Members from the Red Hat Node.js team were recently at PowerUp 2025. It was held in Anaheim, California this year and featured a mix of topics including good coverage of open source.
PowerUP is a conference which is mostly focussed on the IBM i platform which of course runs Node.js. The Red Hat Node.js team works closely with the IBM i teams at IBM so that they can deliver Node.js on the platform and help customers be successful in their Node.js deployments. It was great to be able to meet people who are running IBM i systems in production and to hear about their experiences.
Conference Themes
It was no surprise that there were many talks on the use of Large Language Models and AI. From a quick count there there were 17 talks on AI ranging from how to leverage LLMs in your code to using code assistants to make coding easier.
Other key themes included security, system management and all things related to developing in RPG which is the most commonly used language on IBM i.
Standout Moments
There were a number of talks which covered VS Code or tools that are based on it. It's great to see JavaScript as the supporting technology behind developer productivity. Sanjula Ganepola delivered a number of talks on how to use VS Code effectively which we found interesting. In addition, there were a number of talks on watsonx (which is based on VSCode) which is one of the the entrypoints for using AI and large languagte models on the IBM i platform.
"Surfing the net: the Neural Net" was one of our favorite talks as it's always important to understand at a high level what's going on behind the scenes. In this talk Jonathan delivered a great introdution to Neural Networks and how they work which should be required learning for anybody starting out with AI.
To round things out the session on "The Ethical use of AI" was also one of our favorites as it develed into some of the key aspects that we should be thinking about as we infuse our applications with AI using large language models.
Red Hat Involvement
Red Hatters delivered the talks:
- Node.js - Node.js: What's new and what's next
- Node.js - An introduction to Node.js
- Node.js - AI Meets Node.js: Unlocking the Power of Large Language Models in JavaScript
In addition, they were also part of the panel "PowerUP 2025 - Panel on Cutting-Edge Technology" and helped out with a talk on "IoT and IBM i" presented by Jesse Gorzinsky from IBM by providing the devices which fed live data to an IBM i system over MQTT.
Many thanks to those who attended those talks for being there and the interesting questions.
Where to learn more
Learn more about what Red Hat is up to on the Node.js front:
- Visit our topic pages on Node.js and AI for Node.js developers.
- Download the e-book A Developer's Guide to the Node.js Reference Architecture.
- Explore the Node.js Reference Architecture on GitHub.
