The VM Community

The VM Community encompasses a large group of diverse people: IBMers, Vendors, Customers, and Consultants. Within each of those groups, are more subgroups, developers, support, sales, etc. all bound together by the common technology known as VM.

As I mentioned earlier, my view of this community's scope grew over the years. It's amazing to look at how various people and groups have contributed so much to VM and the use of it. This involved contributing code and features, helping one another use the product, and influencing IBM.

Some relative newcomers to VM were surprised lately when I spoke of the OCO (Object Code Only) wars. They were even more surprised when I started describing how much our customers modified and enhanced the product with their own code. And I really floored them when I told them that a number still use modifications. Beyond the modifications are hundreds of user written programs, scripts, tools, white papers, redbooks, and presentations.

While some shops only have a single system programmer, I point out that they're never alone. You have this community backing you. And it's a community with  credentials. We tend to measure experience in decades rather than years. That's not to say there aren't people that are new to VM. We have a number of them as well, and it's a nice blend. As a new system programmer, there will seldom be a time where you'll face a problem that hasn't been faced before. And you'll be able to find someone to help as well.

One of the things that impresses me is that this VM Community crosses borders, parties, and other lines that tend to divide. I'll see system programmers from two different competing corporations exchange ideas. I'll see people agreeing with one another on an electronic forum where I know they voted for different candidates. It's just one of the refreshing things about the VM Community. Of course there is good nature ribbing and joking at times. That's part of being in a family, or so my mother told me, the youngest of four children.

That's not to say there aren't moments of tension. Particularly between IBM and its customers. But like a good community, we work it out and adapt. I mentioned in an earlier post that Paul Van Leer taught me to represent IBM to the customer and the customer to IBM. So there have been a few times where I felt tension from both sides in carrying out that mission statement. I'm thankful those moments have been few.

There are a number of definitions for community. The following one is from the The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. I probably could have opened with this definition. Actually, I could have opened and closed with it.

Community: A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment. The organisms in a community affect each other's abundance, distribution, and evolutionary adaptation. Depending on how broadly one views the interaction between organisms, a community can be small and local, as in a pond or tree, or regional or global as in a biome.