SHARE Conference - Alive and Kicking

OK, so what is SHARE doing right? Well, first of all they serve a market that is largely ignored in this day and age: mainframe technicians. Many in this industry have written off the mainframe as dead, dying, or just old technology. And just like the mainframe, the folks who use and support it may be getting older, but they are grizzled veterans with experience to match. And the mainframe provides a highly scalable, super efficient platform that has been modernized to support. And the system administration facilities built to support the mainframe are the envy of all other platforms.

So one thing SHARE does right is to support the mainframers with quality presentations and education. You can find educational presentations on CICS, IMS, DB2, JES, z/OS, z/VM, JCL, REXX, and more. But SHARE also offers education on just about every other pertinent platform and topic of interest to IT professionals. There were pitches on Windows, Linux, SOAP and web services, SOX, Java, ITIL, XML, RFID, and more. This makes SHARE one of the last conferences around that covers such a wide spectrum of topics. If you are looking for an update on what's happening now in corporate IT, SHARE is the place to go.

I delivered two DB2 presentations at SHARE this week and I enjoyed speaking to different folks than I see at the regional DB2 user groups and IDUG. If you've never been to SHARE, think about attending the next one in Baltimore, Maryland the week of August 13, 2006. Or maybe even submitting a presentation topic. Maybe I'll see you there...