A belated posting on SHARE and the z10 unveiling

As many of you know, SHARE held its winter 2008 conference in Orlando Feb 24-29th.  It was a very successful conference with approximately 2100 attendees.  Being on the SHARE Board of Directors has given me a much different perspective on SHARE.  SHARE is really much more than conferences.  True, the conferences are a big part of SHARE, but there’s a lot more.  SHARE has been extremely active in partnering with IBM on trying to renew the interest in the mainframe as a career option.  SHARE is very active in the IBM Academic Initiative, and zNext Generation (zNextGen).  zNextGen has grown tremendously in size the past three years since it started at SHARE Boston in summer 2005.  I believe the number of zNextGenners is now over 350.  Kristine Harper, Iris Rivera, Mike Todd,  Reg Harbeck and all the other zNextGenners have really worked hard to create a successful SHARE Project in zNextGen.

One of the highlights the past several SHARE conferences has been the zNextGen project kickoff.  Past keynote speakers have been Dr. Pat Artis, Cheryl Watson, and Michael Stack.  Of the sessions I attended at SHARE Orlando, Tom Harper’s zNextGen project kickoff presentation was one of the best sessions I attended this time.  I have never seen Mr. Harper speak before, but I know I will in the future.  Besides, I need to expand my horizons beyond the FICON and EWCP sessions.

The other big highlight at this SHARE was the unveiling of the new mainframe: the Z10.  It was a great deal of fun to be part of history in the making as IBM did their simultaenous announcements at several cities, and had the z10 actually on the tradeshow floor at SHARE.  Watching IBM move the z9 out Monday night and put the new z10 in was a logistical wonder.

I hope IBM and other vendors will consider similar “unveilings” for other major new products at SHARE in the future.  It was the icing on the cake for a wonderful conference.

Dr. Steve

This entry was posted on 12. March 2008 at 20:35 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.