SHARE’s John R. Ehrman Award for Sustained Excellence is awarded to members who have made outstanding contributions to SHARE’s technical program through high quality presentations and white papers, as well as championing technical activities and participating in task forces. Members who receive the award have made contributions to SHARE for between five and 10 years and are nominated by their peers. Frank Kyne, president of Watson & Walker, Inc., and Mario Bezzi, developer and consultant at Watson & Walker, Inc., received the award at SHARE Orlando and shared their mainframe stories and advice.

SHARE HQ: What’s your mainframe story? How did you come to the platform?

Frank Kyne (FK): I started working as a computer operator directly out of high school. The “how I came to the platform” is easy — the job came with a 25% shift allowance! I’m not a morning person, so I was getting paid an extra 25% so I could have a lie in for two out of every three days. After five years in Operations, I moved to the Technical Support department as a Trainee System Programmer. I just loved the work and have never looked back.

Mario Bezzi (MB): I was born in 1962, and I have been a mainframe person for my entire working life. I started as a junior System Programmer in 1983 at a very small and friendly customer site. That place gave me the opportunity to touch different topics, to study, learn to make mistakes, and fix them. There I began learning about MVS, Assembler, Fortran, PL/1, CICS, Adabas (Db2 didn't exist yet), with MVS system programming being my preferred topic. I also was the librarian responsible for taking care of manuals: shelves and shelves of hardcopy manuals. I remember that documentation updates came as technical newsletters each providing just the few pages that you needed to replace to bring a manual up to date. That has been key for me to understand how the operating system was organized.

SHARE HQ: How did you first learn about SHARE?

FK: I was blessed to have a fantastic mentor in my first job. He was the lead System Programmer and he had me reading Redbooks, IBM Orange books, and conference proceedings when I was still an operator. The thoughts of attending a conference with hundreds of other nerds like me fascinated me — that was one of the attractions of moving off shift to become a system programmer, so I could attend SHARE and similar user conferences.

MB: In my early days there was no Internet, and there were no CDs, but still the myth of SHARE spread and resonated among us through printouts of conference presentations that a friend of a friend obtained by some IBM expert and kindly SHARE’d with us. That was invaluable material that we studied thoroughly to absorb every single word.

SHARE HQ: What drew you to joining SHARE?

FK: When I left IBM to join Watson & Walker, Cheryl Watson, CEO and co-founder, told me that she didn’t care where I lived, or whether I started early or late in the day, but she did have one hard requirement — I “had” to attend two SHARE conferences every year. After pinching myself to be sure it wasn’t a dream, I said, “Yes,” before she could change her mind.

MB: I consider SHARE the community that allows us mainframers to get top-quality, up-to-date technical education. In addition to that, SHARE gives us the ability to meet the real experts face to face, ask questions, explain our point, discuss requirements, influence future directions, and network with other people sharing our passion.

SHARE HQ: As the 2024 recipients of the John R. Ehrman Award for Sustained Excellence in Technical Education, what did the award mean to you?

FK: It is a little like getting that extra 25% in my first job — being paid extra for something I would have taken a pay cut for. In this case, SHARE honored me with that award for doing what I love to do. I love this platform — every single day I learn something new — so I can’t think of anything more rewarding than letting others in on the secret of what a fantastic technology the mainframe is.

MB: I was initially surprised by the award; I didn't expect it. What did I do to deserve it? Technical education to me is just the pleasure of sharing with others the things I am passionate about. In our jobs we have the privilege of experimenting, of always facing different, challenging technical problems. I think that discussing our findings with others broadens everybody's perspective.

SHARE HQ: What advice would you give to other SHARE members about volunteering and providing technical education to members?

FK: I have had a charmed career. I’ve loved every job I had, and I was always too interested in technology to pay any heed to my career.  I 100% owe my great fortune to outstanding managers and mentors that steered me in the right direction and pointed me at the right opportunities. If you have an opportunity to help others, wouldn’t it be lovely to think that 30 years from now someone will be telling their juniors about the great life they have had, and how they owe it all to the knowledge and guidance you gave them?

MB: I recommend younger members to do it because at this point in my career, I know that only if you are able to clearly explain what you've learned to other people with different backgrounds, who see things in a different way and question your claims, then you can really tell you understood something.

SHARE HQ: What’s one piece of technology or technology news you are excited about and why? 

FK: That’s easy — Parallel Sysplex! It is the coolest technology. One time I was sent to Kenya to teach a class to a group of young people that had no mainframe experience. After the snoring started, I decided to liven things up a little by doing a demo of what Sysplex can do. I cranked up my test Sysplex and a transaction workload and said to the people in the class, “This is what each of the components do. Pick one, and I’ll kill it and we’ll see what happens.” They picked something, and I crashed it. Within a few seconds, everything had settled down and all the work was running as normal. We spent the rest of the day with them picking different things for me to crash and discussing how the Sysplex was able to survive this abuse. At the end of the class, I got the best ratings I ever got in 16 years of teaching. All thanks to Parallel Sysplex.

MB: I am excited about new programming languages coming to the platform. For example, as a system programmer, I consider Python a game-changing opportunity to bring new people and new solutions to z/OS.

SHARE HQ: What are you passionate about at work? What are you passionate about outside of work?  

FK: About 80% of my job consists of doing research on topics that the readers of our newsletter are interested in. I typically get to work with customers that are interested in that topic and the developers that created the product or function. And then I get to test my understanding by trying to explain what I’ve learned to our readers. I help our readers more quickly decide whether something is relevant and interesting for their company. We all have more work than we have time for, so if I can give our subscribers a little time back in their day, that makes me a happy man.

Outside of work, I like anything to do with animals. I enjoy motor sports. And my family and I love traveling to far-fetched corners of this small planet that we all share.

MB: I love traveling to understand other ways of life, shooting photos of places and people, walking in the country, reading books, watching indie movies, going to theater, and listening to classical music.

SHARE HQ: Tell us something about yourself that SHARE members may not already know. 

FK: I’m sure anyone that listens to me will immediately recognize my Bronx accent, but I actually spent half my life in Ireland.

MB: I am a maniac book collector; my favorite ones are rare first editions.

Frank Kyne was born in New York and spent his first 14 years traveling back and forth between the United States and Ireland. In 1974, he settled in Ireland with his parents (hence his unique ‘Bronx-Dublin’ accent). His first IT job was as an operator in an insurance company in Ireland. After 5 years in Operations, Frank transferred to the System Programming department to become a VM system programmer, then moved to IBM Ireland in 1985. In 1998, Frank moved to the IBM Redbooks organization in Poughkeepsie, New York, to work as the project leader for Sysplex Redbooks. Over the years, Frank’s role expanded to include Redbooks on high availability, GDPS, and performance, teaching various classes around the world, and consulting with IBM’s most complex and interesting customers. In March 2014, Frank left IBM to join Watson & Walker and is currently its president and author of most articles in their quarterly newsletter, Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter.

Mario Bezzi is a mainframe person with 42 years of experience in MVS both as a customer and in various vendor technical support positions. During his career, he worked on topics like z/OS configuration, tuning and system programming, mainframe hardware technologies, and high availability solutions. In his 20 years with IBM, he helped major financial customers worldwide optimize their mainframe systems. He cooperated with the z/OS development organization and contributed to the creation of various Redbooks publications. In the last decade, he realized that after so many years of infrastructure tuning, significant savings could only be obtained by optimizing application code, a discipline which crosses the boundaries between infrastructure management and application development. This led him to shift his focus toward application understanding, optimization, and modernization.