The 109th SHARE conference was in San Diego last week and I wanted to give you a recap of my experiences there. Despite getting sick almost right when I arrived, I managed to make it through the week! This was the 4th conference for zNextGen (zNG) as an official project and we had a terrific week. Our new Deputy Project Manager Reg Harbeck made an impressive debut! The experience we are gaining and our many supporters are helping us continue to be successful.
As the project manager of the zNextGen, 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. zNG has been growing steadily since the idea for this project emerged in Boston almost 2 years ago, and now have over 300 members. Our opening session (3100) was very well attended, thanks to our keynote speaker Michael Stack. He gave a terrific presentation and sincerely engaged our audience. It was especially nice to see a lot of new faces in the audience. Our interactive closing session (3101) yielded valuable feedback, which we will use to shape our project for the future. Bob Rogers’ three part session series, z/OS Basics: A z/OS Walking Tour through MVS Concepts and Facilities was an excellent overview of the mainframe and he really kept the audience engaged.
To report on the networking activities of zNextGen at SHARE, we had some lunches and a dinner on Wednesday night. We were most impressed by the overall increased SHARE attendance. We had a lot of new sign-ups and it was fun to meet a lot of new mainframers. Each night at SCIDS (the evening receptions) was extremely busy, exciting and fun! It was good to see zNextGenners networking and enjoying this part of SHARE. Thursday night was especially entertaining, as we enjoyed the new songs by our own Reg Harbeck and continued the paddle waving tradition. The sing-along was very popular and NESI was even mentioned in one of the songs ("ISV-Yay" to the tune of "YMCA") written by Reg! Many thanks to John Eells for hand crafting such an amazing new paddle case for us!
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:
- MVS Program Opening (2403)
- Head of the Class: Professors' Perspectives on Mainframe Education (3102) – zNG project continued its professor series focusing on mainframe education. 5 professors from around the country attended this session to discuss their success in starting mainframe programs at their universities. It drew a very large crowd and generated a lot of buzz.
- z/VM Basics (9102) - good opportunity to stick my nose into something I am unfamiliar with
- DB2 Performace Tuning Roadmap (1308) - NESI's Craig Mullins' session was excellent as to be expected
- Space Shuttle Usage of z/OS (8121) - one of the most anticipated and highly attended Assembler sessions, this was a great presentation showing how mainframes and Assembler keep our space systems running safely.
- Additions to z/Architecture (8190) - a really interesting session given by one of the authors of the Principles of Operations...this guy really knew his stuff.
- Many many more!!! Don't forget all of these proceedings are available on the SHARE website.
My presentation on restructuring Assembler programs went very well (8130: A Live Demo on How to Restructure Your Spaghetti Code). Despite feeling awful, the live demo went on without any glitches. It was good to have audience participation and be convincing enough to convert people to the life of structured Assembler!
As always, I come back from SHARE not only 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.
San Diego 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.
Be sure to check out the photo attachment :-)
Again, thanks to my team and all the volunteers that continue to make zNextGen a success!