One thing about mainframe people: we're very careful. We'd rather spend the extra time up front making sure we've gotten something right rather than spending much more time later fixing it.

So, it seems somehow appropriate that, after very carefully considering and putting everything together, SHARE and CA issued press releases yesterday (October 8) about new additions to the SHARE Board of Directors, over a month after SHARE in Denver ended.

And I can tell you that I'm just as excited about it now as I would have been if the announcement had been made on the last day of SHARE. In some ways, even more so - it has been wonderful to see how committed CA is to supporting SHARE and working with them, and it is simply inspiring to begin learning about how the SHARE Board works and discovering what my role will be. I've already been assigned a mentor - an experienced SHARE Board member for whom I have an immeasurably high regard.

The actual SHARE press release is at http://www.share.org/Portals/0/Seattle/SHARE_BoD_Release_Approved.pdf, which is also available through http://www.share.org/. You can see the full list of Board members at http://www.share.org/AboutSHARE/Organization/SHAREBoardofDirectors/tabid/82/Default.aspx.

CA's press release is at http://www.ca.com/us/press/release.aspx?cid=218782.

Now the work begins. The time has come to grow the large enterprise IT community and SHARE's important role in it. Since they were invented, that has always included mainframes, but first and foremost it's about the organizations that use those mainframes and their entire business IT context.

It's important to point out here that this blog is written with my "CA hat" on, so nothing I say on this blog should be construed as coming from SHARE. That said, the following question is of interest to me in any role:

What are the next things that need to happen to bring the large enterprise IT community together and move it forward? Feel free to post your comments on this blog, or just email me at ca dot com; my address is "Reg".

I look forward to your thoughts!