Welcome to the New York Capital District WebSphere User Group ! (NYCDWeb)

We are a professional group of current and potential WebSphere users and developers in the Capital Region who enjoy sharing our thoughts, ideas and views on using the WebSphere products and related Web technologies.

Our membership consists of IT Directors, IT Managers, IT users and other IT professionals.

User Group Meetings

December 2015 - Meet & Greet and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Sunday, December 20th, 2015

Meeting Time: 3.00 PM - 5.00 PM

Meeting Location: Wolf's 1-11, 111 Wolf Road, Albany, NY 12205


Past User Group Meetings

July 2006 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, July 14th, 2006

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Mr. Brian Digman, CIO of NYS DTF presented on the latest technology trends such as Service Oriented Architecture.

Meeting Location: CrestHill Suites, 1415, Washington Ave., Albany, NY, 12206

The meeting was well attended and attendees enjoyed the presentation.



September 2006 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, September 8th, 2006

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: John F. Ebersole, President of Excelsior College presented on the growing role of the Web in both the marketing and delivery of instruction. John F. Ebersole's presentation was followed by a technical presentation by Dan Flynn from IBM on the latest in web portal technology.

Meeting Location: Excelsior College, 7 Columbia Circle, Albany, NY 12203

About Excelsior College: Excelsior College helps busy working adults earn the degrees they need with flexible distance education programs. It is a world leader in distance education. Additonal details about Excelsior College and its President John F. Ebersole can be found on the Excelsior College website. Excelsior College



October 2006 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, October 6th, 2006

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: John Norton, Chief IT Architect, David Palmisano, Director of Enterprise Architecture and Application Support Services and Joe DeGiule, NYS DOL WebSphere Guru, presented a high-level overview of the NYS DOL agency environment and provided an Architectural Overview of WebSphere and its deployment and utilization at NYS DOL.

Meeting Location: NYS DOL, Harriman State Office Campus, Building 12, Training Rooms D & E, Albany, NY 12240

About NYS DOL: The NYS DOL is a leader in providing integrated customer service to jobseekers, workers and employers in the highly competitive workforce of the 21st century.



October 2006 - IT Awareness and Social Networking Meeting

Meeting Date: Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Meeting Time: 6.00 pm

Meeting Topic: Anne Saile, President and CEO of Bellevue Woman's Hospital in Niskayuna, NY presented on the growing role of information technology in the field of medicine and in the healthcare industry.

Following the presentation - Social networking with members of the Capital District WebSphere User Group and the Tech Valley Information Technology community.

Following the social networking - Thomas Tyre, IBM SOA Specialist and Joseph Guanci, IBM WebSphere SSR from Waltham, MA presented on the following:

1) Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

2) Best practice use of WebSphere for implementing SOA.

3) Insight into different products of the WebSphere family.

Meeting Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, 1606 Central Avenue, Albany, NY, 12205 (Behind Village Café on Central Avenue and Near Wolf Road in Colonie)

About Bellevue Woman's Hospital: Bellevue Woman's Hospital is one of only two non-profit specialty hospitals in the nation and the only one in New York State concentrating on health services for women. The hospital is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.



October 2006 - American Heart Association Heart Walk - Chairman - Mark Cattini, President and CEO, MapInfo Corporation

Saturday, October 14th and October 21st, 2006

Some New York Capital District WebSphere User Group members and many from the Capital District joined Mark Cattini, CEO of MapInfo Corporation and Chairman of the American Association Heart Walk, for the Heart Walk held in the Capital District.


November 2006 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, November 3rd, 2006

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Mike Donovan, Deputy CIO, NYS Office of the CIO, talked about the role of "Web Services" in New York State and discussed the NYS CIO's Strategic Plan.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 3 & 4, Empire Sate Plaza Convention Center, Albany, NY



December 2006 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, December 1st, 2006

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Speaker: Alan Little, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect - WebSphere Foundation was the speaker.

Alan's architectural responsibilities extend to all editions of the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) on all platforms. This includes the embeddable runtime kernel, Base Edition, Community Edition, and Network Deployment Edition, as well as the relationship these have to the rest of the WebSphere stack that builds off the common execution model provided for by WAS. Prior to taking this role, Alan was the lead architect for the zOS platform version of WAS, including the integration of WAS for zOS into the unique platform scaling features of zOS. Alan has worked on WAS for the last nine years.

Meeting Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, 1606 Central Avenue, Albany, NY, 12205.



January 2007 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, January 5th, 2007

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Dennis Gaige, Director of Information Services for the New York State Police provided a high level overview of the Integrated Justice Portal vision and implementation goals.

Seth Currey, IT Project Manager, Dominic DiNatale, IT Supervisor and Shaun Johnson, IT Lead Developer of the Web and Portal Integration Services team of the New York State Police provided an in-depth talk and demo of WebSphere app/portlet development.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 2&3, Empire Sate Plaza Convention Center, Albany, NY


May 2007 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, May 4th, 2007

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Mr. James Lieb, Director of Common Services and Case Management for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance presented on "Enabling Innovation using SOA concepts".

One of the unsung benefits of using SOA techniques (web services, XML, process based design) is the ability to innovatively implement solutions to business problems. Mr. James Lieb of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance discussed two recently completed projects (the OnLine Tax Center and IRS/State eFile) that demonstrate leveraging SOA concepts and technologies.

Meeting Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, 1606 Central Avenue, Albany, NY, 12205.


September 2007 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, September 7th, 2007

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Agenda: "Users meeting Users" and "Users helping Users" - Panel Q & A / Discussion with technology leaders.

"Users meeting Users" (Networking): This meeting was a great opportunity to come and meet with other WebSphere/Lotus users and other technology professionals in the capital district.

"Users helping Users" (Knowledge Sharing) - Panel Q & A / Discussion : A panel of technology leaders including Mr. James Lieb, Director of Application Development for NYSDTF, Mr. Dennis Gaige, Director of Information Services for NYSP and Mr. John Norton, Chief IT Architect for NYSDOL participated in a Panel Q & A / Discussion session. The technology leaders were accompanied by a team of highly experienced technical specialists from their respective organizations.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms B & C at The Holiday Inn Express, 1442 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12203.


November 2007 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, November 2nd, 2007

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Agenda: Mr. Bob Loomis, Program Manager for the NYS OSC Portal project & team from NYS OSC spoke to the user group.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 2 & 3 at The Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY.


December 2007 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, December 7th, 2007

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Agenda: Mr. Mike Rhodin, IBM General Manager for Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software spoke to the user group.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 2 & 3 at The Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY.


February 2008 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, February 1st, 2008

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Building Web 2.0 Applications with Project Zero - Presentation by Mr. Roland Barcia - Senior technical staff member and lead Web 2.0 architect for IBM Software Services for WebSphere.

Meeting Location: Empire State Plaza, Meeting Rooms 2 & 3, Albany, NY


June 2008 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, June 6th, 2008

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Info: Dr. Angel Luis Diaz, Director, Websphere Business Process Management Development, Architecture and Technology Strategy, IBM, spoke to the user group.

Meeting Location: Empire State Plaza, Meeting Rooms 2 & 3, Albany, NY


November 2008 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Meeting Time: 12.00 pm

Meeting Topic: Brian Wilson, Senior Certified Executive Software IT Specialist for the IBM Greater New York WebSphere Software team made a presentation on ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) concepts and value. He also covered the three IBM ESB products (DataPower, WebSphere ESB and Message Broker).

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 3 & 4, Empire Sate Plaza Convention Center, Albany, NY


April 2009 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: A new business process based pattern for web applications. Mr. James Lieb, Director of Common Services and Case Management for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, presented a new pattern for web development that facilitates business alignment. This pattern is based around leveraging an XML business object within the three P's - process, presentation and persistence.

Meeting Location: Fairfield Inn Marriott near Harriman State Campus, Albany, NY. (1383 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12206)


June 2009 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, June 5th, 2009

Meeting Time: 11.30 am

Meeting Topic: Mr. Eric Kaplan, IBM Tivoli Enterprise Manager for New York State Government, presented on how IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) for WebSphere provides integrated management tools for your Web and enterprise infrastructure that help maintain availability and performance.

This presentation covered how the tool helps quickly pinpoint the source of bottlenecks or other defects in application code, server resources or external system dependencies.

While the focus of the presentation was ITCAM for WebSphere, also discussed was the relevance of other members of the ITCAM family to the management of environments incorporating WebSphere, including ITCAM for SOA Platforms and ITCAM for Transactions.

Meeting Location: Empire State Plaza Convention Center, Meeting Rooms 2 & 3, Albany, NY


October 2009 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Meeting Time: 12.00 noon

Meeting Topic: What’s New in WAS V7 and Smart SOA Application Foundation

Meeting Abstract: Presentation focus was on new feature packs and features in WAS V7, free WAS Developer Edition, latest TCO study. This presentation also covered major user needs that Smart SOA Application Foundation addresses – application innovation, efficient development and management, highly-effective performance.

Meeting Speaker: Ron Tam is a WebSphere IT Specialist, based in New England, who's focused on the infrastructure and foundational components of the WebSphere portfolio.

Meeting Location: Meeting Rooms 2 & 3, Empire Sate Plaza Convention Center, Albany, NY


April 2010 User Group Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, April 9th, 2010

Meeting Time: 12.00 noon

Meeting Topic: Panel Discussion - SOA: Making it work

Meeting Abstract:

- SOA Implementation Experiences

- SOA Connectivity and Integration

- SOA for Governance

Meeting Speakers: James Lieb from NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, Dennis Gaige from NYS State Police and John Savastio from NYS Department of Labor.

Meeting Location:
NYS Dept of Labor, Training Rooms 2 and 3, Bldg12, State Campus


August 2010 User Group Meeting Meeting

Meeting Date: Friday, August 6th, 2010

Meeting Time: 11.30 AM

Meeting Topic:
- WebSphere eXtreme Scale Overview
- Experience WebSphere eXtreme Scale in the Cloud: SOA Sandbox exercise

Meeting Speakers: Gregory L. Scott, PhD

Gregory Scott (Greg) has been with IBM since 2001 and for the last three years has been an IT Specialist for Websphere, concentrating on infrastructure and application integration within the financial and insurance industries on Wall Street. Products he focuses on include WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, and Extended Deployment, the last of which has been the rubric for Virtual Enterprise, Compute Grid, and eXtreme Scale (XS).

Meeting Location:
Best Western Sovereign Hotel, 1228 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12203


December 2010 User Group Meeting and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Meeting Time: 11.30 AM

Meeting Topic:
- Web Mashups
- Overview, implementation challenges, security considerations and future potential.

Meeting Speakers: Mr. James Lieb

Director of Architecture and Web Solutions at NYSDTF.

Meeting Location:
Wolf's 111 Restaurant & Games, 111 Wolf Road, Albany, NY 12205


December 2011 - Meet & Greet and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Friday, December 9th, 2011

Meeting Time: 11.30 AM

Meeting Speaker: Mr. Brian Wilson - Senior Certified Software Specialist for IBM.

Meeting Location: Wolf's 111 Restaurant, 111 Wolf Road, Albany, NY 12205


December 2012 - Meet & Greet and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Friday, December 21st, 2012

Meeting Time: 11.30 AM

Meeting Topic: Implementing shared architecture and cloud Infrastructure for sharing resources and services across agencies and organizations - User Group discussion.

Meeting Location: Wolf's 111 Restaurant, 111 Wolf Road, Albany, NY 12205


December 2013 - Meet & Greet and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Meeting Time: 6.00 PM

Meeting Location: Revolution Hall, 425 River St., Troy, NY 12180



December 2014 - Meet & Greet and Holiday Gathering

Meeting Date: Sunday, December 14th, 2014

Meeting Time: 2.00 PM - 5.00 PM

Meeting Location: Revolution Hall, 425 River St., Troy, NY 12180



Membership Information:
It is free to join this exciting group. Read more about the benefits of membership, how you can participate in our membership forum, the different committies that you can get involved in and how you can make a difference to the local community.

Program Information:
We have many exciting programs for our membership. We are planning quarterly meetings in which users would present on how they are using WebSphere or related Web technology and how it is benefitting their organizations. Technology experts would be presenting on how WebSphere or related Web technology can be used to better serve the needs of an organization.

We have new awards for members who actively participate in the user group, make presentations, share their knowledge and help fellow members with WebSphere technologies.

We also have a community projects group that would implement free software projects for non profit and community organizations using open source tools such as WebSphere Server Community Edition and Eclipse.

 
Useful Links


 
Web www.nycdweb.org
Capital District WebSphere User Group
User Group is a group of users and developers with the main objective of sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas.