Liam Allan Joins Seiden Group
When IBM i development pros first meet Liam Allan, they’re captivated by the unrestrained enthusiasm he exhibits for their favorite platform. His excitement over what can be accomplished with IBM i technology leaves people refreshed and inspired.
Those who have had the pleasure of working with Liam know that his energy and intelligence are only the beginning of what he has to offer. He also possesses exceptional skill AND the depth of understanding required to turn his ideas into reality.
When I first met Liam, it was clear that his skills with RPG and open source would help advance the IBM i community. One first notices his quickness, as he rapidly assimilates new information and generates new solutions, and then his patience, as he teaches technology to others.
When Liam recently became available for consulting work, I was thrilled that he chose to join the Seiden Group team! He will provide clients with development and training services involving Node.js, Git, RPG, and emerging open source technologies.
Integrating IBM i and Open Source Technologies
Liam’s enthusiasm for IBM i and open source inspires others to embrace new development techniques. “The most important thing to me is that businesses know the open-source technologies they have available to them and how to best apply it to their projects,” he says. “Working with Seiden Group will give me broader outreach in helping businesses achieve their goals.”
Michael Privett, Director of IT at Southeastern Paper Group, confirms Liam’s ability to teach and inspire. “Liam is great!” he reported after a 3-day training engagement with him. “He’s smart as a whip and a very impressive consultant who performs well beyond his years. My team is staying engaged. I see excitement.”
Liam has earned his place as one of the top advocates for integrating the best of open source, RPG business logic, and Db2 for i data.
Liam’s Background & Community Contributions
Liam first came to prominence in 2015 when our friend Dave Dressler (aka PHPDave and UseTheForceDave) invited him to join the Club Seiden open source community.
He quickly earned high standing among the IBM i development community. In early 2016, COMMON named him recipient of the Student Innovation Award, and he found himself on the speaking circuit with audiences eager to learn his techniques for integrating open source with RPG. IBM further honored his work by naming him a Fresh Face of IBM i and, soon after, an IBM Champion.
Yet Liam contributes so much more to the IBM i community. He co-hosts the IBM Bi-Weekly, a twice per month technical podcast, with Seiden Group’s Josh Hall. He works on open source projects such as ILEditor, a free IDE for IBM i developers, and barryCI, a build server for ILE applications on IBM i, from his Works of Barry GitHub repository. He’s also a popular speaker at IBM i user groups and conferences around the world.
Put Liam to Work
If you would like to schedule training or development work with Liam—or any of our innovative, productive consultants—contact us.
With IBM’s delivery of open source capabilities on IBM i, Seiden Group has been there to apply the technology to application modernization initiatives. Starting with PHP and the PHP toolkit, then Python, and now Node.js and Ruby, we’ve worked with IBM and customers to flesh out the capabilities of the technology, teach best practices at conferences and directly with clients, and develop award-winning solutions.
Presentation Handout
We’ve seen a surge of interest in Git version control on IBM i, so a recent video about Git caught my eye. 
One of my favorite jobs here at Seiden Group is to introduce developers to the 
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