At SHARE Orlando this year, Cheryl Watson received the Distinguished Service Award, and it’s not hard to understand why once you get to know this well-respected mentor in the mainframe ecosystem. Her mainframe career has been a journey of learning, and Watson’s dedication to the mainframe is tied to her eagerness to learn new things and pass that knowledge onto other mainframers, no matter where they are in their career.

Bitten by the Mainframe Bug

As a math and physics major in the late 1960s, Watson had planned to go into teaching, but becoming a teacher meant earning just $325 per month. With a husband in graduate school, earning $500 per month as a trainee programmer seemed like the better option. “I went into it thinking, ‘I can do this for a couple of years,’” she recalls.

At Consolidated Freightways, she was trained on an IBM 605 in which wires were used to program the electronic computer. It wasn’t long before she was trained on the company’s IBM 1401 and autocoder language, and then an IBM 360. “That’s when I fell in love with computers. I never wanted to go anyplace else,” Watson says. “Part of me was still a teacher, and even in those early days, I would learn about something related to the mainframe, and I would turn around and teach it to other people.” She ended up straddling the best of both worlds in one place.

Watson went to work for several software development companies that were developing programming languages. One of those companies failed, but the second company sent her to Europe to teach others about the product. That’s when she fell in love with travel. When one company would go out of business, she would find work with another and expand her knowledge of the mainframe bit by bit. “I always say that I have a wide range of knowledge, but not spectacular depth,” says Watson. “I learn enough to know what I’m doing, and it’s allowed me to have a broad view of the mainframe ecosystem from CICS and COBOL to IMS, applications, operations, and security. I feel like my knowledge is more rounded.”

According to Watson, the guidepost of her career has been asking, “Why not?” For example, if a boss asked her if she wanted to travel to Mexico City and do a project, Watson would say, “Why not?” Later in her career, a former boss called her for help to fill a CICS programmer position in his Chicago office. He asked Watson to interview programmers to lead the CICS unit, and she ended up talking herself into taking the job, leaving San Francisco behind.

Watson had an opportunity to open the Germany office for her next employer (Morino Associates) and learn SAS, MXG, and other mainframe software, which she taught to others across Europe. Once back in the United States, she joined another firm and published a paper on computer measurement and evaluation, which is when she first learned about SHARE. Unfortunately, Watson was not able to attend SHARE that year because they had a designated attendee for SHARE. Watson was disappointed because “he kept all the knowledge to himself,” she says.

SHARE Became Her Classroom

Watson brokered a compromise with her employer, offering to give up her years of earned vacation time in exchange for the company paying for her to attend SHARE. While at her first SHARE, she attended all the sessions of interest for her company, created three-ring binders full of handouts and information that were broken down into sections relevant to her co-workers. Her binders were full of insights for COBOL programmers, those working with IMS, and so much more. Watson also took all of this information and transformed it into a mini class for her co-workers to learn tips and tricks she learned at SHARE. It was no surprise that Watson was allowed to attend SHARE every year after that.

“That is the heart of SHARE,” says Watson. “It’s about not only sharing your knowledge with other people at SHARE events, but also sharing your knowledge with people when you get back to your office. The more you share your knowledge back at the office, the more your value as an employee and resource for the company increases.”

Sharing knowledge with co-workers and with other SHARE members at events is just one way to expand your own knowledge, according to Watson. “The more you talk to people, the more you learn,” she adds. “The more you learn, the more you can share. It’s a full cycle.”

This is what prompted her to begin volunteering with SHARE shortly after her first event. “It always seemed to me that volunteers on SHARE’s committees always knew what was going on or what was coming up down the line,” Watson explains. “Volunteering put me in the know and it enabled me to grow my own network.”

Receiving the SHARE Distinguished Service Award at SHARE Orlando was a moment Watson will remember for a long time. “I am honored and appreciate it in more ways that I can articulate,” says Watson. She advises others to volunteer and share their knowledge at SHARE and in their home offices because it is important to every mainframers’ growth. “Never be embarrassed to ask a question at SHARE. Make the effort to meet people and talk to SHARE speakers after their sessions. You won’t regret it,” she advises.

Mainframe’s Next 60 Years

Watson will be among the first to tell you that the next 60 years of mainframe will be as unpredictable as the last 60 years. With the mainframe, “there is one overriding change that will continue, and that is automation,” explains Watson. She says that when she started in her career, it took five people to operate an IBM 360, and each of them knew everything about it, enabling them to cover for one another when they were sick or on vacation. “You can’t say that now. The machines are so big, and the operating system is massive,” Watson says. “There are so many things coming out with every single release that you can’t possibly know everything.”

 “In order to keep up with everything and for current staff to handle all of the new things available, automation is key,” Watson says. Certain tasks can be automated to free up staff time for new deployments and other, more complex tasks.

According to Watson, workload manager (WLM) was one of the biggest changes in the mainframe, especially when it came to IPS PARMLIB parameters that are used to fine-tune dispatch priorities. Staff in charge of those dispatch priorities rebelled against automating those through WLM. But Watson says it was a necessary function to automate, and she created a quick-start policy to help staff “see the light,” and that policy was on IBM’s website for a long time. At every SHARE, “I was on my little soapbox talking about the importance of WLM,” she says.

When IBM unveiled the z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF), Watson noted it was clunky and hard to use because it relied on UNIX® System Services (USS) knowledge, which few staff members had taken the time to learn. But with further investment, Watson knew that IBM’s z/OSMF was going to be integral to the future of the mainframe platform, which is why she quickly got to work bringing customers on board. “Sometimes, you have to embrace the ‘why not’ of new technology, especially if you know the platform is headed in a new direction,” she explains.

In the next 60 years, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to be more prevalent. “The reason AI is important now is because the amount of knowledge coming in just the next five to 10 years will be tenfold what it has been in the last 60 years,” Watson explains. “It is going to change z/OS, and it will change the look of future mainframes. If you’re not in touch with all of these new technologies, you’re going to be left behind.”

“It is the job of the next generation of mainframers to get a handle on new technologies as they emerge, stay involved, volunteer with SHARE, and share their knowledge with others,” explains Watson. The millions of instructions managed per second by mainframes now will grow exponentially with AI and machine learning. Being a volunteer with SHARE and getting engaged with committee work will help keep mainframers at the forefront of evolving technology. And, like Watson, SHARE members must embrace the “why not?” of the future.