Madness? It’s all about Business Benefits!!!
Of course it’s fun to attend a virtual conference. Wearing your own comfortable earphones, (maybe even the ones with noise cancellation), sitting behind your own comfortable desk, sipping coffee (or whatever alternative you choose) from your own faithful mug while you listen to specialists, experts, fellow users and others talking about your favorite topic: Mainframe…
But what are the BUSINESS benefits of doing so? After all, in the worst case, you are listening instead of working during working hours! Well, in all honesty, there are plenty. In a previous blog (http://community.ca.com/blogs/mainframe-voice/archive/2012/04/25/May-Mainframe-madness-2012.aspx) I already explained why the presentations by Dr. Howard Rubin are a must if you are really serious about Mainframe TCO & IT Economics. So that’s two in the pocket already.
But you’ll probably also want to know a bit more about CA Technologies Mainframe Strategy for the next years by Dayton Semerjian, or the impact of bad performance on The Business by Julie Craig from EMA. And for the more culturally interested, the session “CA Mainframe Chorus : The Music Keeps Getting Better” by Jon Toigo. All very interesting, you might say, but how about BUSINESS BENEFITS?!?!
Well, first of all, you can hear from others how new trends impact YOUR mainframe. You learn how others are dealing with things like Cloud, Big Data, ageing workforce and knowledge management (to name just a few). Things you are confronted with already, and will be confronted with even more in the near future. And attending the right sessions will give you more- and better ammunition you can use to position the mainframe better. Then there is the motivational part; listening to motivated, well prepared and smart mainframers always help ME to prepare for those endless discussions with non-believers. Not a single year has gone by where I could not pick at least 3-4 examples and use cases that I could use at customer sites where the mainframe needed some extra support. And then there is the added benefit of not having to travel (did I mention that somewhere already?).
I saw the ultimate benefit last year at a customer site; about 25 people watched some of the keynotes with pizza and (light) beers. With very lively discussions after that, it not only helped the communication between mainframers, but some nosey distributed people who joined unexpectedly also had a great time!!! Register now at www.ca.com/mainframe/may and join us today for the first keynote at www.ca.com/mmm .
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