What a week in Tampa and things are finally settling down, so I thought I'd post a review of my week at the 108th SHARE.
Due to the situation in New Orleans, the rescheduling and location change caused this SHARE to fall during Valentine’s week. The trip began with a nice surprise…flying to Tampa on my birthday wasn’t exactly my idea of celebrating but that night many of my zNextGen friends (including the President of SHARE!) all gathered to throw me a surprise party! Candles and cake and all - what a nice birthday!
As the project manager of the newly formed zNextGen project at SHARE, and as a volunteer for the Assembler project, much of my time was spent making sure the week went smoothly for zNextGen and attending the always-impressive Assembler sessions. Luckily, my team and I were successful in keeping zNextGen on track, and we came out of Tampa with a lot gained, but a lot to learn. zNextGen is a project whose mission is to “serve as the gateway for newcomers, to leverage the experience of mainframe veterans, and to expedite our members’ professional development in this crucial segment of the IT workforce.” We have been growing steadily since the idea for this project emerged in Boston almost 2 years ago, and now have over 240 members.
Tampa was quite an experience for us. Our opening was very well attended, thanks to our keynote speaker Cheryl Watson, and we are generating quite a buzz at SHARE and beyond. I think the support NESI has given me and zNextGen has paid off and will continue to do so in the years to come. This project is important to us, as it parallels the efforts driven by Don Odom and others in getting mainframe education up and running in Houston colleges. I think the exposure NESI has gained by being a part of zNextGen could really help our already strong presence in the pursuit of educating a new generation of mainframe professionals. Getting our company’s name out there in front of the newer generation and our mentors is really creating a new outlook towards NESI.
Along those lines, I must give a HUGE thank you to NESI for sponsoring the zNextGen Networking Event that we hosted on Wednesday at SHARE. Though we would have liked to see more new mainframers in the crowd, the event went very well and I think everyone had a good time. Check out some photos here!
The zNextGen team also enjoyed attending a training session for trialing out SHARE’s new online communications forum. zNextGen is currently a pilot project to test this tool, and we are collaborating with the SHARE IT team to provide them user feedback. Our initial impression is that it will be very beneficial to our project as the tool develops. We plan to use the forum to foster communication between members and mentors, and to provide a common place to file zNextGen-related documents and articles. Stay tuned!
We have a lot to learn as we move west to California, but we are hoping to reach out to people outside our team in order to steer our project in the right direction. Tampa was an enlightening week for zNextGen and it was very encouraging to receive the support we did from attendees and other volunteers. We want to add depth to our core team as we develop, continue to keep in contact with key people beyond our team, and make some critical decisions soon before the next conference. I am very optimistic about the future of zNextGen, and will continue to put my heart into this project so that we all can see the benefits now and in the next 50 years of SHARE and mainframe technology.
As always, the sessions at SHARE were of the highest caliber. The technical content and real-world scenarios presented were invaluable. Some of my favorites that I was able to attend were:
- SHARE Team Time on Saturday – interesting to see all the volunteer efforts that go into making SHARE successful.
- MVS Program Opening – Jerry Ng’s customer-driven funny APARs helped keep you awake in this 8am session. Example: IBM support mentioned that the customer might begin working on the problem by changing something in RACF…to which the customer replied “Change RACF?! I have a better chance of bringing peace to the whole world!” J
- z/OS Basics sessions – Bob Rogers gave a tremendous 3 part session on Sunday giving a detailed yet easy to understand overview of z/OS. The intro SMP/E sessions I went to were also just amazing!
- Fulfilling the Challenge: A Perspective on Education – this was a continuation of sorts from the Day with the Professors sessions held in Baltimore. Professor David Douglas from the University of Arkansas came to present on his views of the mainframe and the lack of skilled professionals. Very interesting to hear from a professor who teaches mainframe courses and recognizes their value!
- Assembler Language: Basic Conditional Assembly and Macro Techniques – another very detailed session by John Ehrman, with an exceptional handout!
- Intro Network sessions – some basic networking sessions I went to really helped build the big picture.
- Intro to RACF – lots of good information!
My presentation on Tony Lubrano’s HALO went very well. I would always say I could have done better, but the audience seemed very intrigued by the flexibility and capability of this product. As predicted, they were very impressed by the tried-and-true technology of D2 on which HALO is based and by the one-and-only-one DBR. J
As always, I come back from SHARE feeling more knowledgeable, but also realizing how much there is to learn. The education and network of people that builds each year can be helpful not just in everyday code development, but in many other areas of a career. I am thankful to have had another opportunity to attend SHARE.
If you’d like to hear any little details I have left out, let me know!
Thanks,
Kristine