Innovation with Purpose: How Rocket.Build Ideas Create Real Change 

From sparking new ideas to strengthening collaboration, Rocket.Build is more than a few-day event where we shake hands and walk away when it ends. Instead, it’s a launchpad for real-world impact long after the winners are announced. The ideas born here evolve into solutions that shape how we work, connect, and innovate for the rest of the year.

In this final installment of our Rocket.Build spotlight series, we’re talking with Ying Lin, QA/QC Manager at Rocket Software, whose team is focused on building something designed to make a tangible difference both in the day-to-day lives of users and within Rocket Software’s product ecosystem. This story is a powerful reminder that the true measure of innovation lies in the change it inspires.

What drew you to get involved with Rocket.Build this year?

What primarily drew me to this year's Rocket.Build was the highly relevant and incredibly timely theme: "AI Empowering Product Supportiveness."

For too long, customer support has been viewed in a reactive light - a necessary function to solve problems after they arise. I firmly believe the future of our product lies in transitioning our support infrastructure from a troubleshooting mechanism to a proactive, value-driven centerpiece of the entire user journey.

The theme of supportiveness this year, specifically, provides a vital platform to explore how AI can achieve this transformation. It's about moving beyond simple chatbots and into advanced anticipation: how can AI help us foresee user friction points, offer personalized guidance before a customer even asks, and essentially, how can we scale genuine, empathetic user interaction?

This is not just a hypothetical exercise. We are at a critical inflection point where AI technology is mature enough to deliver tangible, immediate benefits to our users and significantly improve our internal process efficiency. I wanted to be part of the team driving that immediate, impactful transformation—to bridge the gap between powerful new technology and direct, measurable customer delight. That opportunity to build empathy and intelligence at scale is what motivated me most to participate.

At a high level, what are you most excited to explore, create, or learn during the event?

I am most excited about exploring the transformation of our deep, collective domain knowledge into a scalable, accessible AI asset. As a QA Manager for an IBM i DevOps product, I know firsthand that troubleshooting often requires a rare combination of expertise in our product, the platform, networking, and specific compiler error interpretation. The current process is highly inefficient and domain-knowledge-intensive.

My excitement is centered on demonstrating a proof-of-concept for a Virtual Senior diagnostic tool. This AI-powered tool would analyze complex input, like a massive IBM i joblog, and instantly provide a precise, multi-step resolution. Our goal is to bridge the knowledge gap, making our powerful product and the underlying IBM i platform instantly accessible to the new generation of developers familiar with modern tools like Git, Jenkins, and VS Code. This directly accelerates our clients' modernization journey, which is a core company value.

Collaboration is a big part of Rocket.Build. How are you feeling about your team going into the event?

I feel exceptionally confident and enthusiastic about my team. Our project, focusing on democratizing complex IBM i support knowledge, inherently requires strong collaboration across disciplines. We have intentionally built a team that combines deep domain veterans—the QA, senior development experts and products leader who possess decades of IBM i troubleshooting wisdom—with AI/UX innovators—the engineers focused on modern technologies and user experience.

Collaboration is essential here because we’re solving a complex customer case. Our team structure ensures that the AI solution we design is not just technically clever but is contextually accurate and can effectively address the most painful, high-value, and complex troubleshooting scenarios that currently consume significant support resources.

Events like this often spark new ideas that last well beyond the week. What kind of impact do you hope this experience will have on your work afterward?

My greatest hope is that this event serves as the definitive launchpad for integrating our AI concept—the Virtual Senior diagnostic tool —directly into our core IBM i DevOps product.

The desired impact on my work is a fundamental shift in the QA function: moving from constantly firefighting reactive customer cases to proactively enabling the user base. By codifying our accumulated QA and support knowledge into this AI feature, we can anticipate a significant reduction in support volume, faster time-to-resolution for customers, and a massive boost to user confidence. This would allow my team to evolve into high-level product specialists and feature quality advocates, rather than just technical troubleshooters.  

I want this experience to prove that our R&D and domain expertise can seamlessly translate into integrated, high-value product features.

In a few words, how would you describe the energy or atmosphere you expect at Rocket.Build? What are you most excited about?

I expect the atmosphere to be intensely focused, disruptively collaborative, and vision-driven.

What I am most excited about is the moment of validation and commitment. I look forward to proving the technical and business viability of our project to leadership, and receiving the commitment for a clear, funded path to integrate this powerful AI support feature into our product roadmap. It’s about securing the future of the idea, moving it from concept to concrete customer value.

Ying’s story is a perfectly reflects what Rocket.Build is all about: turning bold ideas into real-world impact. The team’s focus on transforming AI innovation into proactive, empathetic product support showcases how creativity at Rocket goes beyond imagining the future we want to see -- instead, we build it.

As this year’s Rocket.Build draws close, the energy, collaboration, and ingenuity on display remind us that innovation doesn’t end with the final presentation. The projects born here continue to have impact, shaping products, empowering teams, and inspiring new ways to solve problems long after the event wraps.

Together, these stories from Lior, Rashmith, and Ying capture the essence of Rocket.Build: a culture where imagination meets purpose, and where every idea has the potential to create legendary impact.