CICS community

Over the past couple of years I’ve slowly seen the CICS community find other avenues to communicate and share great information about CICS. Apart from all of the new blogs popping up everywhere there are a whole ton of new CICS, System z and DB2 folks on twitter.  So I thought I would spend a little time to try and pull all of the various sources together in one place and share some of my favourite people (some IBMers, some not). Feel free to add your own favourites in the comments sections (even if you just want to plug your own CICS blog). It’s about time I updated the CICS bloggers section again anyway.

It’s a great way to stay up to date with all the latest news and links. So give it a go and take your pick from my list below. I’m @chrishodgins, so give me a follow and be sure to say hello!

CICS community on Twitter

IBMers

@chrishodgins – Chris Hodgins (CICSPlex SM) – did I mention you should follow me? 😉

@IBM_CICS – The latest links straight from IBM CICS support

@CICSfluff – Nick Garrod (CICS marketing manager) – expect lots of links to videos, whitepapers and events. Some great content if you like to stay up to date. CICS marketing rock star!

@dianegjohnson – Diane Johnson (IBM zSoftware Partner Programs) – The ultimate CICS evangelist, more energy than a formula 1 car and a true passion for CICS and System z.

@KatSharp – Kat Sharp (CICS Explorer) – Part of the CICS Explorer team and one of us “young ones” (Grant’s term not mine). Super enthusiastic and helping to drive forward the new face of CICS. Go Explorer!

@crshnburn – Andrew Smithson (CICS Transaction Gateway) – lots of experimenting with CICS and sMash of late. This guy knows a scary amount about CICS Transaction Gateway. A definite follow.

@MattWhitbourne – Matt Whitbourne (CICS Product Manager) – Links for CICS and IBM in general, innovation++

@MartinPacker – Martin Packer (Mainframe performance expert) – currently doing some very odd things with SMF records. Mainframe performance guru and firefox extension hacker. A worrying combination for any manager. 😉

@IBM_System_Z – Sherrie Abshire (System z marketing manager) – lots of nice linkage about our beloved mainframe

@wfavero – Willie Favero (DB2 on z/OS) – a genuinely interesting read. I don’t know huge amounts about DB2 but I’m always interested in what Willie has to say.

Other CICS/Mainframe/DB2 related folks I follow

@hostbridge – Hostbridge – Top of this list because they have the best CICS logo in their profile! Need I say more!

@theCICSguy – Steve Baugh (author of theCICSguy blog) – Lots of linkage and a really great blog about CICS.

@HerbPayne – Herb Payne (Thesaurus [i-tcs.com]) – CICS dude!!

@TroyColeman – Troy Coleman (DB2 on z/OS) – Product manager at CA and a great DB2 blog. Well written and lots of good content.

@zBobThomas, @MainframeZone – Bob Thomas (publisher of zJournal and author of MainframeZone blog)

@ShareHQ – Share headquarters

@MainframeMag – IBM Systems Magazine

@WebSphere_Edu – Gene Fiorina (All of the latest WebSphere education news)

IBM System z tweets

If you are looking for updates on IBM System z software, check out the twitter stream for IBM_System_z.

For more information regarding System z software, the IBM site has plenty to read at:

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/en_US/

Twittering Impact

I will be putting up a couple of write-ups from yesterdays CICS Q&A sessions at Impact later on today but in the mean-time if you are looking to connect with people at Impact 2008 this year may I recommend to you a micro-blogging web tool I use called twitter. There are quite a few people already at Impact that are using this to document their day and to keep in touch with others throughout the conference.

If you do decide to sign-up, then do say hello, you might also want to add your username to the comments below so others can get in touch with you. You can find my tweets here: http://twitter.com/chrishodgins

Give it a try and if you hate it then at least you tried but you might find it changes the way you network for good!

Update:

If you want to follow most of the Impact 2008 tweets you can do so here.

http://hashtags.org/tag/impact2008/

If you want your tweets to appear there as well then simply include #impact2008 somewhere within your tweet.  You will also need to follow @hashtags for your tags to be read.