The Open Mainframe Project launched the Mainframe Open Education Project in 2020 to attract new developers to mainframes. It’s mission is to create a convenient, easy-to-use platform where experts share up-to-date materials and foster collaboration with the broader community.
In this episode of “Open Mainframe Matters,” the chairs of Mainframe Open Education – Yvette LaMar, Director of the IBM Z Influencer Ecosystem, and Lauren Valenti, Director, Mainframe Education, Vitality Program and Customer Engagement at Broadcom Mainframe Software, joined Swapnil Bhartiya, Editor-in-Chief of TFIR, to discuss the talent shortage in the tech industry in general and also more specifically in the mainframe space. Watch the video below:
They talked about what companies like IBM and Broadcom are doing on their own to tackle the skills shortage crisis and how community projects like the Mainframe Open Education Project complement those efforts to solve this problem at a much wider scale.
LaMar and Valenti delve deep into the project and how it is going to be a platform to help cultivate mainframe skills with the sharing of knowledge and ability to create and donate learning tools.
Key highlights of this video interview are:
- Skills gaps are a universal issue with a workforce transition process involving the rebalance of experience and the next generation of workers. Valenti and LaMar discuss the state of skills shortage in the tech industry and what the key challenges are.
- Valenti and LaMar discuss the ways talent shortages in mainframe are different from other areas.
- Valenti explains how companies are dealing with the tech shortage crisis and the importance they are seeing with internal education programs to provide different platform experiences and an opportunity to align people with mentors.
- The Mainframe Open Education project is being developed with the aim to provide open source and mainframe education and training. Valenti discusses their mission and how it will benefit people and help tackle the skills gap challenge.
- Valenti and LaMar explain the scope of the project and who their target audience is.
- The Linux Foundation already has a lot of educational programs. Valenti and LaMar discuss some of the existing educational programs and the community they are looking to build with the Mainframe Open Education project.
- Valenti discusses why they need the community to come together, join and contribute and what their strategy is for forging a connection between students or people that are looking for a career in enterprise computing and the clients that are looking to hire.
- Valenti explains the state of the Mainframe Open Education project and their roadmap. She discusses what they will be focusing on this year.
- Open Mainframe already has a mentor/mentee program. Valenti and LaMar discuss the benefits of the program.
Do you want to contribute to this project? We’ve made it easy:
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Access the GitBook Workspace using this link.
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Request editor access under the How You Can Contribute section.
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Review and contribute to the existing content by creating Change Requests and using the Discussion feature. Be sure to review GitBook help to familiarize yourself with these functions.
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Your contributions will be reviewed and merged by the Mainframe Open Education review team.
