Hello from CA's Prague Mainframe Center of Excellence! This week, I've had the pleasure of meeting with some members of our new generation of mainframers in person.

As you'll know from my blog of May 5, 2009 (see http://community.ca.com/blogs/execio/archive/2009/05/05/gdg-generations-doing-good.aspx) or our New Mainframers video (see http://www.ca.com/files/videos/mainframe-recruit_205295.asx), CA has been building a new generation of mainframers around the world, including here in Prague.

This is my first visit to Prague, and it has been a great experience to meet the outstanding people here. We even got together for a group picture:

 During my visit, in discussing what it means to be a new generation mainframer, we came up with a new term, or perhaps job title: SysPrague.

Of course, it's pronounced similarly to the more established title, "Sysprog" which is short for "Systems Programmer". But, being here where a new generation of mainframers is spreading their collective wings, I thought: maybe it would be good to come up with a definition for this term.

So here's my suggested definition (you're welcome to offer improvements to it if you wish). A SysPrague is a new generation mainframer that knows all about the Internet and distributed technologies, can program in newer languages such as Java, and is bridging the gap between the distributed world and the mainframe by learning all about the mainframe and making it accessible to a new generation that has never heard of a 3270. SysPragues are people on a journey of discovery, which will lead to them becoming in-depth technical experts on the mainframe, as well as a keepers of its culture and history, and who are already effective today with newer technologies, interfaces and approaches that truly bring out the hidden meaning of "legacy": "it works".

In other words, a SysPrague is the kind of person you get when you take a brilliant new-generation person and immerse them in the ways of the mainframe, and then let them take what they already know about modern interfaces and computing and bring everything together into a whole new paradigm for effective management of the most important business platform on earth.

Of course, it follows that you don't actually have to be based in Prague to fit this definition - indeed, new CA mainframers in the Dallas, Pittsburgh and Chicago areas, for example, could just as easily merit this title.

So, here's to a new generation of SysPragues, moving mainframe management to a new generation as well!