Kurt Struyf is a Belgian IBM Gold Consultant and the owner of Lone Star Consultancy. Kurt is known around the world for his technical skills and teaching, having delivered IDUG presentations in Europe, North America, Australia and India.

In this episode, Kurt tells us about his education in economics and tax law, writing his first IDUG presentation and the experience of going up against a big-name IBM speaker, the origin of the famous Fun with SQL session that he created with Dan Luksetich, and his love for Rockabilly and Elvis.

Special Guest: Kurt Struyf.

Sureka Parekh is a Worldwide Marketing Program Directory for IBM, based in the United Kingdom. Surekha has been a fixture in the DB2 community for many years, working on IBM’s marketing efforts for DB2 and helping the DB2 community grow around the world. She has spent many, many hours working with IDUG, helping start and grow regional user groups, and has been instrumental in working to expand IDUG’s presence in India.

In this episode, Surekha tells us about starting her career as an SE at IBM, how she got started working with IDUG, and about her passion for health, meditation and juice.

Special Guest: Surekha Parekh.

Guy Lohman is an IBM Master Inventor with over 35 patents, who recently retired from the Almaden Research Lab. His career spans 40 years, and the products of his research can be seen throughout DB2 – from the optimizer to autonomic features to pureXML and BLU.

In this episode, Guy tells us about starting his career at IBM with the people who – literally – invented System R and DB2; the early years of DB2 for UNIX, Windows and OS/2; and how his team’s research brought massive jumps in performance to both DB2 for z/OS and LUW.

Special Guest: Guy Lohman.

Terry Purcell is the development leader and architect of the DB2 for z/OS Optimizer at IBM. He has worked with DB2 for nearly 25 years, spending over 10 years as a customer and consultant, before he made the move into DB2 Development. He's a very well-known speaker at conferences, and has been named a Top 10 speaker at over 15 IDUG conferences.

In this episode, Terry talks about In this episode, Terry tells us about how DB2 education has changed over the last 20 years; dealing with the long delay between coming up with an idea and it being adopted by customers; and he gives us a glimpse into the world of competitive stair climbing.

Special Guest: Terry Purcell.

Calisto Zuzarte is a Senior Technical Staff Member from the IBM Toronto Lab. Calisto has been involved in DB2's development from it's start, has worked on the SQL Compiler team for a number of years, and is famous at conferences for his mind-bending presentations on SQL optimization.

In this episode, Calisto tells us about earning his degrees in civil engineering before switching to a career in software; developing an airline’s departure control system when commercial databases were too slow to support the SLAs; and how moving his family to Canada happened on a lark.

Special Guest: Calisto Zuzarte.

Craig Mullins is an IBM Gold Consultant, well-known author and owner of Mullins Consulting.  Craig has worked with DB2 since its inception, working for many different vendors and educating the DB2 community.

In this episode, Craig talks about recognizing when it's time to find new career opportunities; his love of writing and blogging; and what it was like to survive in a company that was built on top of its voicemail system.

Special Guest: Craig Mullins.

Saghi Amirsoleymani is a Principal Solution Adviser at Rocket Software, working with DB2 Tools. Although she is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, if you are involved in DB2 and live anywhere on Earth, you have almost certainly met Saghi.

In this episode, Saghi talks about how her honesty and empathy for customers helped her learn DB2 and made her who she is today; about her sincere desire to give more back to customers and the DB2 community than she has received; and how some of the San Francisco 49ers came to rely on her expertise before she started her career at IBM.

Special Guest: Saghi Amirsoleymani.

Dan Luksetich is the owner and principal consultant at DanL Database Consulting. He's an IBM Gold Consultant, frequent speaker at IDUG and other conferences around the world, and has a well-known passion for beer.

In this episode, Dan tells us how his insatiable desire for learning brought him to computers, DB2 and helped him develop his well-earned expertise in SQL, how he has no time for theoretical arguments over possible solutions, and how a bathroom incident resulted in an absolutely insane call schedule.

Special Guest: Dan Luksetich.

Mike Krafick is a Database Engineer at Rosetta Marketing. He's a well known speaker; he won the DB2's Got Talent competition in 2014, and went on to win awards as Best User Speaker at both the IDUG North American and IDUG European conferences in 2015.

Mike tells how a meeting with an FBI agent changed his life; why getting laid off made him a much better DBA; and how giving back to the community is such an integral part of his life.

Special Guest: Mike Krafick.

Iqbal Goralwalla is an IBM Gold Consultant and the Head of Midrange DB2 at Triton Consulting.  He has worked with DB2 in the IBM Toronto Lab and as a consultant for nearly 20 years, and was the Chair of IDUG's Conference Planning Committee for the EMEA Conference that took place in Brussels in 2016.

In this episode, Iqbal tells us about how he faced adversity when moving to a foreign country, how he discovered his love of database systems and about making sacrifices for the ones we love.

Special Guest: Iqbal Goralwalla.