migration issues. It is a global, multilingual survey addressing the whole Power i community in Europe, Americas, Australasia and Africa as well as the worldwide IBM i clients through the web.

Like last year, there will be four iPod prizes for Web voting from each continent. All attendees of the annual COMMON Europe Conference, Milan, Italy, June 23—25, 2011, will also rate the concerns during the opening session on May 23. Voters there will have a chance to win three iPods. The preliminary results will be announced during the first week of June.

Here is the link to participate in COMMON Europe's Top Concerns 2011 survey:

For more information on Top Concerns, please contact Ranga (Shrirang) Deshpande at +32 2 541 3650 or at ranga@comeur.org.

COMMON Europe Conference (CEC)

The COMMON Europe Conference this year will be from June 23–25, 2011 in Milan, Italy, the fashion capital of the world. It is The Signs of Excellence–Development, Innovation, Organization —educational event in Europe. It has seven parallel streams covering Power Systems Management and Infrastructure, Application Development, AIX, Domino and Technical Briefings. There are two special streams, one for BPs and the other for Open Source. For more information, please visit www.comeur.org or contact Ranga (Shrirang) Deshpande at +32 2 541 3650 or at ranga@comeur.org.