By: Marty Zimelis, Deputy Director, Conference Operations
We’re roughly six weeks away from the start of SHARE San Jose 2017! Kicking off on March 6, this year’s event is chock-full of highly valuable technical content delivered by an incredibly knowledgeable lineup of speakers.
But for those who are looking to get a jumpstart on your week in San Jose, might I suggest circling March 5 on your calendar? This is the day that we present SHARE Academy — two-day long seminars designed to provide a deeper dive into topics relevant to enterprise IT professionals today. This features material that can’t be presented during the main technical program — due either to the depth of the material or its duration, or both.
This marks the third SHARE event over the past two years in which we have hosted SHARE Academy. When we first conceived the idea for SHARE Academy we envisioned it as a way to provide a few additional hours of technical learning that simply couldn’t fit into the main agenda of the event. But, almost immediately, we realized that simply adding a few more one-hour sessions was not the best use of time. In fact, given the ever-changing complexities of enterprise technology, it became apparent that if we were to host an additional education session for the event that it needed to be an entire day.
Thus, the first Immersion-type SHARE Academy was born and debuted at SHARE San Antonio 2016. This was followed up just a few months later at SHARE Atlanta 2016.
SHARE Academies currently fall into two categories: Immersions and Boot Camps.
- Immersion: As the name implies, a “deep dive” into a particular subject area. It provides more detail than one can get in a normal one-hour presentation — or even several hours!
- Boot Camp: An introductory course designed to give participants a grounding in a particular topic area and help them get more out of related material presented in sessions during the week.
This year, we’ll be offering two SHARE Academy classes: z/OS Bug Busterz, a boot camp on z/OS debugging; and IMS Immersion, a deep dive class on IBM’s Information Management System.
z/OS Bug Busterz
The SHARE Academy z/OS Bug Busterz class is presented by experienced z/OS Level 2 professionals and will provide you with the skills to analyze and make sense of diagnostic data captured by z/OS. You will gain the knowledge necessary to perform preliminary analysis of dumps and trace data using IPCS, and learn how to capture information through diagnostic tools, including GTF trace, CTRACE and SLIP. The class is designed for z/OS Systems Programmers and Application Programmers that support products running on z/OS, and will include a pre-event webcast. No prior IPCS experience is required.
IMS Immersion
"Immerse" yourself in IMS with a full day of programming that will focus on advanced topics in IBM's Information Management Systems. This program is targeted at IMS mid-level and lighter skilled DBAs, Systems Programmers, Application Programmers and Architects, and will include a pre-event webinar with homework.
Do you want to know what it’s like to attend one of these unique classes? I encourage you to check out articles from past attendees of both z/OS Bug Busterz and IMS Immersion. These individuals share tips and insights for how to best prepare for the day — and how to make it a lasting experience.
For more information on these offerings, see http://www.share.org/san-jose-academy, where you’ll find links to detailed agendas and registration information.