We are now just over half way through the 2023 Summer SHARE conference. As I expected, my biggest problem is in trying to decide between which of the excellent sessions I will attend – I have a minimum of three competing sessions in most slots. It is a big help having Mario here with me – I can’t imagine how people handle it when they are the only attendee from their company.
Our last blog post provided some suggested sessions for Monday through Wednesday. This one will cover Wednesday (there are some changes) through Friday. I (Frank) will be presenting or co-presenting two sessions:
- Wednesday, 16:00, Empire C, I moderated the ‘Observability Shootout’ session, with presenters from BMC, Broadcom, EPS, IBM, IntelliMagic, and Rocket Software.
- Friday, 09:15, Empire D, I will be co-presenting our ‘Watson & Walker’s 2023 zRoadshow’ session with my colleague Mario Bezzi.
Tip: If you find yourself having to decide between multiple sessions, check to see if they of them are marked as Live Streamed. The recordings of those sessions will be available on the conference website., so if there are multiple competing sessions that you really want to see, you might decide to go to the one that is not Live Streamed, and then catch the other one when it is available online. I’ve marked Live Streamed sessions as LS in the following list.
Even though the Wednesday sessions have passed now, you can always download the handouts AND you can look at the recording of the Live Streamed sessions. The following are the Wednesday to Friday sessions that I thought might be particularly interesting to our subscribers:
- Wednesday, 08:00, Strand 13A, ‘New IBM Dashboard for Resiliency’, by Juliet Candee and Anastasiia Didkovska. Everyone you speak to has a slightly different view on precisely what ‘Resiliency’ means on the mainframe. The IBM Dashboard for Resiliency is still in the Statement of Direction phase, so this is your opportunity to let IBM know what Resiliency means to you AND what you need in terms of reporting tools.
- Wednesday 08:00, Strand 10B, ‘Jekyll and Hyde of Generative AI’, by Michael Kiehl and Chris Spencer. Unlike some people, I’m not at all frightened by AI technology – it is the people that control that technology that scare the life out of me. I really wish this session was live streamed, because I would love to see it.
- Wednesday, 09:15, Bolden 4, ‘What’s Possible with Machine Learning for Performance and Capacity Management’, by Jim Porell. Jim must be a mind reader because that very question has been on my mind for the last year. I can’t wait to see his answer!
- Wednesday, 10:30, Strand 10B, ‘Python’s Evolution on z/OS’, by Chad McIntyre. Amongst other things, Chad will be discussing the recent addition of zIIP support for Python programs. If you have, or could have, a lot of Python running on your z/OS systems, this is an excellent opportunity to speak to a real expert on this topic.
- Wednesday, 10:30, Strand 13A, ‘A Sysplex Developer Looks to Improve Availability in Your Sysplex’, by Mark Brooks. If you are serious about achieving real high application availability, the answer is z/OS and sysplex data sharing. And who better to tell you the best way to do it than the lead sysplex developer himself.
- Wednesday, 13:15, Bolden 4, ‘z/OS 3.1 Framework Overview’, by Steven Partlow and Dieter Wellerdiek. Artificial Intelligence is coming to a z/OS near you soon, and the new z/OS AI Framework is going to be a core part that, so we consider this to be a ‘can’t miss’ session.
- Wednesday, 13:15, Strand 2, ‘(Primer to) The IBM Z Processor Optimization Primer’, by Dave Hutton. If you don’t see yourself jumping on AI on z/OS just yet, and you are a performance person, this is an excellent opportunity to see the man that has been referred to as ‘Gary King 2.0’ – Dave’s sessions are always insightful and entertaining and he doesn’t get to every SHARE, so don’t miss this chance to catch him.
- Wednesday, 13:15, Empire D, ‘z/OS 3.1 & WSC z/OS Hot Topics’, by Meral Temal. See what I mean about being spoiled for choice? Here are three presentations, all in the same time slot, that I have to see. And there are two more that I would really like to see. All I can suggest is to select the one that is the most important to you.
- LS Wednesday, 14:45, Bolden 1, ‘It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint – New Mainframers Speak Candidly About Their Careers’. The next generation of mainframers are going to be the ones that will look after the systems that manage our pensions and our savings and our societies. And our generation really needs to start doing a much better job of attracting and retaining them. Maybe a good place to start is to listen to them?
- Wednesday, 14:45, Strand 12A, ‘Cyber Resiliency Solutions for Your Mainframe Environment’, by Justin Bastin and Brett Quinn. We don’t believe there is any one vendor that delivers a complete solution to all your resiliency requirements – the successful enterprises will be those that create the best configuration they can from the full set of available offerings. This session describes Dell’s offerings in this space.
- LS Wednesday, 16:00, Empire C, ‘Observability Shootout’. DOUBLE SESSION. Nicole Fagen and Meral Temel (now in IBM!) organized this hugely popular session in Atlanta (people were literally sitting on the floor), and the NOLA version will be even bigger (there will be demos from BMC, Broadcom, EPS, IBM, IntelliMagic, and Rocket Software) and there will be a panel where the presenters will take audience questions. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot (sorry) and miss out on this opportunity to see side-by-side live demos of the latest in observability by the industry’s leading performance vendors.
- LS Thursday, 08:00, Strand 13B, ‘A new look at z/OS Performance Analysis and Capacity Planning’, by Seth Miller and Len Santalucia. The three magic words – ‘free’, ‘new’, and ‘performance analysis tool’ – we definitely need to learn more about this new offering from VICOM Infinity.
- Thursday, 09:15, Strand 12B, ‘Are You Leveraging the Latest DFSMShsm Enhancements?’, by Rob Gensler. Did you know that HSM is regularly among the top 10 CPU consumers in many sites? And yet we constantly encounter customers that are not exploiting the CPU-saving enhancements that have been delivered for DFSMShsm. This is your chance to rectify that and earn brownie points with your bean counters 😉.
- Thursday, 09:15, Empire C, ‘The Way we Walked – The Story around the z/OS 3.1 AI Framework’, by Dieter Wellerdiek. Dieter is one of those mythical beasts – he can swap acronyms with the best data scientists and he reads SMF records as easily as most of us read the Sunday comics. Don’t miss this opportunity to have the AI framework described in terms even I can understand.
- Thursday, 10:30, Strand 12A, ‘Cyber Resilience for Enterprise Data – Protection from Logical Corruption’, by Beth Peterson. In this session, IBM DE Beth Peterson describes IBM Storage’s strategy for protecting your enterprise’s crown jewels – your mainframe data.
- Thursday, 13:15, Strand 2, ‘Diagnosing Transient Performance Issues by Analyzing SMF 98 and 100 Records in Zowe’, by Dan Rosa. We can’t help but be amazed by the way zWIC and zWIN provide performance insights at the 5-second level in such small amounts of data. Dan was one of the key drivers for this technology, so this is a great opportunity to see it in the hands of a master.
- LS Thursday, 13:15, Bolden 1, ‘The Best Kept Secret in IT’, by John Baker. John was explaining to me tonight that this session tells young mainframers about the life of excitement, intrigue, and unimagined wealth that awaits new performance analysts. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that bit about the unimagined wealth in front of his manager? Oops. 😊
- Thursday, 14:45, Strand 11B, ‘MQ SMF and Advanced KPIs’, by Lynn Elkins. I can’t remember the last time I was in an installation that didn’t use MQ. With MQ playing such a central role in so many applications, you really should be getting the maximum value from MQ’s SMF records, and there is no one better than Lynn to tell you how to do that.
- LS Thursday, 14:45, Strand 13B, ‘z16 Concepts and Real-World Experiences’, by John Baker and Todd Havekost. The z16 processor cache design is radically different to that in preceding generations of mainframes. So what does that mean in real world performance and capacity? Come along and hear John and Todd’s experiences with analyzing multiple z16 upgrades from both z14 and z15.
- LS Thursday, 16:00, Bolden 1, ‘The RNI-Based LSPR and the Latest IBM Z Performance Brief’, by Dave Hutton. What better follow up to John and Todd’s z16 session could you ask for than Dave’s Z Performance Brief? If only SHARE had scheduled this in the same room as Todd and John, I could have brought my armchair and settled in for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative afternoon.
- Friday, 09:15, Empire D, ‘Watson & Walker Summer 2023 zRoadshow’, by Mario Bezzi and Frank Kyne. Come along and hear our view of the highlights of the week at SHARE, interesting new APARs, horrifying thoughts on data recovery, and a special treat based on the most-commented upon part of our SHARE in Atlanta presentation.
- Friday, 10:30, Empire D, ‘Bit Bucket x’42’: Mainframes, the Universe and Everything’, by Lionel Dyck, Art Gutowski, Ed Jaffe, Henri Kuiper, and Mike Shorkend. It’s The Bit Bucket – what more do we have to say??
If you are going to be at SHARE, please drop by one of our sessions to say Hello. We hope you have safe travels and an enjoyable conference.
Frank