Mainframes still form the foundation of many critical industries today: Banking, finance, travel and government, to name just a few. There are billions of lines code currently running on mainframes that, in one way or another, need to be maintained or modernized as the pool of developers skilled in mainframe technology shrinks. But how can you foster a culture of learning and innovation and ensure this valuable knowledge and these educational resources are handed down to the next generation of mainframe developers? The answer is simple -- Mainframe Open Education (MOE). Mainframe Open Education is a community partnership that focuses on ‘open sourcing’ mainframe learning roadmaps and community knowledge transfer. The mission is to offer all mainframe users a platform to cultivate skill onboarding that is most critical to future hires and to allow for knowledge sharing and community contribution. In this episode of The Open Mainframe, hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by leaders JJ Lovett (Broadcom), Viviane Sanches (Kyndryl), and Tiiso Senosha (Open Mainframe Mentor). This panel discussion will provide an overview of the Mainframe Open Education initiative. We will review the milestones since inception, discuss new badges and mentorship program opportunities and talk about what's to come in mainframe education.

The Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe is marking a major milestone next month: The fifth anniversary of its launch. Zowe is an integrated and extensible open source framework for z/OS that combines the past and present to build the future of mainframes. Zowe offers modern interfaces to interact with z/OS and allows you to work with z/OS in a way that is similar to what you experience on cloud platforms today. You can use these interfaces as delivered or through third-party plugins and extensions. In this episode, Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by experts Rose Sakach (Broadcom), Joe Winchester (IBM) and Mike Siemasz who will share details about what Zowe is, how far the community has come, conformance programs, where the project will go next and more. https://openmainframeproject.org/community/events/

Open Mainframe Summit aims to connect and inform all those interested in growing the use of mainframes and related technology in dynamic technical and educational sessions. It is open to students, developers, corporate leaders, users and contributors of projects from around the globe looking to learn, network and collaborate. It will feature content tracks that tackle both business and technical strategies for enterprise development and deployment. This year, the premier mainframe event will be co-located with two industry conferences - IBM TechXchange Conference 2023, hosted in Las Vegas on September 11-14; and Open Source in Finance Forum, hosted in New York City on November 1. In today's episode hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by panelists that include speakers, sponsors and Open Mainframe Project Leaders who can discuss what we're looking forward to for this year's event. Len Sentalucia, (Chair, Open Mainframe Project Governing Board and CTO Viacom Infinity), Rick Perret (member, Open Mainframe Project Marketing Committee, Open Mainframe Summit sponsor and Head of Analyst Relations and Open Source Marketing at Broadcom), Donna Hudi (member, Open Mainframe Summit Program Committee and CMO at Phoenix Software) and Elizabeth Joseph (Open Mainframe Summit Speaker and Global Head of the OSPO for IBM zSystems)