Jon Paris   Jon's IBM midrange career started when he fell in love with the System/38 while working as a consultant. This love affair ultimately led him to joining IBM.In 1987, Jon was hired by the IBM Toronto Laboratory to work on the S/36 and S/38 COBOL compilers. Subsequently Jon became involved with the AS/400 and in particular COBOL/400. In early 1989 Jon was transferred to the Languages Architecture and Planning Group, with particular responsibility for the COBOL and RPG languages. There he played a major role in the definition of the new RPG IV language and in promoting its use with IBM Business Partners and Users. He was also heavily involved in producing educational and other support materials and services related to other AS/400 programming languages and development tools, such as CODE/400 and VisualAge for RPG. Jon left IBM in 1998 to focus on developing and delivering education focused on enhancing AS/400 and iSeries application development skills. Jon is a frequent speaker at User Groups meetings and conferences around the world, and holds a number of speaker excellence awards from COMMON. .