Fostering Mainframe Education Resources for the Future – The Open Mainframe EP 24

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Open Mainframe. The Open Mainframe is a monthly video series dedicated to the Open mainframe.

Uh, it's about the mainframe, the vulnerable mainframe computer system. Today, it's IBM Z's mainframe for the most part, and, and how it interacts in today's modern world of DevOps and Cloud native and cloud and everything else that we do. Ai, I guess, is coming too.

We're gonna probably do a show on that soon, I bet. AI in the mainframe. But anyway, we do these shows once a month.

Thrilled to do 'em. Uh, you may or may not believe it, but the audience for the mainframe is one of the most passionate audiences I've come across in the tech world, and, and we're happy to have you joining us here. Uh, we're also happy to have an amazing panel for this month's show.

Let me tell you, before I introduce the panel though, let me just give you the title, what we're gonna be talking about today. Today's Open, this month's Open Mainframe, uh, episode is on how do you foster the stewardship of education resources? You know, one of the main, uh, goals, one of the main, uh, jobs of the Open Mainframe Project is to foster education around, around mainframe, mainframe systems, mainframe software, hardware, applications, and uses.

And, and the Open Mainframe Project does a tremendous job with that on a worldwide basis, on everything from university programs to outside of the traditional, you know, schooling, to, you know, training code camps, open source materials online, and everything else. We're gonna find out a lot about that today. But before we do dive in, let me introduce you to our Panel of Experts today.

I wanna first start off with Paul Newton and Paul, first of all, welcome. I think this is your first time on the Open Mainframe. Um, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience.

Hi, everyone. Paul Newton, uh, from I B M. I've been in the industry for over 40 years, and the last 20 has been with I B M.

Um, I did something called the Master the Mainframe, uh, which ran for a long time, and now I support the backend of what's called Z Explorer. And so I've got a, um, wealth of experience in industry, uh, both technical and applied to different aspects of industry. So I'll just leave it at that.

Fantastic. Okay, Paul, welcome and thanks. Joining Paul with us this week is JJ Lovett.

Jj, welcome. How you doing? Thank you for having me.

Uh, JJ Lovett, I'm the head of, uh, education and customer engagement for the mainframe division of Broadcom. Uh, while not as, uh, tenured as Paul, I've been in and outta the mainframe and working with the mainframe from the, uh, ca days prior to the Broadcom acquisition, going back about 20 years. Um, in terms of, you know, the role that I have with the Mainframe Open Education Project, uh, I'm on the core team and one of the things that that affords us is the ability to extend beyond our regular product in z o s education.

So it's really a way for us to go out and get into the market in these other areas in an open source fashion. So, uh, I reside on Long Island, outside New York City, so I hope you enjoy your travels this weekend, and, uh, looking forward to the discussion. Yes, I'll be coming home.

I'm a Long Island boy myself, so appreciate that. The old Islandia for ca days, right? Certainly true.

Um, some people called it hot Hog. But anyway, uh, let me introduce to our next panel member today. She is Vivian Sanchez.

Vivian, welcome. And if you wouldn't mind telling a little bit about yourself. Of course.

Thank you, Alan. Uh, so I'm Vivian. Uh, I work for ndl.

Uh, I'm based in Brazil, and I have been working with Mainframe. It's a half path of Paul. Uh, but I have already worked together with Paul in the past.

Uh, I am 20 years working as a service provider, uh, for mainframe. I have started my career as a computer operator, actually as a VM computer operator. And since, even though it seems it's been a while already, I'm pretty sure there's a lot to learn.

Uh, I always learn in, in this space. Uh, now at Kydo in the past 10 years, I'm more focused on the education strategy, putting this, uh, strategy for the global team as we have a lot of employees and we need this, uh, this is a very key topic that we all should care about. So very happy to be here, and thank you, Alan, thank you team to be partnering with us on that.

Very happy to have you here. And, and I think this is the first time we've had someone from NDL on the Open Mainframe, so thank you. Thanks for coming in.

And then, uh, our next panel member is Tcio O Osh. If I mispronounced that double I, I apologize. But Tcio, why don't, why don't you tell 'em the right way to pronounce your name and maybe a little bit about yourself.

Okay, thanks Alan. You'd pronounce it as Teso. Teso, okay.

Yes. So, and a A little bit about yourself. Okay.

I am a graduate intern at I B M South Africa. That's where I'm based. And I joined the Open Mainframe Project as a, the mainframe Open education project.

I then went on to join the core team, uh, and also like, uh, joined the whole project as a mentor to the other students that are coming up. So, yeah, that's just a little background about myself. And I think I've been on the mainframe for close to half a decade now.

Uh, the, that's like leading, um, the skills, uh, while I was at the university, the University of Johanne respect to be exec Yeah, until now where I'm training as a zero o s systems program. Excellent, thank you. And a half a decade's, nothing to sneeze at, but of course Paul probably has logins older than that.

Um, but it's a pleasure to have all of you on. Let me introduce our last face on, on, on your screen. And that is my co-host of the Open Mainframe Project video series, but he's also the ed, the executive director of the Open Mainframe Project for the Linux Foundation, as well as an author, uh, on Linux, on on open source communities.

There's, he's always has, he always has his prop nearby. Shameless plug, right? Shameless plug available on Amazon.

Yeah. John, how are you? If you wouldn't mind maybe expanding from what I said about you.

No, I mean, you, you did, you did, you did great. Um, you know, I, I, I have the, the, um, fortune really to work with great communities like this and just such a variety of different projects. You know, you, you and Alan, you always think of open source as we're coming together, we're building code, but we're just seeing more and more of just the open source principles being applied to just other sorts of del uh, you know, development collaborations, you know, where you've seen it in Open Hardware, um, in many cases.

Um, I've seen, um, you know, domains. I, I used to dabble in home brewing, and I know there's a whole open source scenes on, you know, collaborating on home brew recipes. Um, and, and I think it's a really interesting one here around education because it's, you know, it's just such a critical part of, of any c ecosystem of having it.

And, and it's really hard to pull this together. Um, so I'm really fascinating to, you know, talk more about this project here. Um, I've worked with a number of these folks as we were getting this off the ground here, and, uh, I think we think we really have a tree ahead of us.

Absolutely. And, you know, look, three of the four people on our panel have been in mainframes 20 years or more, which to me, you know, calls out that, hey, we need an educational foundation, an educational program that gets more people like TSO in right, who's five years in and gets the next generation of mainframe developers or mainframe operators in, in involved in this and, and up to speed. Um, John, if you wouldn't mind, I mean, you are the ED for the project.

Why don't you, if you, if you could take a shot at sort of framing, you know, the, the, uh, the system or the educational program that the Open Mainframe project has put in place, and then I, I'd like to ask our panel members to jump in from there with kind of their thoughts around it. Yeah, no, that, that, that, that would be great. Um, you know, this project came together a few years ago, and it was a few folks in the mainframe community that reached out and said, you know, we, we have, we have sort of an education challenge.

And it was in the realm of that there's a lot of sort of basic fundamental education materials around mainframe that are being put together in all sorts of different places. You know, I b m was putting together a lot of curriculum, Broadcom, B M C, um, a number of other organizations were doing this as well. And, you know, for any of you in the audience that I've ever been in training development, and, and I remember talking with Clyde, uh, siad, who runs, uh, who's the GM of the Linux Foundation training business, you know, you have to tell me is like, you know, a lot of that training at that level.

It's, it's a lot of work to put together. It's, it's really important, but at the same time it's, it's just a heavy lift. And we often see a lot of repeated pieces that happen at that layer.

And, you know, and this idea came together of, you know, Broadcom has some great verses. I b M has some great resources. KY rl, a number of other organizations, have great resources.

Pulling it together in one place where this could be iterated built on, made available to anybody, because making that low barrier to entry is really key. But, you know, at the same time, being a rallying point for this community, um, to, to work on it seems like a very no-brainer. Um, you know, it's really interesting 'cause you don't see a ton of these projects out there.

I've been starting to see a few more of them emerge, you know, because often technical training content, it's, it's just hard to build. I mean, if you're, if you're into training, and I know, you know, jj you know, you lead training for Broadcom, so I'm sure you can resonate. And you know, Paul, you've been around, you know, the blog a few times, Avena, I know you've done a ton of this as well.

It's, it's really hard to put together. You have to have a very, you have to be an ss m e in the place, but then you also have to have a special set of skills to understand how learners appreciate that. And, and I think this is sort of a unique thing of this coming together, that both of those are able to, to come together really well and out of it, we've seen this early work.

And yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, you're all, I'd love to hear, you know, some of the panelists sort of talk about it. 'cause you all come with a lot of different experiences and, you know, maybe talk about, about like what you were hoping to get out of it and, and how it's really worked out and, and what you all have learned. Yeah.

If I may share, uh, something that happened just last week with me, I was, uh, in a training for, uh, around mainframe and we were discussing, and there was a very, um, mixed audience between, um, newer and mainframe other professional high and other seniors professional with a lot of years of experience. And then someone told me that they, it started with all of this training that we, we know now that we have in the industry, but they thought it was that, okay, I was learning about the Z o s, but then what is a mainframe? And then they said, oh my God, that's the foundation of the training.

That's the base understand the proposed, the business behind that. So that's exactly, I believe what this project means. And, and that's what we were aiming when we start to discuss that.

And, and just to give you a background, uh, John, why you were talking, why we put this together in the project. We were actually in a education conference when this idea born. So we were there with different companies talking about new content, about everything new we were learning from the industry.

And then we said, why not? Why not to create that? So that's the beauty of mainframe, combining all of this knowledge, all of this resources.

And then in the other side, we have the need. So, uh, we have here example of Teso. Uh, last week I had this example that someone, uh, deep dive on the content, but so deep without the previous knowledge.

So connecting this, uh, ha having this bridge is super important for someone that is starting. So, uh, I'd just like to give this testimony because it just happened and it's, uh, really ties to what the proposal of this project. Fair.

Um, I, I'd like to hear from Teso, if you will, because you know what, teso among the folks on the panel here, you represent the next generation, right? You, you just, you were just being mentored a year ago, and here you are this year now mentoring others as a member of the Open Mainframe education T S C. Right?

What, what do you think when you, about your experience and what this offers, you know, people of your age, of your generation? I mean, um, the being part of the program came with a lot of benefits because, you know, as a student, you don't have a crafted, uh, path that you wanna follow. You're still trying this and that.

So, uh, by being part of, by being part of this team, I gotta to work with mentors who were able to guide me on which career path to follow. So also, like they provided me with a lot of content that I should read up on so that I can find the part of the mainframe that I like the most. You know, by consuming this knowledge that we've put on our GI book, I could identify the areas that, okay, I like this the most.

And also, like, I'd also advise them that, you know, I think this, um, part of the content should be made better so that it can be more attractive to a young person like myself. And also I'd, I'd add something to the Git book also that I found to be helpful as I'm doing more research on my own. So I'd say the, the, the program is quite helpful.

You know, I'd advise more students to join in so that they can get to explore with the mainframe with all these different resources that the project provides for them. Interesting, interesting. Um, you, Paul, I wanted to, you are the dean here, right?

Let's talk about how people get trained on the mainframe today versus forget 40 years ago. I don't know if we had formal training 40 years ago, but even 20 years ago or 25 years ago. What, what's kind of, you know, and you're at I B M, then you're in a catbird seat.

What, what's your view on it? Well, starting out early, guess what? The mainframe and the operating system was much simpler.

We grew up with the original D N A, and it is just grown and advanced over time. So when people want to learn the really complex stuff and are overwhelmed, I tell 'em, go back to the original books. Look at the original D n A.

And so what I do, because it is a very feature function rich environment, it's very critical to understand the fundamentals. And as a profession, it's a fascinating profession that people don't understand. Like, for example, civil engineering is a profession.

If you are a really good civil engineer or a principal architect, civil engineer, you've gotta understand material engineering. You've gotta understand structural engineering. So as Tisa was saying, there's so many different job roles and career paths, but you gotta start out small.

You gotta start out simple and get a view of the landscape. And what I've done with people that I've helped over the years is I try to start out, make things seem simple and give them confidence, because that's critical to really being able to embrace all the feature function that's available in this mainframe environment. JJ, To, to build on the points, I think it's important to realize, I was bringing in, brought into conversations around attrition in the community 20 years ago, and people were saying, we have to start preparing.

We have to start preparing. And there wasn't the mind shift that had happened yet. And because of that, a lot of the education within our portfolio and what I've seen across the industry is really meant for experienced practitioners.

So it's getting back to what TISA was saying about bringing people in, what Paul was saying about the transition, to make it easy, we have to look at more ways to change the way we're teaching the mainframe because the teaching style or learning style of the students has changed and evolved in that timeframe. It's what works back in the day is likely not gonna work today, right? So we have to figure out how to make that transition and make or more information available.

Going back to the basics, like Vivian said, what is a mainframe starting there? But then figuring out how to build in that early education. So it's no longer read the manual or refer to this reference.

There's always gonna be some of that as a part of the O J T and everything else, but how do we start building the knowledge for the people that are coming in today rather than basing it off of the education we've always done? So, so one interesting thing about open source projects are that you, you see companies invest in them because it sort of gives them an idea, an opportunity, what they call leverage development, you know, meaning that there's all of this development that is happening out there and you know, you put resources into it, but you have such a gain back from it, you know, and you often see, you know, nine, 10, you know, 12 x I mean, it just really depends upon the technology and a lot of different factors. But you know what, but you know, the driver of all of this, obviously for this is, you know, if this wasn't a thing, you all would be building these same resources yourselves.

So, and I know this project's kind of a bit early on, they've, you know, you've built out some resources. I've looked at them, they're really, really interesting. What has been sort of, as you all have internally been looking to take these and sort of building them into your curriculum, what, what does that look like?

Has, what has the progress been? Um, what has the feedback been? I mean, I'd love to learn a little bit more about that.

You know, I could go ahead and start with that. And there is the, um, I, I believe Greg is an SS v P at, at, um, Broadcom. And he actually came out and made a comment not too long ago that I absolutely love, because one thing you were talking about, the game, well, all of us need each other for this worldwide economy.

And this mainframe is running the worldwide economy. All mainframes stop, the worldwide economy stops, and we all need each other. It's not just I b m, it's not just the banks.

It's all of us together. And it's a community and we know that we need to help each other as a community. And that's where the real gain is in working and collaborating with other people.

This is a community, it's not just one company. Mm-hmm. Fair.

Not only is it a community, it's a worldwide community. I mean, just looking at our panel here today, we have someone joining us from Brazil, someone joining us from South Africa. John, of course is in Ohio the most exotic place there is.

You'd Be surprised, Alan, But you know, it, it, and in past shows when we've talked about education, obviously India, India may have more people taking cobalt or mainframe education than, you know, the rest of the world combined in some ways. So this is a, you know, a global effort that I think talks about the, the global nature of, of the mainframe, right? Um, you know, the global footprint, presence of the mainframe.

Vivian, if you don't mind, I I'd like to ask you, I mean, Don in Brazil, you know, what, what's the level there of, or what's the appetite, if you will, for people to be involved, you know, in mainframe education, become mainframe, you know, be mainframe professionals? So, uh, around me in Brazil, we have about a thousand professionals working on mainframe. Uh, and, but we do have a, a very, uh, a challenge with the universities because universities around us that they do not teach, uh, mainframe.

So that's on us to go to the univers, the to advocate about the mainframe. So we really use the Z Explorer for i b m, we go together there, we showcase what we have available for them to use. So with that, they can hands-on touch the mainframe and see how cool that could be.

We like the approach on having some hackathons, uh, which make the ways of learning different so we can approach different types of learning. And so that, that's one of the ways we, we attract the new talents to join us. And, and we have this type of a university partnership to make sure we grow.

So, uh, we, we cannot be sustainable in terms of growing new resources, and we need to be balanced in terms of that. So attracting resources for mainframe is a key point for us. Got it.

Ti so you mentioned, you, you, your mainframe training came at at University of Johannesburg. Is that, is that correct? Yes.

It started when I was a student at the University of Johannesburg, but at my university, we do not learn mainframe skills. So there was this employee from I B M who came to our university to advocate for learning of Z skills, and I got interested in learning Z systems and eventually joined the I B M Z systems ambassador program. That's when I started to learn more about the mainframes.

And then I did a lot of, uh, hands-on learning from the platforms headed by the likes of Paul Newton, the master, the mainframe 2019 challenge. And then I went on to do the z explore challenges. And yeah, I grew just like that, uh, trying this and that.

And I got other students also to get involved in learning the mainframe skills by, uh, establishing tech community, my university, so that, uh, we could be a group of students learning the skills. Uh, but yeah, that's more like it. So I guess the, the best way to, to do it in countries like ours is to use, um, resources that are provided in the community because, uh, our universities are not giving us that opportunity to learn the mainframe skills.

Fair enough. You know, I, I think we, we have like everything else, uh, it training goes through phases and epics and what's in style, what's not in style. When I was a much younger person, closer to tso's age, right?

You had kid, you had friends of mine who went to school for computer science, and I'm ashamed to tell you, but I think most of the Audi, most of our panel will remember this. It was punch cards, right? You'd have this many punch cards and that was nothing.

Um, and you came outta school, you might know fortran, you might, you might know cobol, but you, you, you know, that was kind of either that or you studied hardware design, right? That was what you learned in, in school. Then when you got out of school and into the field, there were courses, you know, not part of a university, part of technical training, vocational training, whatever you want to call it, you know, continuing education training, if you will.

And then, you know, when I got into it, let's say in the nineties, you started seeing much more non university training, right? I, I, I got into security. It didn't really teach security in schools.

Any security training you took was, you know, from a place like SANS or CompTIA or I S C squared or, or these kinds of places. So it was, you know, truly in the field vocational training. And I think that's the way a lot of the mainframe training was as well, right?

Uh, the, the university stopped turning out mainframe, uh, proficient students sometime in the late nineties, early two thousands, I would guess, if not before. And ever since then, we, we've tried to build this private non university channel of mainframe training. But it sounds, from what I'm hearing from you folks, that we are now going back to the universities.

We've done other shows in the past with some of the folks here in the US who are doing COBAL training, for instance, and other mainframe training. Um, it sounds like we're really moving back to a traditional university college level program, John, is that the fact with this program from Open Mainframe? You know, I think learning has definitely changed.

Um, now I, when I went for computer science, I was just past the cut punch card era. Um, although I did, um, sure Rub it in, I, I I, I did however, um, learn on X terminals, um, okay. Which were a fun experience in and of themselves.

But, you know, I think I, I think we have found that learners are taking, you know, learning a lot different, you know, before it was very classroom oriented. We're seeing, you know, massive online courses, digital training, you know, my, my daughter is a senior in coll, a senior in high school, and she's taking college classes and she's doing them all out of our home, right? So we, we've seen a lot of that change over time.

So I, I think there's one aspect that is the how we learn and how we educate is different. Um, we're seeing a lot, and I think all of you could resonate with this, of people going through career changes or adding additional skills on their already education. Um, so there's a new learning path that's, that's going towards that.

Um, you know, and, and, and, and so I think it's really critical to make these materials relevant and accessible at multiple different levels. And I think, you know, and I know a couple of the extended members of this community and, and they come from those different backgrounds. I know, I know there's a few folks from academia that participate in, in a number of the conversations.

Um, there's s people from training partners that have participated. So I, I, I think we're, I think, you know, Al best ask your question, I think universities is a large component of it, you know, because, and we've seen that through our mentorship program. But I think this group is really taking a broad approach of we have to make this relevant for a lot of different audiences, and how can we best do that?

And how can we provide those resources so it can be adapted? Um, and I guess panelists, I see, jj, you're off mute. I have a feeling you have something really cool to say.

Yeah, No, it's, the platform's evolved, right, John? So there are people that are working with the mainframe that may not even know it. So, you know, with the platform going open with hybrid cloud, with cybersecurity, reaching across all of the infrastructure, no matter where it is, either in the cloud or on-prem, however it is, you know, there are people that, you know, with the modern developer experience, they may be developing stuff for the mainframe and not necessarily even know it.

Um, there are people that are in cybersecurity, the security analysts that will need to know how to do policy settings and know how security works end-to-end across the platform. And, you know, there are a bunch of other different examples in terms of, you know, folks that are mainframe adjacent or actually work in the mainframe and aren't even necessarily aware of it, that need to know about these things. And so with that open attitude in mind, that's the approach of going back to the universities and making it relevant to programs, whether or not they're focused on the mainframe.

That's certainly an effort that ourselves and every other vendor are involved in as well as the, uh, uh, mainframe open education. But, you know, it is becoming much more relevant in many other areas than ever before because it's not in the back of the data center more isolated by itself. It's now being brought to the forefront of today's economy.

Yeah, it's Completely relevant. So the one interesting thing about this project, but I don't think we've mentioned, is it's a matured project. Um, it recently has moved to the active stage of projects, which if, if you look at some of the, the rigor that's put to it, it means there is a diverse community.

There's a lot of, um, great infrastructure put in place, you know, especially from a, a project standpoint, because the idea of an active stage project, it's one that people can trust and invest in. I, I would love for you all to sort of talk about, you know, what that transition is like, and then kind of talk about some of the programs and stuff that you've been putting in place to help grow the community. Right.

I, I, I believe that, uh, the, the main thing around the, our platform, which is GitBook, uh, is where we concentrate all the content. So the main goal, and as you rightly said in the beginning, John, that's hard to put together content for all of us in this ecosystem and count on a platform that's open collaborative. I think that's the key thing for us here, uh, with this education proposed.

Uh, so we created this, uh, platform, uh, with a structure of five, uh, existing key talks around mainframe foundation. And we are looking as much as possible for contributors, for any contributors in the community, no matter what your level of expertise on the mainframe. If you just watch a presentation and you like to put together some content, and then you like to share, uh, references, ideas, all of this can be added as part of this community.

And then, uh, which is a very brand new thing, we just launched, uh, our series of badges. So if you are a contributor, we do have level one, level two, level three, there are a set of criteria you need to meet to, uh, be a, a contributor on our project. But that's a very interesting way to encourage and to make sure we're gonna get more and more contributors, because that's the key thing.

We need to make sure we just not, uh, build the platform, but we, uh, keep that current. We maintain that and we keep that attractive no matter the audience, as you said, it could be students, it could be professors in the university, it could be professionals, it could be re retires that, uh, are not more working on the mainframe, but they like to teach mainframe. So there is many possibilities.

We can work on this platform. And, and the badges will be a very interesting way for, for going further on this project now And add recognition, which I think will be really good in recognition of contributors. That's a, it's, it's a really smart idea to put that in place.

It is. I mean, people, you know, in some ways it's gamifying it. What what I find interest interesting is that when you look at it, education as a whole, today in some way, in some places there's a move away from traditional certifications, right?

Uh, across the board, right? People want to do self-paced learning. They, you know, they like to do direct to the computer rather than being in a formal classroom.

On the other hand though, the, the badging, digital badging and so forth, right, is, is more popular than ever because I think people like the, the simplicity of, if you will, of having that badge near your graphic, right? Proving that, Hey, you did do something, you have some expertise here. Um, but it's, it's certainly I think, less onerous than going through sort of the traditional, let's go sit two days in a training center somewhere and listen to someone talk to me with some slideshow.

Um, I've went through those. I, i, I wish those days to be gone. So I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad to see something like this filled in the gap.

Not to, not to doubt anybody who does that. It's a wonderful profession. But, you know, I I I think this is really transitioning, like you said, Alan, to the learner to today.

Yeah, direct, direct to learner. I, I think that's the model that people, people want to go. So Paul, I'll come back to you if it's okay.

Again, you have more experience here than all than the rest of the team. Is this the path that keeps the mainframe relevant and on top of its game going forward? What else could we, should we, would we do?

It absolutely is relevant because there's a lot of people working past retirement and they grew up with the mainframe. They know it really well. They make it look really easy, and it's not as, and there is a lot of complication there.

And I've been working with Teso recently and we've discovered that. And one thing that, um, there's a lot of hidden talent to start with also. And it's not just the universities and JJ will be able to talk to this also, but there's apprenticeship programs.

But in terms of moving forward, these things have gotta be taken care of. It's just like our structure of society. The digital infrastructure has gotta be taken care of and the younger people have gotta come in behind us, the ones that have helped put it all in place and take over and continue to advance it.

So this is an opportunity to have the community, and the community is a big word here, to come together and work together to build this next generation. And one thing that I did with tso, they asked me when I joined the project, Hey Paul, would you talk about the job roles, the job responsibilities and the careers? And I looked at this short narrow list and I said, oh, no, no, I don't think you, because we've got it right.

You gotta understand how broad this is. And it's huge. And I try to categorize all the different, um, value add employers out there as part of the community.

And so Teso took a look at that and I was really happy Teso looked at it and he was just blown away. He said, I had no clue. And I don't know if you wanna make any comments about that Teso.

'cause sometimes I would hear from young people, well, what does a mainframe person do day to day? And it's the old, it depends and it depends big. So I don't know if you wanna make any comments on what we were working on Tcell?

Yeah. Um, when we established, uh, the deeper dive role on our deep book, I was working with Paul. So Paul sent me this document that he had prepared.

Um, initially he teaches you about, uh, all the different shops that are out there, you know, where, uh, you could apply your main skills and you get to understand the type of work that, uh, you do. Because, you know, like at a shop like mine, where I work with the customer, it's, it's a small shop. So like I do a lot of, it's not just, um, systems programming work, it, you also do storage ation and, you know, sometimes attach on security ation.

So like, I think that's document that all send, you prepared me for this, even though I did not know I'm gonna get into this kind of a role. So when I started there, I already knew that, okay, this is what's gonna be expected of me as time progressed. So it really opened my eyes.

And also I gotta learn about the other rules that are there in the mainframe space, you know, because you, when you gonna work in the, you need to know who you work with, those on the other side so that, uh, you can all communicate and get to come together and solve problems. So it has opened my eyes that way. Excellent.

Very good. That's great. It's great to hear from, you know, from your generation about that ti So jj I feel like we haven't gotten enough from you here, right?

You're, you're officially on the, uh, on the, on the board. You're helping to run this. Give us, give us kinda your take a bit.

So there, there's been an interesting evolution, as John said. We, we just went from incubator to full project, and, and Paul has done a ton of work in Vivian in terms of getting get book going, the contributor badges and everything else. So then the next question is content, right?

So where do we go from there? What's important? And as Paul mentioned, you know, a lot of the large vendors have their apprentice programs, they have their career tracks, education tracks, certifications, and they're all, you know, aimed sort of, of in the same direction.

And they apply, you know, basics, intermediate, you know, along the fundamental track. But one of the things that we wanted to know was going out to a multi-generational crowd, uh, at a recent event, share New Orleans, uh, this past August. And we went out and threw a working session hosted by, um, Meredith Stoll, uh, VP of ecosystem at I B M and Neil Cash, uh, senior managers in charge of the vitality program at Broadcom in the mainframe division.

And they ran a session where they crowdsource the information around what's important and what do people wanna learn about first. And we're in the, the effort of prioritizing that right now. But it was really interesting because it was, um, such a wide swath in terms of topics and what people wanna know about.

And it just goes to show that, you know, we, we do need to sort of go back to the basics, as Vivian said, around what is a mainframe? But then there's all the other different aspects that come up in terms of generational perspectives. And so, you know, we're gonna be working on prioritizing that to get to the next stage in terms of what the next contact project is and who we're gonna be looking for for contributors.

Um, but it, it was just very interesting to see, um, you know, because people have been in the community and in the industry for so long that they have sort of set opinions on what people need to know. And, you know, looking at TSO and other folks coming into the world, uh, you know, they want to know potentially other things. And that's generally because experiences will always vary, you know, based on the role work that Paul did.

There's not necessarily, there may be groupings, but there's not necessarily defined roles because, you know, you wind up in a shop and then the, the role definition changes based on the needs of the shop and the business. So it's, it's just pretty interesting trying to get into that. Uh, and I'm looking forward, maybe on a future episode we can sort of disclose where that went and, uh, and what we found out with our findings after we're done with the, uh, the prioritization.

But it's, it's interesting to just sort of marry together what our impressions are of the new ways of learning and consuming education, and then the topics that people feel they need to know from a generational perspective, those that have been in it for a long time, and then those that are coming into it. Absolutely. So topics Is an interesting area because I think, I feel like the one question we didn't ask is like, what topics are covered?

'cause you've, you've built a decent amount of content that's available right now. Um, if someone were to go through it, what would they learn? What's that?

What's those topics where, you know, talk a little bit about that for maybe a minute or two. I'll look at, uh, Vivian and Paul in terms of, they, uh, like I said, I'm relatively new. They were the ones that built it.

You know, it's almost as if Vivian, I don't know if it's absolutely true 'cause I haven't gone out recently, but I think as we got together as a team recently, we went back and looked at all of it and said, well, wait a minute. Maybe we need to start, start from the beginning again. I think we came to that conclusion and um, 'cause we were building content and we got content, but is it really what we want?

And so we're almost questioning ourselves in retrospect and going back and say, well, is this really what we want? And what works? That's the feeling I got Vivian.

I don't know how you think about that. No, yeah, I totally agree. Uh, and, and to the, we do have five, uh, main topics.

So what is the mainframe foundation technology role is the mainframe, which is, uh, the key point that, um, Paul was mentioning on the deep dive in the role choosing. So that's exactly what, uh, Paul did with Teso. Uh, and then the other one is career path opportunities.

So we would like to deep dive in those foundation contents, but the content is very broad. So we do have a lot of things as, as Paul said, we would like to start. Uh, we do have this structure.

We have, uh, a very high level content on each of them because we will like to include that just to cause some, uh, interesting to generate in interest from the audience, from the community. And then they can start, okay, that's too low here. I, I can contribute with that so they can come, uh, because if we start so big with something very ready, they might feel uncomfortable to share something.

So that's why we also started with, uh, high level content so the community could support us on growing this content. So I, I really believe, uh, on the badges as helping us and going further on, getting more contributors. I'm really excited to run some programs with the, um, the teams, the professionals I know, I'm pretty sure they'll be very excited with those badges.

And, and they're gonna be con very good contributors for us. And I will add that content is probably not gonna be our problem. I have got so much content, I can overwhelm people in foundational content.

I know Broadcom does and IBM's willing to contribute this content. And the issue is not so much the content, it's how do we organize it in an easy, digestible format. And it's kind of like coming up with a nightly news.

We can't overwhelm people. We need to really articulate how to get started in a succinct way and build from there. And that's the key.

It's, there's an overwhelming amount of content. Now how do we organize it? Very well said Guys.

We're, we're about outta time, John, for people out here who want to go see what we've got and maybe, you know, dive in, we, where on the web do they go? They can go to the Open Mainframe project, uh, website. And we have actually a special, uh, menu in there under our community where you can actually get a number of these resources and other programming like the Cobalt prob course, um, and many of our other resources as well.

So I'd encourage, uh, folks to start there. And this project actually also will be presenting, and I think we will, this show will go live before, um, we go to the Open Mainframe Summit in Las Vegas. Yeah.

But they're also gonna be doing a session there as well. Um, so definitely go check it out and you can learn, you, you can meet these folks that you're seeing here, um, and many more members of that community and learn more about it and learn how to get involved. Well, now that you mentioned it, what's the date?

It is September 11th. It's in Las Vegas. Uh, it's a whole day.

It's the first day zero of I b m Tech Exchange. Uh, we're right there. Uh, we have two tracks of some great content, some good speakers, um, at the upfront part.

And, you know, it should be a, a really good time and a really good opportunity to learn a ton about what's going on at open source in the mainframe. Excellent. All right guys, this has been a tremendous, uh, open Mainframe project video.

I want to thank each and every one of you for participating and dialing in from wherever you are in the world. Um, keep up the great work. 'cause it's, it's good work.

It's needed work and, uh, you know, it, it's, it's what this industry needs. John, as always, thank you for co-hosting. Thank You for hosting.

Yeah, and that's it here for the Open Mainframe Project this month. We'll see you next month with a fresh new show. Until then, be well September 11th.

Check it out if you're going to be there in Vegas. Bye-bye.