Welcome to this month’s Message from SHARE!
First, thank you to everyone who participated in and attended SHARE Dallas at the end of March, especially (as we close out National Volunteer Month 2022 in the U.S.) all of the incredible volunteers who had a hand in its programming. After two years of a pandemic and virtual SHARE events, it was apparent that our community was excited to be networking and learning in person once again.
I saw so many smiling faces throughout those few days, and many of the folks our team talked to shared how much they had missed in-person demonstrations with our expert speakers. Industry veterans were as eager as first-timers to connect and share their knowledge with one another, further strengthening the bonds within our community.
Small Event, Big Impact
SHARE Dallas, though smaller in size than your typical SHARE event, placed a big emphasis on education and networking. In addition to the in-person programming, three livestream rooms made education accessible to a virtual audience. As an example, one popular technical session was “Look Ma No Hands – Installing Maintenance and IPLing z/OS Without a Systems Programmer”, during which IBM’s Kevin Miner highlighted how to use the Watson Assistant chatbot to give individuals the capability to perform task remotely from a mobile device. Check out a round up of our top five most-attended sessions below.
Top Attended Sessions
Each of the below sessions was shown in person and broadcast to a livestream/virtual audience.
- “What's New In z/OS V2.5: The Big D Edition” / “What's New in z/OSMF V2.5?" / – presented by IBM’s Gary S. Puchkoff (senior technical staff member, z/OS Development)
- “Watson & Walker zRoadshow” – presented by Watson & Walker Inc.’s Frank Kyne (president)
- “ISPF Hints, Tips, and Recent Improvements" – presented by IBM’s Sam Reynolds (senior software engineer)
- “Upgrade to z/OS V2.5: Planning and Technical Actions” – presented by IBM’s Marna Walle (senior technical staff member), of Marna’s Musings, and Mark Wallen (software engineer)
- “DevOps Experiences Panel” – presented by Rosalind Radcliffe (IBM), Gustavo de Paiva Almeida (Kyndryl), Venkat Balabhadrapatruni (Broadcom), Bill Alexander (IBM), Jack Opgenorth (IntelliMagic), Misty Decker (Micro Focus), and Peter Wassel (Broadcom)
What’s Trending and What’s Next
Following Dallas, the feedback has been coming in and we’re noticing a keen interest from the community in a few key areas: IT operations and professional development. We hear you on this and plan to do our best to bring you more content in these areas in the coming months — and especially in Columbus.
Thoughts from Enterprise Data Center Program Manager Karla Houser on the Professional Development Project:
Technical knowledge is undeniably the powerhouse of your IT department, but soft skills are critically important as well. In today’s environment, technical competence alone is not sufficient for career success. It’s the soft skills — the ability to communicate clearly and concisely, work collaboratively, think critically, and analyze seemingly disparate information — that are also required to meet the ever-changing requirements of IT today. Ensuring that you and your enterprise are prepared to meet the current and future needs of your IT organization requires emphasizing and demonstrating the necessity of soft skills, as well as technical expertise. This is the focus of SHARE’s Professional Development (PDEV) Project.
In Dallas, professional development was one of the highlighted topics and the PDEV Project sponsored a series of well-attended, well-received sessions covering mainframe workforce education and training, career development, diversity, and communications. Sessions were presented by industry experts as well as by the user community, and the Enterprise Data Center Program plans to continues this at our next technical conference in August. We are looking forward to continuing to include soft skills sessions in order to enable you, our community members, to proactively grow and develop your soft skills.
As for what’s next, I hope you’ll join us in Columbus for the next SHARE event. The team is currently accepting proposals for sessions through this Friday (tomorrow), April 29, at 5:00 p.m. CT. Showcase your innovative approaches to the industry by presenting on key enterprise IT topics, like API economy, data privacy, DevOps in the enterprise, and more!