Written by Boris Petkov, Member of the Zowe community, Open Mainframe Project Ambassador and Engineering Manager at Broadcom Mainframe Software
It all started a year ago when Maurice Gennotte, Broadcom’s Client Services Consultant for the Dutch speaking region, contacted our Mainframe education team in Prague, Czech Republic. They wanted to follow up on a conversation with professor Leendert Blondeel, a lecturer in ICT and a mainframer in the University of Applied Science and Arts in Flanders, also known as HOGENT.
Mainframe in HOGENT
Professor Blondeel teaches Mainframe to ICT students by applying a learning-through-work approach. All the students that take part of his course are also employed as interns in companies from the region. This well beaten path from the school to their first jobs has been built with the invaluable help of Chantal Teerlink, HOGENT’s dean of IT & Digital Innovation department. Professor Teerlink is a passionate mainframer who has dedicated thirteen years of her career to IBM as an education specialist for data management and software. All this makes HOGENT one of the few but a very strong academic institution in Europe that is actively investing and developing the platform.
Zowe Workshop Masterclass
Part of the mainframe course in HOGENT are the Mainframe Masterclasses where the university collaborates with businesses and invites representatives to show the students the latest industry technology. Professor Blondeel was already curious about Zowe and knew that Broadcom was a big contributor to the project. He reached out to Maurice Gennotte, who told him that Zowe was strong in Europe and that we had an active development site right in the city of Prague, Czech Republic.
With the sponsorship and support of Broadcom, I was went to Ghent, Belgium to present Zowe in a workshop. The workshop was a success and the students were excited to be able to apply skills they learn from other ICT subjects into a mainframe practice class.
HOGENT Mainframe Day 2023
A year later, I found myself privileged to be part of an invite-only event. The HOGENT Mainframe Day hosted 140+ students and professionals presenting and discussing the present and future of the mainframe.
The purpose of this event was to introduce companies that develop the mainframe platform as well as companies that leverage the mainframe platform for their businesses. The main objectives for this event was to showcase that the mainframe is still relevant and that students have selected a good platform to study that can lead to a lucrative career. Additionally, it gave companies the opportunity to share their internship programs that are available.
A VIP invitation was also extended to Mr. Jan Jambon, the Minister-President of Flanders to participate in a round table with representatives of the school’s leadership and the business. The goal for this format was to give forum to the guest to witness how investments in education are impacting the development and sustainability of the Flemish business, technology, and society. Unfortunately for everyone, Mr. Jambon was called in the last moment to attend an urgent meeting of his government and did not make it.
Regardless, the round table meeting happened and important aspects of the present and the future of the mainframe platform in the business and the academy were noted and discussed.
Zowe @ HOGENT
Among the many interesting and important things that were discussed and presented during that day, was undoubtedly Zowe. The reasons for that were two. First, Zowe is open source and part of the Open Mainframe Project hosted by The Linux Foundation. Merely mentioning these facts excited most of the students but also the professionals who were quickly realizing the potentials utilizing and collaborating with a project like this would create. The second reason was the simplicity with which we presented the platform transformation that we are doing with Zowe, its open, familiar design and architecture, yet secure and reliable as everything else on the mainframe. 
In the end, Zowe once more shined bright in an environment where it felt at home. My aspirations to continue promoting it to students and university teachers as a great tool to introduce new people to the Mainframe have never been stronger. Our plans are big, as big as Zowe is. Stay tuned! 🖖🏼
Learn more about and download Zowe at zowe.org or read more Zowe blogs here.
Ask a question or join the conversation on an Open Mainframe Project Slack Channel #zowe-api, #zowe-explorer-intellij, #zowe-explorer, #zowe-cli, #zowe-dev, #zowe-user, or #zowe-onboarding. First time using the Open Mainframe Slack Channel? Register here.
