| Open Mainframe Project Members and Community,
Open Mainframe Project strives to eliminate barriers to open source on the mainframe through demonstrating the value of the mainframe on technical and business levels. As such, with this current global pandemic, we want to assure you that open source and diverse collaboration are ways that help us stay connected to each other. And in fact, it helps bring out the best in this community, as it has come together to drive sustainability in COBOL.
Launch of COBOL Programming Course project for collaboration on COBOL learning materials
As record unemployment and benefits claims created enormous stress infrastructure design to support systems critical to our society, there was a need discovered for COBOL skills to help scale these systems. Open Mainframe Project staff and members worked quickly to create resources, including a COBOL volunteer forum, Q&A forum and the TAC approved a COBOL Programming Course as a new Incubation project.
When I say the community came together, just look at the stats since launch in mid April…
- Over 1600 individuals who’ve made themselves available for hire or volunteer work with COBOL.
- Over 1400 stars on the COBOL Programming Course project repo on GitHub, with numerous created issues and contributions coming from the mainframe community and beyond.
- Broad press pickup from major news outlets, which recognized the breadth, diversity, and strength of the COBOL community.
Responses like this are beyond a single person, single company, or single project. It takes a broad and diverse community like the mainframe community to respond in such an impactful way, and I for one am always humbled by what the community can do.
More information on the announcements at:
Webinars!
With in-person events coming to a standstill the project community has went virtual, launching a monthly webinar series that highlights the great technical work. Last month focused on Ambitus, Feilong, Polycephaly, Zowe, the Zowe Conformance Program and Zorow – check out recording on the Open Mainframe Project Youtube Channel or the slides on the Open Mainframe Project SlideShare.
This month will focus on the Zowe project.
On May 27 at 9 am PDT, several teams from the first-ever Zowe Virtual Hackathon will present their projects and answer questions. Teams include Broadcom, EXL Service, HCL Technologies and IBM. Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RqqXgRhuTxmZw4wRCc597g
On May 28 at 9 am PDT, members of the Zower Leadership Committee will discuss Zower LTS plans and features and how it impacts the Zowe Conformance Program. Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qmwFDBjPR9OMc7H8H0Nl6w
We are working with the Governing Board and technical communities to find more ways to drive collaboration and engagement across the hosted projects and the ecosystem as a whole. If you see ways that Open Mainframe Project can help – feel free to reach out to me or come to an upcoming meeting and get involved.
Thank you again for your support of the Open Mainframe Project community!
John Mertic
Director – Open Mainframe Project
jmertic@linuxfoundation.org
+1 234-738-4571
Schedule time with me at https://calendly.com/jmertic |