GSE UK Conference 30 October to 2 November

For people who work on mainframes and are based in the UK or Europe, this year’s Guide Share Europe (GSE) UK Annual Conference starts on Monday 30 October until Thursday 2 November. It really is not to be missed. If you’ve not been before, it’s held at Whittlebury Hall, Whittlebury, Near Towcester, Northamptonshire NN12 8QH, UK. This year’s strapline is “Where Technology and Talent meet Tomorrow”.

Because it’s an in-person meeting, it not only provides excellent education for attendees, but also gives them the opportunity to speak to the exhibitors about where they are focusing their attention, and to catch up – and argue – with other mainframers during the day and in the bar in the evening!

Because the conference starts at the end of the month, there’s not a lot of time left to register to attend. So, I would recommend that people do so straight away. My experience is that the conferences have always been great value for money, full of the latest greatest information, and as I just said, great for connecting with new and old friends.

This year, the Diamond sponsor is Broadcom. The Platinum Sponsors are BMC, Vanguard Rocket Software, and IBM. The Gold Sponsors are Opentext, and Vertali. The Silver Sponsors are MainTegrity, Ensono, DataKinetics, Beta Systems, Veracode, SEA Software Engineering of America, and SCC.

This year’s exhibitors are Enterprise Performance Strategies, Velocity Software, Trident Services, Macro4, Planet Mainframe, Fitz Software, TSG, </mooody cow>, Interskill, Red Hat, Dell Technologies, Action Software, Verhoef Training, Real Time Defrag (RTD), PopUp Mainframe, Precisely Software, Altair, IntelliMagic, and IBA Group.

There are two keynote presentations on Monday.

IBM’s Mark Nelson is talking about “Risk Assessment: We’re Only Human” at 5:15pm. Vertali’s Mark Wilson is then discussing the “Journey into Mainframes & Cybersecurity” at 6:15pm.

On Tuesday Mark Wilson is opening the conference proper at 9am followed by Rocket Software’s Phil Buckellew looking at “Modernization. Without Disruption” at 9:15. At 6pm, Vanguard’s Brian Marshall discusses “Cyber resilience: an organization’s DNA”. On Wednesday at 8am there’s “The Mark & Steve Show” with Steven Dickens from Futurum Group and Mark Wilson. At 9am, there’s Greg Lotko, SVP and General Manager for Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division speaking about “Racing Towards Resiliency”. At 5:45 in the evening, IBM Fellow, Elpida Tzortzatos, will discuss “Why AI for business”. On Thursday, at 9am, BMC’s April Hickel starts the day with a session entitled “Mainframe Strong: Dancing into the Future”.

There are some lunch-and learn sessions too. On Tuesday at 1pm, IBM’s Michael Zagorski leads “Lunch & Learn IBM”. On Tuesday at 1pm, Broadcom’s Earl Dixon leads “New Mainframers Talk Candidly (continued)”. On Wednesday at 1pm its BMC Software’s Tim Ceradsky discussing “Redefining Data Storage: Unearth the Urgent Imperatives Driving Cloud Object Storage Adoption!”. Also on Wednesday at 12:45pm, Vertali’s Tony Amies talks about “Discover, Detect, Protect: Vertali zTrust for Networks”.

With up to 18 streams on some days, the streams include: 101 New to Mainframe, 102 New'ish to Mainframe, AI Artificial Intelligence, AppDev Application Development, CICS Transaction Processing, Db2 Relational Database, IMS, WIT Women in IT, Large Systems z/OS, z/VM, Linux on z, Mainframe Skills & Learning, MQ Messaging, Networks Communications, New Technologies, Security Securing Mainframes, Storage Management Disks, Tapes,, Systems Management Tools for managing systems, zP&C zSystems Performance & Capacity Management, Systems Management Tools for managing systems, Code-a-Thon Event

You can find out more details about the conference at https://conferences.gse.org.uk/2023/. And, if you’re on social media, the hashtags are #gseconf2023 and #gseukc.

It’s also worth adding that there’s usually 500 or more people there. It would be a shame for you to miss it.

As a final incentive, you may be interested in a session at 10:15 am on the Wednesday. It’s called “A look at human intelligence and how the human brain works”, it’s in the AI stream, and it will be presented by me in the Wellington A room.

I’ll see you there.