Guide Share Europe Annual Conference 2021

It used to be that you needed to live in the UK or western Europe to be able to attend the UK’s premier mainframe conference and exhibition. However, because of Covid, the Guide Share Europe Annual Conference is online again this year. And that means anyone from anywhere can enjoy the presentations.

The conference runs from Monday 1 November to Thursday 4 November and Monday 8 November to Thursday 11 November, and has presentations in eight ‘virtual rooms’. There are all the usual streams: 101; 102; AIOPS, System Automation, Monitoring and Analytics; Application Development; Batch and Workload Scheduling; CICS; DB2; Enterprise Security; IMS; Large Systems; Linux on Z; Mainframe Skills & Learning; MQ; Network Management; New Technologies; Storage Management; Women in IT; and z/Capacity Management and zPerformance. If you want to register, the address is https://conferences.gse.org.uk/register.

The conference is made possible by sponsorship. This year’s Platinum sponsors are IBM, BMC Software, and Broadcom. Other sponsors include MainTegrity, Beta Systems, Micro Focus, SMT Data, Luminex, and Rocket Software. The charities being supported this year by the raffles are: RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and Guide Dogs UK.

There are a number of keynote presentations. The first is on Monday 1 November at 2pm, when Mark Wilson opens the conference. That’s followed by Broadcom’s Greg Lotko, whose keynote presentation is entitled, “Colleagues in Corvettes Getting Cappuccinos”. That’s followed at 3:15pm by IBM’s Geeth de Mel, whose keynote is entitled. “AI Driven Knowledge Discovery”.

The keynote on Tuesday at 5pm is from Chris Booth from NatWest and is entitled, “Don’t call us special”. “Infrastructure and Application Modernization on IBM Z with Red Hat OpenShift” is at 5pm on Wednesday 3 November. It’s presented by IBM’s Marcel Mitran.

Mark Wilson opens the second week of the conference at 2pm on Monday 8 November. He’s followed at 2:15pm by BMC Software's John McKenny’s keynote called “The Road to Digital Transformation is Paved with AIOps, SecOps, and DevOps”. At 3:30pm, it’s Saghi Amirsoleymani from Rocket Software asking, “Does the future DBA need to be a data scientist?”. On Tuesday at 5pm, Ian Thompson from Next will be asking, “Where Next? Keeping the mainframe relevant at Next”. On Wednesday at 5pm, IBM’s Meredith Stowell will be speaking. Mark Wilson wraps up the conference on Thursday 11 November at 6:15pm.

There are also a number of lunch and learn sessions. On Tuesday 2 November, Misty Decker from Micro Focus will be asking, “Do You Really Understand Mainframe Modernization?”. On Wednesday at 1pm, conference favourite Resli Costabell will be discussing, “Imposter Syndrome”. On Tuesday 9 November Glenn Anderson from GlenAndersonSpeaks will offer, “Five Tips to Energize Your Next Presentation”. On the Wednesday, BMC Software’s Edward Shim looks at, “SecOps, SOAR and how to build a strategy for your mainframe”. SOAR stands for security orchestration, automation, and response – in case you weren’t sure. Thursday lunch time sees BMC Software’s Atul Bhovan talking about, “Mainstream the Mainframe with Automated CI/CD Pipelines and Shift Left Automated Testing”.

Being an online conference means that you don’t need to drive or fly anywhere. There’s no need to book hotel rooms. There’s no need to arrange cover for staff who are off work because they will just be in a meeting for part of the day. There are just so many reasons on the plus side for registering to attend. The presentations are the usual high quality – and there are so many of them. The only downside to a virtual conference is that you don’t get to meet and chat to other mainframers from other sites. And you don’t get to hear all those horrendous revelations about what has actually happened at other sites while you’re sitting with new friends in the bar late at night!

You may be interested in a session on the last Thursday at 10:30 until 11:30, “Defending your mainframe against hackers, ransomware, and internal threats”.

I would definitely recommend the conference to everyone.