In today’s episode of the “I Am a Mainframer” podcast, Steven Dickens talks with Dr. Cameron Seay, IBM Z Academic Thought Leader and Adjunct Professor at Tennessee State University and East Carolina University. Their conversation focuses on Cameron’s longstanding support of the Mainframe community, his commitment to introducing students to the mainframe, and how that commitment, coupled with his teaching approach to development methodology, has helped nearly 300 students get mainframe jobs.
Steven Dickens: Hello and welcome my name’s Steven Dickens. You are listening to the I Am A Mainframer podcast brought to you by the Linux Foundation’s collaborative project, The Open Mainframe Project, which is a collaborative project designed to bring open source to the mainframe platform. I’m joined today by one of my dear friends in the community Cameron Seay. Cameron, welcome to the show.
Cameron Seay: Thanks for having me, Steven. Very glad to be here. Always a pleasure to talk with you, my brother.
Steven Dickens: I’m looking forward to this. You and I have known each other for a few years now. And it’s going back a while that we got to hang out in North Carolina for the recording of the launch of the LinuxONE box. So you’ve always been a longstanding supporter of the community. Let’s get the listeners orientated, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background and what you are doing. And then we’ll just dive straight in from there.
Cameron Seay: Gladly. My name is Cameron Seay. I’m a practicing academic, a typical academic. I teach at two universities, East Carolina University and Tennessee State University. I teach mainframe topics. I’ve been teaching for the last 16, 17 years. Before that I was an IT person for 21 years, and I distinguish, I teach in a computer science department now. So I make it real clear. I’m not a computer scientist. I’m an IT guy. And there’s a difference. If anybody wants me to delineate that difference, I’m glad to do it. But to me, there’s a clear difference between IT and computer science.
Cameron Seay: Got involved in the mainframe via somebody I think you’re familiar with Steven, Don Resnick of IBM, back in January 2005. Been teaching mainframe ever since. I was teaching at a Historically Black College in the US, North Carolina Central University. And I saw this as a niche that my students could really flourish in. And I found that to be the case. Probably helped over 200-300 students get mainframe jobs. So, that’s me. That’s me.
Steven Dickens: Fantastic. There’s so much to unpick there, Cameron, we’ll get into it. Tell us a little bit, we’ll start on you are actually doing today. And then we’ll try and sort of unpack that as we go. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. I’m looking forward to this. So walk me through what a day in the life of Cam Seay, looks like. What you’re doing today. You mentioned a couple of different colleges there. Just sort of unpack that for us a little bit and get us started.
Cameron Seay: Sure, sure. Be glad to, be glad to. I’ve got a great life and most of it is due to IBM and mainframe. I’ve got a great life. I do what I want to do. I’m semi-retired now. So a typical day for me is I teach Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I teach in the mornings at Tennessee State, teach in the evenings at East Carolina. I teach COBOL at East Carolina and I teach an intro course in COBOL at East Carolina and at Tennessee State I teach COBOL.
Cameron Seay: A typical day for me is doing class prep, there’s always grading to do. Always grading. I never not have anything to do. There’s always labs to grade because I give a lot of labs. In between that, I’m also co-chair with Derek Britton, someone you know, of the Open Mainframe Project COBOL Working Group. I’ve been doing that since I think June of 2020. I’m very, very glad to do that. So there’s always duties involved with that. I’m on the Governing Board of the Open Mainframe Project. So we have regular meetings and we have meetings in between quarters. And so there’s always emails. There’s always projects.
Cameron Seay: I’ve written a book, just written a book, working on the second one with some authors. Some of these folks, you may know David Boyd, Reg Harbeck, and Carl Eric Stenforth. So we wrote a mainframe primer, z/OS primer. And now we’re working on a VM primer. This already been published, it’s in production now with Kendall Hunt, they’re an academic publisher. So working on that, always writing articles. I do a lot of blog posts. I do a lot of blog posts for ASG, for the Open Mainframe Project, for a couple other companies. So that’s a typical day in life for me. I’ve always got stuff to do, stuff that I enjoy. So that’s a typical day.
Steven Dickens: You’re Mr. Energy.
Cameron Seay: [crosstalk 00:04:34] one or two o’clock in the morning.
Steven Dickens: Yeah, you’re Mr. Energy, Cam. Mr. Energy, is the way I describe you. So couple of different academic institutions, you mentioned the Open Mainframe Project work you do. I’m obviously really familiar with that, but maybe just double click on that for the listeners. Derek was actually the last person we had on the show. So that was a great episode. And he sort of picked up the ball and went deep onto the COBOL Working Group. But I’d love to hear your perspective. Obviously Derek’s coming from a Micro Focus angle. He’s coming from a vendor perspective. I know you take a very different perspective on COBOL and you’ve touched on it already with some of your academic work. Just give us a view for the listeners, if you would, on what you think that COBOL Working Group is about and really what it’s trying to achieve.
Cameron Seay: It was an idea that I think Derek came up with it either Derek or Len Santalucia, both of whom you know. I don’t know who came with… I didn’t come up with the idea, but it was broached. I said, yeah, I think this is a great thing. I think it could be really good because I was teaching COBOL at the time. We shopped that, we pitched it to the Open Mainframe Project, John Mertic, who’s the program manager. We were the first Working Group for the Open Mainframe Project. They’ve got another one now.
Cameron Seay: Derek has kind of shaped the direction of that. My role and my goal for the COBOL Working Group, ultimate end game is to get COBOL back into the academic classroom. That was a big macro objective of mine. But Derek kind of drilled down and said, “Well, you know, really, we need to understand what COBOL is and what COBOL’s doing today.” He’s kind of driven that part of it. So we see ourselves as the COBOL information entity. That we are going to be the repository of all the information that’s relevant to COBOL. Who’s using it, how much are they using, how are they using it? Et cetera, et cetera.
Cameron Seay: So we had a survey that is due to be published very soon. I think Micro Focus, not Micro Focus. I think TechChannel is going to publish it. Reg Harbeck has written the survey. I mean, written the write up about the survey. The analysis of it. Phil Polchinski is kind of the lead analyst on that. And it was a great project. We had 272 respondents. We can talk about the results, sometime in this conversation, but that’s done. And so we feel that’s a major accomplishment.
Cameron Seay: So now what we’re doing is we’re trying to work with Sue Harslett and Shirley Basson, whom I think you know, and she’s got a COBOL group that they built a course, a free course for COBOL via the Open Mainframe Project. So we’re trying to work, not at cross purposes, but kind of develop some synergy between the two entities. Because they’re separate entities. It’s separate groups. Separate pieces of the Open Mainframe Project. And so we’re just trying to promote COBOL because what I’ve seen in the last six months to a year, Steven, is the big boys and girls, Bank of America, The Social Security Administration, MetLife. They’ve seen it doesn’t make sense to try to migrate those hundreds of billions of lines of code. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense.
Cameron Seay: Their main push back, there’s nothing wrong with the COBOL, the COBOL is fine. It works day in and day out. Their main issue is they don’t think that they’re going to be able to find COBOL skills. One of our roles in the COBOL Working Group is to help make that problem go away. And I do see much, much more communication today between industry, academe, and the students about COBOL and about the mainframe in general, but COBOL specifically, than I ever have before. Every week I get a couple folks that want me to, for money, a pretty good daily rate, want me to train people at COBOL. Now I was a never a COBOL production programmer. I was in programming industry, but not in COBOL. But I know the language well enough to teach it and I’ve been teaching for several years, so that’s kind of where we are right now. We’re in a good space. All the needles are pointing up and green and we’re just trying to keep them in. Trying to keep them in.
Cameron Seay: We have regular conversations about… I’m always on panel discussions, that was another thing of day in a life. More often than not, I have a panel discussion that I participate in. More often than not. In a weekly basis, not a daily basis, but a weekly basis. So that’s where I am right now about the COBOL Working Group and Open Mainframe Project. I hope that answers your question.
Steven Dickens: It does. It does, Cameron. And there’s a couple of things that you mentioned previously in your introduction which I’d like to circle back to. You mentioned Historically Black Colleges that you’ve worked with and you talked about the numbers of students you’ve brought through. I know that’s a subject you are passionate about, and so am I. How do we get more diversity and more inclusion and bring other maybe groups that aren’t as represented as they should be into the wider mainframe community?
Steven Dickens: I know you are probably one of the best at advocating for that group. So I just want to give you the opportunity to spend a bit of time talking about that. Because I think it’s important for us as an Open Mainframe Project Group. It’s important for the wider community. It’s important for tech in general. So I just want give you the opportunity to sort of just go along on this section. It’s important. I want to give you the time. Just talk me through that if you would.
Cameron Seay: Sure, sure. I appreciate you having insight and understanding the importance, the relevance, and the value in understanding these opportunities. Ever since I first saw this technology, I didn’t know anything about the mainframe. I programmed on SaaS on the mainframe, but I didn’t know was mainframe. I was a SaaS programmer. I saw that this is an area that can be a niche for the HBCUs. And the reason that’s important is the HBCUs suffer from inferiority complex and image problems. Their product too often, more often than not, is perceived as inferior to the bigger schools. That’s just the way it is. Now, sometime there’s some justifications there because there are some HBCU programs that really aren’t doing the best that they can. You have to understand HBCUs are chronically underfunded. Chronically underfunded and understaffed.
Cameron Seay: I’ll give you an example, Tennessee State University. The State of Tennessee owes Tennessee State University today half a billion dollars in money they were supposed to be getting, but they weren’t getting it. They were giving it to other schools. They weren’t giving it to Tennessee State. So that kind of thing and those types of issues are going to put HBCUs in kind of a bind. But there’s a silver lining to that because in the mainframe space, IBM’s strategy early on with the academic initiative was to bring in the bigger schools. You know, NC State was supposed to be a flagship in mainframe education. Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. That didn’t happen and it didn’t happen not because there’s anything wrong with the mainframe technology. It’s that NC State doesn’t really need to teach mainframe. Georgia Tech really doesn’t need to teach mainframe, but guess who does and can benefit from teaching mainframe? HBCUs. Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Cameron Seay: And that has been a target. Now what I am seeing now, and I’ve been screaming this, as you know, I’ve been screaming this for over a decade. I’ve been screaming. Industry has heard that, the last couple of years, last year or so. And I do see them reaching out to the HBCUs. Here’s the problem, the HBCUs aren’t responding. That’s the problem. I have a couple of hiring managers, three or four hiring managers that I know personally, that have reached out to HBCUs and said, “Look, we think you can benefit from teaching this technology and if you teach it, I’ve got jobs for your students.” But HBCUs don’t respond because there’s a lot of inertia in academia, not just HBCUs, but everywhere. When they start doing something, they’re going to keep doing that thing. And if you try to put something else into the mix, unless there is a very extremely compelling reason that they can see and accept, they’re not going to change. They’re just not going to change. So it’s a challenge.
Cameron Seay: But I do see leeway. I am at Tennessee State. Tennessee State is a Historically Black College and University. I want to give shout outs to Dr. Jacqueline Mitchell who is a program manager and my colleague John Thompson for bringing mainframe. We have two courses on the books now, and we’re going to have more. So it can be done, but I’m optimistic, but there are challenges. So it’s not happening today. But I do see the conversations being had. I do see the conversations. But anybody from industry that hears this, that’s in the mainframe space, if your company uses mainframe [inaudible 00:13:38], focus on the HBCUs. NC State is never going to teach this stuff. They’re never going to teach it. Georgia Tech’s never going to teach this. I shouldn’t say never. That’s a long time. But they’ve got no compelling reason to teach it. The HBCUs do if you make that case to them. So I want industry to hear that. All conversations in this arena are going to come back to that at some point in time. So that’s my [inaudible 00:14:03] on HBCUs. I’m optimistic, I’m optimistic.
Steven Dickens: And I think I’d say this to the listeners, Cameron’s a fantastic voice for these underrepresented communities. He’s very active on the social platforms. We’ll put a link to Cameron’s LinkedIn, if you are okay with that Cam, we’ll put that in the show notes.
Cameron Seay: Absolutely, absolutely.
Steven Dickens: Highly recommend anybody who’s looking to bring people into the mainframe platform, particularly in the COBOL space, if you are looking for junior COBOL developers, Cameron is absolutely the person to reach out to and he’s got pathways to get people into those programs. So we’ll put that in the show notes, I’ll work with the producer, Chris, and we’ll get that in the show notes. Because I think that connection point between industry and some of those HBCUs is exactly where you fit and that’s the value that you bring to the community.
Steven Dickens: We’ve sort of talked about some of those connection points and I think that’s really important. I know you’ve done a lot of work in the COBOL space. COBOL been a bit of a lightning rod of a technology and a discussion in the community since the start of COVID. And we’re both laughing about it, because we know where the next five minutes of this podcast is going to go. Maybe just give us a state of the union, Cam. You’re a co-chair of the Working Group. You’ve probably got as good a perspective as anybody on where COBOL is these days. You talked about some of the research that’s coming out. Just give us a state of on COBOL in 2021.
Cameron Seay: So, it goes without saying the global economy is dependent on COBOL. That’s a fact. If you don’t know it, look it up. That’s a fact. Without COBOL there is no global economy today. That is becoming more and more accepted. It’s always been a fact, but it’s becoming more and more accepted by the hiring managers, not the hiring managers, I’m sorry, the strategic managers that make the decisions. That is becoming clear. I do see an embrace of the necessity to train people in COBOL. There are numerous initiatives underway and for the state of the union on COBOL, it’s aggressive in terms of education. Jeff Belsky of IBM, I think you know Jeff, he’s got some excellent material on this. Very easy to follow.
Cameron Seay: And so now the whole development methodology, I just had three guest speakers in my class this week. Rosalind Radcliffe, she’s an IBM distinguished engineer. Bill Perera, who’s a somebody in the Zowe space, and a gentleman by the name of Pierre Washington who’s a senior software architect with Rocket. And they explained to the students how they’re using modern tools like Jenkins and Git to do their development. So you’ve got to be clear with the students. You’re not putting yourself on an island by developing this skillset. It’s part of a continuum. It’s part of a continuum. And it’s a continuum that you can point in any direction you want to.
Cameron Seay: I’m old school. I teach ISPF because the hire managers tell me to teach ISPF. But next week we’re going to look at VS code. We’re going to look at IDz, we’re going to look at some modern interfaces. So the whole development methodology is really evolving. Thanks to people like Chris O’Malley. I think Chris is retired now, but he used to be the CEO of Compuware.
Cameron Seay: He was very hardcore DevOps in the mainframe space, very hardcore. And I see that evolution occurring and Misty Decker, formerly with IBM now Micro Focus, really is on me to show the students VS code. I get the feeling that people are kind of ashamed of ISPF. They shouldn’t be. Because ISPF is like vi in the Linux space. It’s always going to be there. So if nothing else is going to be there, you know ISPF is going to be there. So you need to learn it just like you need to learn vi. So that’s kind of where we are. We’re when people are waking up and they’re seeing things. There’s a lot of movement. There’s a lot of moving pieces to this, a lot of good, positive energy in the COBOL space. And I love to see it because there’s nothing wrong with the code at all.
Cameron Seay: COBOL is a language. The more I learn about it, the more I fall in love with the simplicity of it. My students say that they all know Java. They’re CompSci students so they all know Java and Python. They say, “It’s so simple I have a hard time understanding it.” It’s so simple. I mean, it’s too straightforward. It’s explicit. Perform. Write. Read. It tells you in simple English what the program is doing. Java doesn’t do that. C doesn’t do that. Python doesn’t do that. But it tells you in simple English what… so answer your question the state of the union of COBOL, as a president would say, is good. It’s good. [crosstalk 00:19:04].
Steven Dickens: I love that. I love that. I think some of the passion comes through, Cam. And some of those breaking down those perception barriers. You and I have known each other, what is it? Six, seven years now? And I think if people get to spend time with you and I can imagine the students that you’ve worked with. If they get time to spend with you, they’re going to come out of those programs with a broader landscape of horizons. They’re going to come out with better career prospects. They’re going to come out with a better shaped view of what it means to be a developer. And some of those prejudices are going to be washed away. And I think that’s the positive thing that you bring to the community.
Steven Dickens: Let’s start to look ahead a little, where do you see the next 12 months for the COBOL Working Group, particularly? I’m going to ask you about the mainframe as we look towards wrapping up, but I’ll ask you a little bit more specifically now, where do you see COBOL? Where do you see it going? You guys have been on a fantastic run for the last couple of years with the COBOL Working Group. What do you see is next?
Cameron Seay: A further integration to a heterogeneous infrastructure, making it a better, a more acknowledged part of what business is doing. Because I tell my students, I say, “Now, even though you may not be applying for a COBOL job at Bank of America or Wells Fargo or somewhere else, the mere fact that you know COBOL, you understand COBOL, means you understand a big part of the way they do business. You understand what their business is based on. Even if you’re not going to work in it. So that’s an advantage.
Cameron Seay: Like I said, further integration. Development of tools. There’s going to be tools. One of the things that that Derek Britton has wanted us to do, and we just hadn’t had the bandwidth to do it, is develop tools that integrate seamlessly with other pieces. A COBOL two that works with Git for example. I don’t know of one. I don’t know of one. The way Jenkins does. Jenkins work can Git. So, tooling. I see more and more tooling.
Cameron Seay: I don’t know where the new Telum processor fits into this, but I know it fits somewhere. And I know COBOL is going to exploit some of those advantages Telum [inaudible 00:21:25]. I don’t know, I’m not an engineer. I don’t know what that is. I just know how IBM does things. So I see that as an advantage and I see it becoming more of a factor in things like IoT. And now this is more mainframe generally than COBOL, but COBOL is involved in this too, IoT and blockchain and technology that’s ancillary to the COBOL space. Just further integration, more understanding. And I think more and more students are going to understand how COBOL fits into the overall landscape. So it’s not this anomaly or this exotic thing that’s over there that nobody really understands.
Steven Dickens: I tend to agree with that perspective, Cam. So I ask this question on every podcast and I’m really looking forward to ask it to you, because I think there’s probably nobody better in the industry to ask this question of. A consistent question I ask is what advice would you give to your younger self? So you’ve got a time machine on loan for a couple of minutes here. You get back to go to the 21-22 year old Cameron Seay as you are leaving college. I think as I say, you’re the best person I’ve asked this question of on the podcast. And Chris will keep me honest, but I must have asked this to hundreds of people now. What would you say to your younger self?
Cameron Seay: To my younger self, even after I finished college, well we’re talking about 10 years ago. Myself 10 years ago. I would do a serious study of computer science as a discipline, which I didn’t do because I was afraid of the calculus. Which I shouldn’t have been. I would do a deeper study. I would tell myself 10 years ago, spend more time on tasks, on learning the fundamentals. Get clear on the fundamentals. The fundamentals are important. So I would do that. I would lay a firmer foundation for where I am now. I wish that I had done more technical study early on. I was a tinkerer and stuff. I did what I did, but I would be much more focused. I would be much more focused. So get a degree in computer science and focus and develop more technical chops. Understand the fundamentals. Understand the fundamentals. And learn another language. If I got 10 years ago, learn another language. That’s what I want.
Steven Dickens: So what I mean, and I’ll double click, as I say, I’m really keen to get your perspective. Career advice. What would you be giving to that 22 year old Cameron? What you be saying? You just started to enter into the workplace. What would you be saying to your younger self? I think you are perfectly positioned to answer this question. So that’s why I’m asking this sort of double dip, if you will. But what career advice would you be giving-
Cameron Seay: No, no, no. Career advice? Understand the corporate environment. Understand corporate culture intimately. I would advise the 22 year old Cameron to get a mentor. Get a mentor in the organization where you’re working and stick to that mentor like glue. Become a pain in the butt to that mentor. That will enhance your chances immeasurably by having a mentor. Now you got to be somebody that a mentor wants to work with so you have to be serious, but learn the corporate culture in general, how corporate America works, how the corporate world, not just corporate America, corporate world globally works, understand the global economy and get a mentor. Those the best two pieces of advice I could give a 22 year old starting out.
Steven Dickens: I think that’s really solid advice. The amount of junior professionals that I’ve worked with and it’s been the first time they’ve had a mentor and they’re at sort of 27, 28, and yet you’ve been navigating through the world for sort of five or six years at that point. They’ve been stumbling and they’ve maybe not had as much. And you work with them over a couple of years and the amount of progress they make. You sort of think, I wish you’d come to me age 22, because I could have helped you made that progress so much earlier in your career.
Steven Dickens: I think that’s fantastic advice Cam, and I think you certainly play that mentor role to a lot of people. I know you do that and provide those pathways. So I think that’s really solid advice. We’ve sort of just gone back. Now let’s look ahead. I think you’ve got a really good perspective, but say you’ve got a crystal ball now. You’ve still got that time machine, but you can go forward in it. Where do you see the mainframe sort of 5-10 years out from now.
Cameron Seay: So the mainframe 5-10 years now. I love the direction IBM is going. It’s becoming much more cloud savvy. Because when you say mainframe, you’re saying cloud. Folks don’t understand that. Mainframe is cloud technology. It’s the original cloud circa 1965. So I see it becoming more of a visible factor in the cloud landscape. A hybrid cloud. The area that you’re working in vigorously, Steven. Vigorously. I would like to see IBM promote Linux on the mainframe more because Linux on the mainframe is completely, well I shouldn’t say completely different. It is a vastly different animal than Linux on x86. It does things that you can’t do on x86. So I would like to see that happen. I believe it’s going to happen. You asked me what I think is going to happen. I believe it’s going to happen. Becoming more cloud savvy.
Cameron Seay: What I’m seeing now is I’ve never had a problem with all my classes. 100% of the students have never heard of the main. Well, I shouldn’t say 100%. Better than 95% of the students have never heard of the mainframe before the class. At the end of the class, I have convinced them that this is an important technology and one that they should consider a career in. So I see that expanding. I see that expanding more. The mainframe becoming more of a household… I’m not going to say a household word because it’s business technology, but more understood by the common folk. By the common folk. I see that happening because of the things that mainframe is going to do. It’s going to start playing a role, for example, in blockchain. I see mainframe playing a big role in blockchain. I mean it plays a role in blockchain now, people just they don’t know that.
Cameron Seay: I see people becoming aware of mainframe’s role in blockchain and IoT and things that involve heavy transactions. So that’s what I see. Now, IBM comes up with another mainframe every couple of years. And so I really can’t make any predictions about that. The memory’s always going to get more powerful. It’s always going to have to have more storage. It’s always going to be faster, bigger, better, stronger. So that’s going to keep going. That’s been going for the last 60 years. I see it broadening it’s already pervasive footprint and solidifying, solidifying that footprint going forward. That’s what I see.
Steven Dickens: So Cameron, this has been a fantastic conversation and I knew us as soon as Chris booked you to come on the show that this would be one of the highlights. Over the last half an hour, 40 minutes, what we’ve been able to cover is a really good sort of spark around where COBOLs going. You’ve given us a really good view of some of the pathways that underrepresented groups can get into the technology. Talked about just the student experience in general. Given that, I think some of our younger listeners had a lot to take away from the conversation. Anything you’d want to add before we wrap up? Is there anything I’ve not asked you as the host or done a bad job on? Is there anything you’d want to talk about that we’ve not covered?
Cameron Seay: Well, I would just reiterate something I said earlier to industry. Understand that you can make the skills issue much less of an issue than it is now just by opening your eyes. Look around you. I’m involved in a project now where with a faculty member, Maggie Hall. She just got an NSF grant to teach technology programming to the working poor. Python and COBOL. I’m the COBOL guy. And so she’s going to find these people that are either homeless or working poor, and she’s going to teach them how to do mainframe. So industry open your eyes and don’t come to me that I can’t find the skills. It annoys me to no end when I hear industry say… I say, “Here’s my email dude. Hit me up. You’re saying something’s a problem. We can make that problem go away. At least for you we can.” Any company.
Cameron Seay: Oh, and this is another thing that I want to say that I hadn’t said. The time to grow your internal skills is now. Don’t wait, don’t kick this can down the road. You’ve been doing that for the last 10 years. You need to start going [inaudible 00:30:39] looking for people with 5-10 years mainframe experience. You’re not going to find them because everyone is looking for the same people. Grow your own internally. Bring new hires on and teach them what you want them to know. That’s the message that I have.
Steven Dickens: I think that’s fantastic. You’ve been listening to Steven Dickens, I’m your host from the I Am A Mainframer podcast. We’ve had Cameron Seay on the podcast with us today. If you like what you hear, please click and subscribe and give us a five star review. That really helps with the rankings. Cameron, it’s been fantastic to have you on the show. You’ve been listening to I’m A Mainframer [crosstalk 00:31:15] podcast brought to you by the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project. We’ll speak to you next time. Thank you very much.
