SHARE is well known for its twice annual events in which presenters offer educational and technical sessions on everything mainframe. In an expansion of its year-round education strategy, SHARE Nibbles offers short, digestible content to members similar to how-to videos on YouTube. These 10-minutes or less tutorials, created by users, will present a quick learning opportunity for IT enterprise questions. These microlearning opportunities will help users hone their skills and stay up-to-date on the latest topics in the mainframe industry. SHARE Nibbles will be available on the SHARE website within the content center and hosted by the SHARE YouTube channel.
Scott Fagen, treasurer at SHARE, says that SHARE Nibbles is just one part of the organization’s commitment to providing timely and useful information for members. “It also provides our members a way to contribute helpful hints and tips to the community,” he explains. “While the conference and presentation formats are great for providing longer form education content, there are many opportunities to provide quick hit information that someone might be able to watch and use almost immediately. On websites like YouTube, you can post helpful hints and tips on almost anything from fixing a vacuum to sorting dishes in your dishwasher. SHARE Nibbles is the vehicle for our members to share these kinds of short, helpful 'nibbles' with the entire community.”
SHARE Nibbles will have a broad array of content, according to Fagen, from best practices around the installation and configuration of components and products to the use of new system, subsystem, or programming language features, along with background information for new functions and enhancements.
“I would hope that people with the inclination to share their knowledge will put some Nibbles together on their own and that there will be a healthy backlog of requests from the community,” Fagen says.
The first SHARE Nibble — launched in October — is from Dusty Rivers, director of z Systems Software: IMS & CICS at GT Software and SHARE program manager for IMGT. The Nibble is titled IMS API's in Action (You Don't Know What You Don't Know). The session focused on learning how some of the world's largest IMS installations successfully implemented hundreds of application programming interfaces (APIs). Rivers also discussed potential pitfalls that can be encountered while developing APIs.
Check out the second SHARE Nibble, zOS Support: APARs, Red Alerts, SADMP with John Shebey III, senior software engineer at IBM. He examines how APARs affect the system and explains how to engage in recovery. In this SHARE Nibble, listeners will garner a greater understanding of some new red alerts since the last conference in Fort Worth. Stand-alone dumps are also touched upon and users can share their experiences with IBM directly through a survey, a link to which is provided.
With plans to roll out more in its year-round education initiative, SHARE Nibbles is just one way for members to get involved and provide value to the community. Fagen says, “I think we'll be encouraging a lot more grassroots participation and an ability to provide much more varied content.”
He adds that the virtual format doesn’t have the same time restrictions as in person education events. “One of our greatest challenges is providing a session slot for all of the good submissions that we have,” Fagen explains. “The virtual format will go a long way in providing the means to distribute this valuable information to our members. Yet another great way to SHARE.” Be sure to check out SHARE Nibbles for your next microlearning opportunity and subscribe to the SHARE YouTube channel.
Those interested in contributing to SHARE Nibbles playlist can request topics for others to present or become a presenter yourself. Send email requests to webinars@share.org