SHARE in Anaheim was actually one of the better conferences in recent memory for those interested in z/OS technical content. Cheryl Watson did a great job articulating the reasons why in her 'Cheryl's Hot Flashes' session at 9:30 on Friday. (See the Conference Proceedings.) Cheryl predicted a similar experience for the Summer 2014 conference. I'm very much looking forward to that!
z/OS-related summertime content, such as that sponsored by the MVS Core Technologies Project, generally centers around an upcoming z/OS release. Many sessions are devoted to summarizing and detailing the various line items that are becoming available. This time, there was no new z/OS release to talk about; the next one is not scheduled until September, 2013.
In Anaheim, there were fewer 'basics' sessions and more 'intermediate/advanced' sessions. The content shifted noticeably toward in-depth learning about how to implement and use some of the most important new System z and z/OS features made available in recent releases, leveraging some overlooked features that have been around for years, performance tuning for major z/OS subsystems, and 'how does it work?' sessions of great interest to the attendees.
Conference attendance was down slightly, probably because some SHARE members wrongly assumed that without a new operating system release to talk about, z/OS-related SHARE content would primarily consist of uninteresting, recycled material. Nothing could have been further from the truth!