Megan A. Irvine

My tenure at IBM has come to an end, but the narrative I’ve spent two decades building is far from over. As I close this chapter, I find myself looking toward the next—searching for an organization ready to leverage twenty years of experience in global training strategy and digital transformation. The past year was defined by a singular mission: overseeing the deployment of AI-driven tools to accelerate learning content development. I witnessed the immediate, complex results of those efforts firsthand. Now, I am eager to carry that momentum forward. But before I step into the future, I must reflect on the remarkable, often unpredictable, year that was 2025. Leadership in a Time of Transition The year began in the wake of 2024’s reorganizations. I found myself leading a new team, positioned as the primary subject matter expert for our portfolio. With a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and our go-to-market strategy, I possessed a clear vision for aligning our curriculum with the ...

I will be there next week and I'm very excited about it! This conference is different than others in that it's really geared towards education and skill enablement - getting you to the next level with products, technologies, etc. As I write this, it begins in 6 days, but it's not too late to register:  https://www.ibm.com/community/ibm-techxchange-conference/   I am co-leading 3 learning sessions on IBM Liberty, and I will also be in the Sandbox (expo area), so if you see me there, please say hello!

I recently ran into a mysterious problem as I was developing and testing a lab exercise to teach about Kubernetes resiliency. I sort of caused the problem myself, because I had run through several scenarios with the example application, and I wanted to blow it all away and start over...so I just started deleting things. That, my friends, is a sure-fire way to break something. If you are dealing with Deployments and ReplicaSets, merely deleting a pod is just going to cause K8s to try and redeploy it. I ended up with a handful of pods that were stuck in a state of "Terminating," and they would not die. For days. So, I asked around, tried researching the problem. A google search of "pods stuck in terminating" gave many hits, with many different possible causes and solutions. Some issues mentioned kubelet and a hostname mismatch - that was not it.  I tried doing a drain, cordon, and shutdown of the node. When I started it back up, the pods were still there, stil...

You can now earn a badge for completing each course in the IBM Microservices Specialization on Coursera.org. More information on each badge is here: Microservices Fundamentals Developing and Deploying Microservices with Microclimate Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes IBM Cloud Private: Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes

The  IBM Microservices Specialization just launched on Coursera! This series of self-paced online courses takes you through microservices fundamentals, microservices application development, and deployment of microservices to IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud private. In this course, you get hands-on experience with: Docker and containerized applications Kubernetes - a container orchestrator Helm - the Kubernetes package manager Microclimate - an end-to-end development environment for microservices Jenkins, and other tools used for DevOps IBM Cloud (formerly known as Bluemix), and  IBM Cloud Private - an application platform for developing and managing on-premises, containerized applications.  You can audit this series at no charge, or enroll for a nominal fee and earn a completion certificate. 

I recently developed and launched a new course on Coursera.org - IBM Cloud: Deploying Microservices with Kubernetes About this course: In this course, you learn how to install the Kubernetes command-line interface (CLI), and create a Kubernetes cluster on which to run applications. Hands-on tutorials show you how to deploy microservices to a Kubernetes cluster. You also learn about securing and managing a Kubernetes cluster, and how to plan your Kubernetes cluster for deployment on IBM Cloud. You can audit this course at no charge, or pay a nominal fee to receive the badge/certificate after completing it. This course is part of a specialization on Microservices. If you complete all courses in the specialization, you get a special badge. Another course in the specialization,  Microservices Fundamentals , also recently launched, and two more courses in the specialization are targeted for release later this year. Coursera is a an education-focused technology company that o...

This article is getting a replay on the IBM Mobile Business Insights blog: http://mobilebusinessinsights.com/2017/07/sowing-the-seeds-for-tomorrows-mobile-developers-in-africa/ A bunch of my articles from that time period have been archived, and are no longer available online, but this one, I think, is worth revisiting. It was one of the most interesting and successful experiences that I had while teaching abroad.

Another fresh post on the IBM Mobile Business Insights blog: http://mobilebusinessinsights.com/2016/06/leading-the-pack-essential-mobile-developer-skills-to-have/

My first article  is published on the new blog for IBM Mobile. Please check it out, and feel free to comment! Thanks.

...was awesome. I wrote about it here -  http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2015/06/mobile-development-in-africa.html

...and I wrote it! http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2015/02/getting-started-ibm-mobilefirst-mobile-platform.html

While I'm not able to attend IBM Impact this year, I am working on a lot of things to make it an awesome experience for you  (if you attend Impact). My colleagues and I in WebSphere Education contributed dozens of lab exercises to the curriculum that will be available in the Open Lab center at Impact . I wrote an article about that here . We also tested the lab exercises that are offered as scheduled lab sessions . I tested some of the labs on mobile technologies myself, and wrote an article about that here .  Another cool thing that you can do at Impact is get certified on any one of hundreds of IBM products and technologies. Being certified in some of these technologies ourselves, my colleagues and I can tell you what you need to do to get certified at Impact: Addison on PureApplication System   Jennifer on BPM   Megan (that's me) on IBM Worklight Michael on DataPower

The IBM Mobile blog has been running "theme weeks," so I chose to write an article for last week's theme, which was "Optimizing your infrastructure." When I think of optimizing your infrastructure, I think of performance tuning, in particular, tuning the middleware layer, so I give my tips on tuning the IBM Worklight Server. It is published here - Changing your tune from desktop to mobile . You can check out the other articles published from that week on The Mobile Frontier blog.

I got another article published today on the IBM Mobile blog: Bridging the hybrid app skill gap  - Oct. 25, 2013 And, also published these since my last update here: Why mobile needs cloud  - June 6, 2013 Five things about mobile from Impact  - May 10, 2013 Please check them out. 

I compiled some stories on Storify to capture my Impact experience this year: http://storify.com/mirv_pgh/ibm-impact-2013-monday http://storify.com/mirv_pgh/ibm-impact-2013-tuesday http://storify.com/mirv_pgh/women-s-panel-at-ibm-impact-2013 http://storify.com/mirv_pgh/ibm-impact-2013-wednesday You can find all my photos from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85622714@N03/sets/72157633383928113/ ---- ...and now I have two articles about it published on the IBM Mobile Business Insights blog - http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2013/05/mobile-first-at-ibm-impact-2013.html http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2013/05/five-things-about-mobile-from-impact.html ---- Make that three articles! Here's the latest one - http://thoughtsoncloud.com/index.php/2013/06/why-mobile-needs-cloud/

Yes! I am going to IMPACT this year. Very excited about that, and I am delivering the following lab session there: TMD-1361: Hands-On Lab: Exploring the IBM Worklight Application Center Session Type:  Hands-on Lab Date/Time:  Wed, 1/May, 03:45 PM - 04:45 PM Room:  Venetian - Murano 3205 It is among the many hands-on lab sessions being offered in the Mobile  track, and you should definitely check that out.  You might also find me at the WebSphere Education pedestal in the Solution Center ,  where I can demo the Worklight Application Center mobile client for you on my iPad or my Android phone.  There's still time to register , but it's coming up fast. Online registration ends April 26, 2013 at 5:00 p.m. PST.

Please find here for your reading pleasure - The question of local storage Another blog about mobile app-devvie stuff. In this case, I describe some of the options for local storage in mobile applications and highlight IBM Worklight JSONStore support.

Me again, spanning the MoClo (mobile and cloud) in #SoMoClo. Got another article published: Connecting mobile apps to the hybrid cloud - about using IBM Worklight with Cast Iron.

In case you missed it, my first article for the IBM Redbooks Mobile Enterprise residency was published: Teach Yourself Worklight Please feel free to comment! I would like to hear your suggestions on good resources for learning hybrid mobile application development and IBM Worklight.