Start learning COBOL with the Open Mainframe Project's COBOL Programming Course video webinar series

Since the launch of Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Programming Course in April 2020, the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has held quarterly meetings to encourage learners, COBOL fans, and the community at large to join and learn more about the work they drive, and provide input on the course. In these meetings, which are recorded as video webinars, members of the TSC team share project updates and mentorship success stories, and showcase young COBOLers and enthusiasts. This 4000+ learner community on Slack is an engaged community of COBOL enthusiasts who help each other succeed in their COBOL journeys!

Technical Steering Committee members:

Sudharsana Srinivasan, IBM
Paul Newton, IBM
Joe Winchester, IBM
Michael Bauer, Broadcom
Hartanto Widjaya, student at Singapore Management University

Part 1. Interested in COBOL? Check out the COBOL Programming Course from the Open Mainframe Project

In Part 1 of the video webinar series, Technical Steering Commitee members talk to Rune Christensen, a Senior Software Developer from Bankdata, and Simon Mikkelsen, a new COBOL developer at Bankdata. The Danish company has about 130,000 COBOL programs and 95 million lines of COBOL code.

Part 2. The global economy runs on COBOL!

COBOL skills have been debated long and hard -- so let’s get some facts from guest speaker Dr. Cameron Seay, a mainframe educator who has incorporated the Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Programming Course into his curriculum. In Part 2 of the video webinar series, Technical Steering Commitee members talk to Dr. Seay and his student Angie Mejia to learn the latest developments in COBOL education.

Part 3. Is COBOL still alive and kicking?

TSC members chat with two special guests. Reg Harbeck, a member of the Open Mainframe Project COBOL Working Group and a self-described "deep mainframe nerd," talks about the Working Group and its global survey, which was designed to find out if COBOL still alive and kicking. Then, Sainath Rao, a student from IIT Roorkee (India) and Open Mainframe Project summer 2022 mentee, shares his experiences working on the COBOL Programming Course.

Part 4. Get to know the amazing COBOL learner community

In this Q4 video webinar, recorded in December of 2022, TSC members chat with members of the learner community who took the COBOL Programming Course. They discuss the benefits of learning COBOL and new enhancements to the course for 2023. Find out how these updates make it easier than ever to get started with COBOL!

Part 5. COBOL Check! Exciting new development for the Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Programming Course

For some time, the COBOL Programming course team wanted to introduce testing as a chapter in the course. With this collaboration with COBOL Check, the team is planning to do just that through this year’s 2023 summer mentorship project. In this webinar, Rune Christensen, Lead Software Developer at Bankdata and co-lead of the COBOL Check project, shares the capabilities of this open source unit testing tool, focused on enhancing a COBOL developers experience.

Part 6. COBOL programming through the years! Open Mainframe Project Q2 webinar

Open Mainframe Project Summer mentor for 2023, Lezlie Browder, has more than 60 years of software experience with COBOL. She talks about her journey as a consumer to contributor of the COBOL Programming Course. She has experimented with modern tools like Zowe and COBOL Check. She’ll share her experience, feedback, and more.

Part 7. My summer with COBOL - a mentee story Open Mainframe Project Q3 webinar

Open Mainframe Project Summer mentee Ashis Kumar Naik, a third-year computer science student worked with mentor Lezlie Browder, a Tech Practitioner and Chief Solutionist with decades of mainframe experience. He shares his experience of learning COBOL and contributing to the unit testing chapter of the course. Listen to this interesting discussion with the TSC members, and check out the demonstration from the young COBOL enthusiast who is an avid open source contributor and picked up COBOL over the summer!

Part 8. Learning COBOL: A student's experience

This COBOL Programming Course Q4 webinar is a conversation with Reinhard Mensah, a senior student from Talladega College. It discusses the importance of COBOL in our world today, how Reinhard started his COBOL journey, and how he used it to create a game! The COBOL Programming Course co-chair, Mike Bauer, also shared the latest release (3.1) of the COBOL Programming course and how you can get started on your COBOL learning journey.

Part 9. COBOL and Zowe! An Open Mainframe Project webinar

Zowe Explorer CoSquad Lead Adam Wolfe joins the COBOL Programming Course Technical Steering Committee members to discuss all things Zowe. Adam does a demo of the features in Zowe Explorer version (V2) as well as the new features coming up in V3. Zowe and COBOL are two of the most popular projects of the Open Mainframe project. Watch the webinar to learn more about the upcoming Zowe V3 release, the impact to the COBOL course, and more!

Part 10. Experience the new and improved access to the Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Programming Course

Guest speaker Ross Cruickshank, IBM Z Developer Advocate at IBM, discusses the new and improved COBOL registration platform, user experience and more! You don’t want to miss learning about this exciting new update to the much-loved COBOL course.

This course is also available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform and Coursera.

Start learning COBOL with the Open Mainframe Project's COBOL Programming Course video webinar series

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