We had a great week at SHARE in Orlando! The meeting rooms and hallways of the Walt Disney World Dolphin were crowded and resounded with the energy of IT specialists making professional connections and gaining knowledge on the latest technologies for their companies. I would like to thank all of our volunteers who helped make this event successful as well as our speakers and everyone who attended. In particular I would like to thank our keynote speakers, Bill Capodagli of Capodagli Jackson Consulting and Dr. Gururaj Rao of IBM Corporation, for sharing their knowledge and expertise.
We were excited to once again have an opportunity to have the newest member of the IBM zEnterprise family, the z114, on our trade show floor running all of our hands-on lab sessions. We offered over 30 sessions related to the zEnterprise including user experiences. We also featured a dozen sessions on IPv6, as well as a number of sessions covering other recent announcements such as CICS TS v4.2, WebSphere Application Server v8 and NetView v6.1. At our opening reception, attendees enjoyed a luau with a tropically inspired theme, food and live music. If you missed SHARE in Orlando, check out SHARE Live! which offers access to recorded sessions from our Orlando event for up to six months.
SHARE has been executing a plan to provide year-round engagement to our Members and their employees. One example is by holding monthly webcasts to provide more information in a timely fashion. We have hosted webcasts covering CICS, NetView, Virtualization, WebSphere, cloud and the z114 announcement. The z114 webcast was held only two days after the announcement by IBM.
In Orlando, SHARE announced our newest membership option, known as SHARE Select. By upgrading to SHARE Select, your organization will be able to access the valuable content typically only experienced during our bi-annual events. SHARE Select members will receive exclusive access to more than 100 recorded sessions and web classes in the SHARE Hub, one virtual conference license per live event (two per year), as well as research papers, technical documents and white papers. Learn how you can expand your conference experience throughout the year by visiting the SHARE Select web page.
SHARE continues to encourage young professionals in Enterprise IT, and is pleased to partner with CA Technologies who will be awarding over $1 million in scholarships to their Mainframe Academy. We would like to congratulate the first recipient of this scholarship, Daniela Ferreira de Paiva, Systems Analyst at BRQ IT Services in São Paulo, Brazil.
SHARE Members elected two directors at SHARE in Orlando. The SHARE leadership team is committed to delivering strong programs and ongoing collaborative opportunities which will help you drive business value from your IT investment. We look forward to the next year and the opportunities it will present.
Make sure to save the date for SHARE in Atlanta which will be held March 11-16, 2012 at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, in Atlanta Georgia. We are already planning the event, including holding our ExecuForum conference for IT executives. In the meantime, continue to watch for year-round activities from SHARE. Join us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, learn about our ongoing opportunities and stay connected to SHARE. I look forward to your continued support and participation in SHARE activities.
Sincerely,
Janet L. Sun
SHARE President