The Guide Share Europe (GSE) UK Annual Conference ran from lunch time Monday 30 October until late afternoon on Thursday 2 November. It was held at Whittlebury Hall, Whittlebury, Near Towcester, Northamptonshire NN12 8QH, UK. This year’s strapline was “Where Technology and Talent meet Tomorrow”. And it was brilliant.
There were over 610 delegates, which must have been a record. And there were 278 sessions across 18 streams including the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) stream, as well as: 101 New to Mainframe, 102 New’ish to Mainframe, 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.
I arrived slightly later than planned due to an accident and later roadworks on the A34 into Oxford. And, just before registering, I spoke to Mark Wilson, who is the GSE UK Region Manager, and also Technical Director at Vertali. After that, I just had time to look round some of the exhibitors before dashing off to the first session I was attending. A quick break was followed by another session.
Lunch was nice, and gave more time to chat to exhibitors. I spoke to IBM Champion Matt Nation, Managing Director at Verhoef Training Ltd, which turned into a putting-the-world-to-rights session. I moved on to Fitz Software’s stand. Michael FitzGerald, MD at Fitz Software, quite rightly, wouldn’t let me start the whiskey tasting session because I was still eating. I agreed to come back later. I also stopped by the Action Software stand for a chat with Hugo Prittie, the CEO.
After lunch I went to a Security stream presentation. And, after that, I had a meeting – yes it was in the bar – with MainTegrity. That was followed by another session in the AI stream.
There were a number of exhibitors giving away T-shirts, and some giving away, socks, or caps. Interestingly, the PopUp Mainframe stand was giving away pants! It was there that I bumped into the always wonderful Resli Costabell, the award-winning international speaker, trainer, and coach. She was leading the Women in IT stream. It’s always a pleasure to chat to her.
At dinner, there were a few people in Halloween costumes. One person who came over to chat wearing their costume and face paint was Atul Bhovan, DevOps Solution Adviser with BMC Software. We agreed to meet the following day. I had dinner with IBM’s Anna Dawson, who chairs the system management streams. Tracey Dean, IBM Offering Manager: IMS and z/VM Management Software, came to join us for a chat. Tracey has spoken at a Virtual IMS user group meeting.
Wednesday started with me giving a presentation about the brain and what psychologists think intelligence is to the AI stream. It was well-received, and a number of people came up and said so afterwards. I was also asked to present it again at lunchtime to some people who couldn’t attend.
I then watched the next AI presentation before lunch. I bumped into IBM’s Joe Winchester on the stairs and chatted briefly. I also bumped into him in the bar – again a brief chat. Unfortunately, we never got to have a proper conversation about Zowe, open-source software, and anything else. Next time!
At lunchtime, I made sure to catch up with Andy McCandless, Presales Consultant with Beta Systems and am IBM Champion. He does a great mainframe-based newsletter, which is available on LinkedIn.
After lunch, I had a meeting with the Planet Mainframe people. There were lots of ideas bounced around by Andrew Armstrong and Amanda Hendley (whom people will know from the Virtual IMS, CICS, and Db2 user group meetings).
Then it was back to the AI stream for a game of Jeopardy led by IBM Champion Henri Kuiper.
Here’s photo of
me enjoying the session.
I missed the final keynote and joined everyone for pre-dinner drinks. There I chatted to Herb Daly, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at University of Wolverhampton and IBM Champion. He brought a number of students along to the conference. I also caught up with Tony Amies, Software Technical Director at Vertali. I’d missed his lunch-and-learn session.
I chatted to Darren Surch, CEO at Interskill Learning and a Lifetime IBM Champion. This is his photo. He said, “Honoured to spend time with the industry legend Trevor Eddolls. Priceless!”
It was a pleasure to meet Shari Chiara, Program Manager, IBM Champions and Community Advocacy – IBM Z and LinuxONE. All the IBM Champions that were around at that time had their photograph taken by a racing car.
Champions in the photo with Shari are: Mark Wilson, Henri Kuiper, Darren Surch, Trevor Eddolls, Matt Nation, Max Stern Dahl, Steven Perva, Larry Strickland, Andy McCandless, Tom Crocker, Wolfram Greis, Leendert Blondeel, Colin Knight, Philip Nelson, and Neale Ferguson.
My apologies to all the other people chatted to that I haven’t mentioned. And my thanks to all the people who took these photos that I have shamelessly stolen from LinkedIn and used.
IBM brought their Lego model of a mainframe. Here’s my photo with that.
And here I am standing by the real thing.
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