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Summer Mentorships 2026: From “What Even Is a Mainframe?” to Speaking at Forge26

By | September 16, 2026

Written by Idris Zubair, Open Mainframe Project Summer Mentorship 2026, mentee researcher, guided by mentors Kelsey Colberg, Nanxi Meng & John  Lovett

A little over a year ago, I couldn’t have told you what JCL stood for. I was an undergraduate at the University of Wolverhampton, comfortable with the usual computer science toolkit, algorithms, data structures, the languages everyone teaches you, but completely unaware that an entire parallel universe of computing was quietly running the world’s banks, insurers, and airlines. Then I encountered the mainframe, and it didn’t let go.

What followed was the IBM Z Student Ambassador program, where I ended up reaching the highest tier globally; a stint as Secretary and Vice-President of the Mainframe Student Society at Wolverhampton, organizing meetups to close the same knowledge gap I’d just climbed out of myself; and, this summer, a spot in the Open Mainframe Project’s Mainframe Open Education (MOE) mentorship. This post is the story of that mentorship, from a blank page to a conference stage.

The Mission: Education-as-Communication

MOE’s mandate for me was simple to state and hard to do well: act as a relatable voice for students and early-career developers, and turn intimidating mainframe concepts into something genuinely learnable. Not simplified, translated.

I decided the best way to do that was to document my own learning curve in real time, rather than write from the safety of already knowing the material. If a concept confused me, that confusion became the article.

The Articles

Over the course of the mentorship I wrote six long-form pieces, each tackling one pillar of the mainframe stack:

  1. Mainframe Interaction: how developers actually get onto and around these systems: TSO/E, ISPF, USS, and TN3270.
  2. Introduction to Mainframe Programming Languages: HLASM and COBOL alongside the modern languages now running on z/OS.
  3. Introduction to Mainframe Scripting Languages: REXX, CLIST, and shell scripting under USS.
  4. Batch Processing and the Job Entry Subsystem (JES): how JCL, JES2/JES3, and CICS keep high-volume workloads moving.
  5. Designing and Developing Applications for z/OS: VSAM, Db2, IDz, Zowe, and what modern DevOps looks like on the mainframe.
  6. Mainframe Communications: SNA/TCP-IP, OSA, HiperSockets, and how these systems talk securely to the outside world.

Each one shipped with a companion social advocacy post on LinkedIn, because writing an article nobody sees doesn’t close any gaps.

Turning Articles Into Something You Can Touch

Writing was only step one. An article can explain how the Workload Manager prioritizes work, but watching a priority simulator respond to your own inputs teaches it faster than any paragraph can. So the second half of the mentorship was about turning static explainers into interactive ones.

All six articles now have interactive companions, alongside a bonus piece I wrote earlier on the Workload Manager, complete with a live priority simulator and a zIIP CPU offload visualizer: zubs.github.io/mainframe-series

Another effort made in terms of interactivity was by co-mentee Tushar, who built and polished an interactive learning platform that now hosts these topics, pulled directly from our shared GitBook.

Centralizing Everything on GitBook

The last piece was making sure none of this got lost across five different platforms. All six articles are now structured and indexed on GitBook, so future students, or mentees who come after me, have one place to start: Mainframe 101 Blog Series on GitBook

Building JCLcheck

Alongside the writing, I wanted to build something that solved a problem I’d actually hit myself: JCL syntax is unforgiving, and most students don’t have z/OS access to practice against. So I built JCLcheck, a real lexer, parser, AST, and rule engine for JCL, running entirely in the browser. It checks statement ordering, DD-statement rules, keyword legality with “did you mean…” suggestions, and full in-stream PROC resolution, with a 3270-terminal-styled editor so it even feels like the systems it’s validating for. It runs without needing a mainframe at all, which was the entire point, to remove the access barrier, and the learning curve gets a lot less steep.

If you want to see the rest of what I’ve built and where the mainframe work sits alongside my other engineering projects, my portfolio has the full picture: zubs.github.io/mainframe.html

The Advocacy Doesn’t Stop Here

The mentorship is wrapping up, but I’m not stepping away from mainframe advocacy, I’m taking it to a bigger stage. I’ll be speaking at Forge26 (formerly GSUK), where I’m giving two talks:

Both talks are, in a way, a continuation of exactly what this mentorship trained me to do: take something that sounds inaccessible and hand it back to people in a form they can actually use.

Thank You

To my mentors, Kelsey Colberg, Nanxi Meng, and John Lovett, thank you for the structure, the honest feedback, and for trusting a student with a genuinely open brief. To Tushar, for building a platform that gave this content a real home. And to Niall Ashley, whose support and encouragement before and during this program meant more than a single line here can capture, thank you.

Closing Thoughts

When I started, the mainframe felt like a locked door with no obvious handle. What I’ve learned since then is that the door was never actually locked, it just needed someone to write the instructions in plain language, build a tool or two, and stick around long enough to answer the follow-up questions. That’s what this mentorship let me do, and it’s what I intend to keep doing, on stage at Forge26 and everywhere after.

If you’re a student who’s ever felt intimidated by enterprise technology: the mainframe isn’t as far away as it looks. Start with the interactive series, try JCLcheck, and consider applying to a future Open Mainframe Project mentorship, it might be the on-ramp you didn’t know you needed.

 

Stay tuned for more mentee blogs as our Summer Mentorship Program continues!

 

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