[00:00] – Speaker 3
Welcome to the Planet Mainframe podcast, your gateway to the Forefront of technology in the digital age. Join us as we dive deep into the heart of tech innovation, where industry experts and thought leaders gather to explore the ever-evolving world of mainframes and beyond. In each episode, we’ll unravel the complexities of the digital realm, dissecting the technology that shapes our lives. From the giants of mainframe computing to the latest breakthroughs in AI, cybersecurity, and more, we’re here to guide you through it all. Our mission is clear to bring you the brightest minds, the boldest ideas, and the most captivating stories from the dynamic world of tech. Whether you’re a tech veteran or simply tech curious, get ready to embark on this enriching journey with us. So fasten your seatbelts for a world of knowledge, innovation, and inspiration. Welcome to the Planet Mainframe podcast.
[00:52] – Speaker 2
Welcome everyone to today’s podcast. I am here with Chris Munkin. If you haven’t met Chris, he’s a lead DB2 DBA at Sun Life. But you’ve probably met him because he is the 2024 iDoug North America conference chair. Thank you for joining me today.
[01:08] – Speaker 1
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate. Glad to spend some time with you today.
[01:12] – Speaker 2
Me too. I’m really enjoying the conference, and I appreciate you giving me a couple of minutes. Today, I wanted to talk about you and your mainframe journey, dive a little bit into DB2 and tooling, and then we’ll see where the conversation takes us.
[01:30] – Speaker 1
Looking forward to it. Awesome. Great.
[01:31] – Speaker 2
Well, can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into mainframe?
[01:36] – Speaker 1
Sure. It was completely by accident. I always say it’s from the foot and mouth disease. I started off my first job right out of university. They asked me if I knew cobalt, and I said, no, but I really want to learn. When they saw a 20-something-year-old kid fresh out of university wanting to learn the mainframe, they brought me in right away. From there, the rest is history. I just fell in love with the mainframe. To me, it just makes sense. That’s where I started my career as a cobalt and DB2 kicks developer, and it grew my career from there and honed to my craft. Again, I just love coding in cobalt and learning some more DB2 along the way. Really, my career evolved. I’d say we were working on a project, we were converting off of an IDMS over to DB2, and that’s where I found my passion for DB2. That’s where really DB2 took off for me, and I knew that this is where I really wanted to stay in this role and expose DB2, the database, and use it more and more and grow it as much as I could.
[02:36] – Speaker 2
What were you doing before they asked you if you wanted to learn cobalt?
[02:41] – Speaker 1
My studies, I was doing software engineering. I Because I knew… Actually, I can tell you, I was a little kid. I met with my uncle, and the first time seeing a computer. I think I was about six years old, and I saw a computer, it’s the DOS prompt, and I was in awe. And from there, I knew what I wanted it to do. I knew I was going to be in IT. I knew I was going to be in tech. People ask me, What did you want to do? Most people say, Oh, a doctor or an astronaut. I knew I was going to be a geek. So that’s just where I felt the most comfort. And again, it just flourished from there. So that’s where for me, it just felt like a lifelong passion, lifelong wanting to learn. So it was a natural fit for me. It was definitely not forced. It’s comfort.
[03:28] – Speaker 2
Okay. And you got to do that project of moving things to DB2, and then it sparked lifelong interest?
[03:35] – Speaker 1
Yes, it did. It sparked a lifelong interest just seeing the interworkings of how you can change one database technology into DB2, make it more logical, more relational. It’s really working with the applications team. At that time, I was a developer, too. I wasn’t quite DBA. I was on the cusp of an application DBA. That’s, again, what really positioned me and transitioned me into a DBA role because I was doing a lot of the DBA activities, but as a developer. Okay. Then that’s when the company saw, Hey, do you want to pop into the DBA role? I said, Sure. Been doing it for about, I think it’s about 10 years now, been doing the DBA role. It’s been a great experience, and I’d never looked back since then.
[04:14] – Speaker 2
How long have you been at your current position?
[04:17] – Speaker 1
My current position, I’ve been here for two and a half years. And prior to that, I was at my previous company for 15 years. Okay. So it was long stint there and lots of learning in that time frame and lots of career growth, lots of development. And I found a great fit at Sun Life here. I’m so happy where I am and learned again where I was before, learned so much there, too. So getting experience all along the way.
[04:40] – Speaker 2
Awesome. I understand you’re passionate about tooling, and I was curious to learn a little bit more about that and where you see some of those most significant advancements happening.
[04:53] – Speaker 1
For sure. So tools are key nowadays. If you look at from what I’m seeing, I guess now I can consider myself more of an old-school DBA, although I don’t really feel like it at times, just given where I’m at with my comfort on the green screen. So that’s why a lot of tooling, they’re taking off that layer of abstraction from the green screen and giving it to the newer DBAs. They don’t have that same experience on the green screen and on a terminal. They want to have more the visual. They want to see things that you can click on and have those alerts and those bright-popping lights that you don’t really get on terminal. So it’s really about that user experience and that new UI, the new functionality that you get. Me personally, I’ve always loved the green screen and the going into the nitty-gritty, but again, I definitely see the benefit of having those tools that you don’t need to know those specific fine-tuning, that’s the tool I help you for as well. And those fine-tuning, if you’re looking at, be it buffer pools or you’re looking at your get pages or those things that really takes a lot of training, a lot of specialty.
[05:58] – Speaker 1
It takes a lot of time to gain that experience. And that’s what these tooling really shorten that window down. So I’m finding a lot of these new modern tooling from when I’ve tested them out, tried them out, I’m seeing that my time to resolution is quicker. I’m able to do problem determination faster as well. So be it new graphs, new charts, new metrics, whatever it happens to be, I can look at those and get a quicker answer from a visual representation than from a textual-based. And that’s what I think these newer tooling all across the board is really giving you.
[06:28] – Speaker 2
It’s funny that you mentioned the love of the green screen, the prompt, because when you hear about that user experience modernization effort, it is about changing from that. But I hear so much love and… What’s the word I’m looking for? There’s just a lot of…
[06:51] – Speaker 1
It’s a lot of passion as well for the green screen. We’re so attached to it. We are so attached to that green screen. I’m thinking back whenever I go to the bank. If you think if you go to the bank, and I always love hearing my teller saying, Oh, I’m so sorry about this really old system. I’m like, What are you talking? We just updated that last week. When you hear these things and you see these old systems, you’re like, It’s the quickest input method ever. To have that green screen, this hands-on keyboard. But again, if you look at airlines, banks, insurance, all the industries are all using these old terminals, and they’re working really well. Now we’re looking at the newer tooling help administer them better, to help administer them for the new ages coming out.
[07:35] – Speaker 2
Exactly. How do you approach the tools that you need and evaluating new tools for your current role?
[07:42] – Speaker 1
So evaluating tools, a lot of it has to do with coming to IDUG? Coming to the conference, listening to webinars, listening to the experts, the expert panels, the partner presentations, listening to all those, and then seeing what is out there, what the trends and directions are, what are, is With Broadcom, BMC, IBM, info? Whatever the company happens to be, what products do they have, what’s available, what do you currently have, and comparing and contrasting. I’m saying, okay, if you happen to be with one particular vendor, working with them and saying, Okay, this is what I’d like to do. Can you work with me to come up with a solution? But again, attending sessions, you get to see these tools hands-on. If you do the workshops as well is one of the big things. I’ve always loved attending workshops because that’s where I always get hands-on. You’re talking to to the experts that have developed the tool. So you get to work with them and try to determine how best to use it in your shop. Does this have, quote unquote, legs? Is it viable? Or what’s the right criteria? Is it going to reduce Is it your CPU reduction?
[08:46] – Speaker 1
Is it going to reduce your MIPs? Or what are you looking to do with that tool?
[08:50] – Speaker 2
I was talking to someone earlier today, and they were talking about a suite of tools, but we were talking about how it’s not a one size fits all. What’s going to work for one company and one project is not going to work across the board. It’s important, like you said, to go to these sessions. I think what’s great about a conference like this is that feedback loop.
[09:13] – Speaker 1
Yes, for sure. Again, The number of software consultants from all the companies that I’ve spoken to this week alone so far, and we’re on Tuesday afternoon. We’re not even two full days in. And the contacts that you meet at IDug, the people that you can associate with and help you with your current production problems, past issues, or you find like-minded individuals here as well, but all working towards a common solution. We’re all looking to make DB2 better. We’re all trying to use DB2 as best as we can from all walks of life. That’s why we’re all here, is to do that education and get more out of it.
[09:48] – Speaker 2
What are some of the trends that you’re currently seeing in mainframe and DB2?
[09:53] – Speaker 1
Oh, so trends. Good thing you mentioned that because as being the Conference Planning Committee Chair, we’ve reviewed review hundreds and hundreds of sessions each year. I’ve been on the conference committee for five years now, and I think I’ve reviewed close to 3,000 submissions. Again, each year, you review the submissions. It’s not just review, you get in-depth in reviewing the articles, seeing what their abstract is, and then you get the final presentation as well, reviewing that. So you see a lot of trends over time as they go. Five years ago, there was a lot about Zoe because that’s when Zoe was really coming out. I remember actually here in Charlotte, five years ago, had a separate Zoe track, which was really cool. So again, Zoe was just coming out. Five years later now, now are when shops are starting to implement Zoe. So yeah, it was, I want to say the hype, but it was the newest product in the market, it’s going to be a game changer. And it is, don’t get me wrong, but it takes time to adopt it as well. So that’s what I’m finding is that there’s all that hype at the beginning, but it stayed.
[10:57] – Speaker 1
And now people are adopting it and it’s becoming the backbone. That’s what I’m really seeing. One critical one is Zoe. We spoke about it years ago, and now it’s like, Oh, now it’s the backbone. If you need to get new tooling from IBM, from Broadcom, from BMC, they want you to have Zoe there as well because they want that mediation layer so that that we can have a common endpoint to connect to. It’s really neat where you see that from five years ago to now, and that’s the time in the conference, you see those slow pickups of that technology. The biggest change in technology that I’ve seen now, this year, especially, is visualizing your metrics. So your statistics, your accounting, and again, all the vendors have come up with their tools with the same Grafana displays. And it’s often you see one come out and the next one, and the next one is like, Okay, whichever vendor I’m with, whichever software solution I have, I have that same capability. And now you can visualize your metrics. You can visualize, you get your alerts, and you can do all that thing visually with a clicks of a mouse, as opposed to hours on end, trying to figure out your metrics and are you okay with your averages?
[12:02] – Speaker 1
You’re doing a lot of stuff there.
[12:04] – Speaker 2
Yeah. I was talking to someone, too, about observability because we just did a lot of sessions on the topic, or a lot of content on the topic of observability. And we were talking about sorting through massive amounts of data and what tools and resources there are to help make sense of every bit of data that you’ve got. I am sure you all sort it through quite We have a few sessions, missions with AI integrations.
[12:33] – Speaker 1
Oh, yes. And again, for AI, we have a hole. And again, this year, we’ve done all these themed days. So this year, we have an entire day dedicated to AI, which is really cool. So you can sit down in four sessions, four hours long, and learn all about AI, AI, ML, generative AI. So it’s really what we’re trying to do here and reorganizing the conference. To bring those new things and those trends and directions, like you said, bring those the forefront, and just how we have those themes now. So you can pick up on that particular theme and sit in it and become a little bit more of an expert in it.
[13:09] – Speaker 2
Are there any topics or tools that you’ve picked up here that you think you’re definitely going to go back and say, Hey, this is… Guys, we need to do this.
[13:18] – Speaker 1
I have so many notes written down. If I go through, I think I got half this notebook written down from this conference and past conferences this year. There’s so many things. I mean, even just little tweaks your system, looking at if it happens to be your buffer pools, looking at your deadlocks, looking at little tweaks that you can do without really affecting the application, but really enhance your system itself. Then also looking at additional tooling, learning about additional capabilities of the tools you currently have. I would say it’s another big one, too, because one thing, if you have Broadcom or you have IBM or BMC, you You can pick up, if it’s, let’s say, detector, I’ll pick on that one right now. With detector, you may even know of a certain feature, you may not. But if you come here, you talk to the consultants, they can tell you, Oh, do you know about this feature or this feature? Or what about this recovery feature here? It’s things that if you have that tool, but you don’t know about the feature, you can learn about it as well. I’ve learned about different things about recovery tools that we have that we should start possibly exploiting more of.
[14:27] – Speaker 1
Again, we’re fully recoverable, but can we do more? That’s the thing to look at. It’s, Yeah, we have everything that we need in our shop, but can we be better? Can we go up and level up to the next level? That’s what we’re really trying to do with exploiting our current tool set as well.
[14:44] – Speaker 2
Well, it may I think that is a way of innovating that maybe gets overlooked. Some people look at innovation as it’s got to be implementing brand new technology into the fold, but how can you take what you’ve got and do things better? Yes.
[15:00] – Speaker 1
If you think of it, you’ve already paid for what you have. Why pay for something new that if your tool can already do it and you just need to learn it a bit better? Again, it comes down to working with other… Again, working with other users at a conference, they’ve experienced We’ve experienced so many of these heartaches and pitfalls. So just talking with other individuals here, and we’re all life-minded individuals, we’ll find others that have had the same problem or have the similar problem, and we can reach out to our consultants and work with them to get a solution Well, so you’re…
[15:31] – Speaker 2
I mean, obviously, you’re active in the Dv2 community. You’re chairing the conference. How did you get involved in IDUG?
[15:38] – Speaker 1
I got in… So seven years ago was my first IDUG. I attended. It was IDUG Anaheim. My co-worker, Brian Labe, he was presenting there as well, and he attended many IDUGs in the past, and he said, Why don’t you come on out, too? So I managed to get the funding and the approval to go to IDUG. And again, when I first stepped foot and when we had the keynote, I was just in awe. I was like, this was a whole other experience that I needed to have more of. And then again, sitting in sessions, I’m like, I thought I knew a fair bit at my place. At that point in time, I thought I knew enough about DB2 to get by, but there was so much more to learn. It just really opened your eyes and your mind as to what is all out there. Then again, you just sitting down listening to other users speak as well, doing presentations. My first eye dug, I sat in listening to other users, came to my second eye dug where I actually presented. I went from being a first-time attendee to the second year being a first-time presenter.
[16:38] – Speaker 1
Then by third year, I was a presenter again, and I joined the CPC, the Conference Planning Committee. Because again, I wanted to share with… Whatever I received, I wanted to freely give back again. Everybody else here, all the other experts, they gave me so much information. I want to help them out as well. I want to help out other attendees, other first-time attendees, get hooked just like was.
[17:00] – Speaker 2
I mean, I was going to ask you how IDug has really changed over the years. I know there was this brief stunt in your time at IDug, we might call COVID.
[17:12] – Speaker 1
Where I lost so much hair and went a lot more gray? Yes, so IDug has changed. So COVID definitely changed everything. The way that we do conferences, I mean, we have the virtual aspect now. And when we went back in person, we’re still continuing on with that virtual and offering about 30% of the conference to virtual attendees. So you can be from anywhere in the world and still get that content live and on demand after the fact, too. Another big change is 9: 00 AM start times. You may laugh, you may smile. That is the biggest benefit that IDug has changed, the number of compliments that I’ve received for starting at 9: 00 AM now. We used to always start at 8: 00 AM, and especially 8: 00 AM seems okay, right? I mean, a regular business day, 8: 00 to 4: 00, that’s okay. But you’re also going to bed at a regular hour. You don’t have the social events after hours, too. It’s a long day of learning. When you’re sitting in sessions, six sessions a day, six hours of education learning. It’s a lot. It’s draining. We were able to push the conference back to 9: 00 AM, and everybody got an hour of sleeping in, and we’re very appreciative of that.
[18:26] – Speaker 1
That’s one big change. Another big change is consistency. Hour-long sessions across the board starting at the same time every day. That was a big thing, too. Just getting that conference model set for attendees so that this way they don’t have to think, Oh, is it 3: 00 o’clock today for this session, or is it 3: 10, or is it 3: 15? You always, if it’s 3: 00 PM Monday, it’s going to be 3: 00 PM on Wednesday. So it’s the same time across the board. We’ve been trying for many years just to get that consistency done and set. I think we’ve nailed right now. And also in working with both conferences, actually with all the conferences, especially our main flagships EMEA and North America, and to have those two conferences run and feel the same. Because we really want that when you attend either North America or IDUG EMEA, you’re attending an IDUG conference. So that’s what we want you as an attendee to really experience and feel you’re attending IDUG. It’s not that you’re attending a separate event and it feels different than IDUG North America. We want to have the same for both.
[19:25] – Speaker 2
I appreciate the 9: 00 AM start time because what I see is after the sessions are done is where you’re building your community in between the sessions on the breaks and meals and then afterwards. It’s an opportunity to connect. Absolutely. That’s something you don’t get on virtual.
[19:46] – Speaker 1
No, you do not. That is missed out on virtual. That’s a piece that’s really missed out on virtual. That again, you get to listen in a session just like a webinar. You get to listen in a session. Don’t get me wrong, it is great for learning. You can always take that back and listen to it again, but you do miss that personal aspect of being able to reach out to somebody else or just comment to the person next to you and say, Hey, do you have that as well? Or what about this setting here? So having that little, just like being in the office as well, having that water-cooler chat. When we all are working from home, we really lost that water-cooler chat and just seeing how everybody’s doing. That’s really what you get at the conference, too. You get that personal aspect of the conference. It’s the number of friends that I have and really close friends over the years here that I’ve met. It’s an unbelievable experience. It’s almost like cheers when you come back, like everybody knows your name.
[20:37] – Speaker 2
That’s right. I’ve got one last question for you. I’ve talked a lot I’ve talked to a lot of people lately about talent development in mainframe and how we’re getting more and more new people into the space. I’m going to ask you, what advice do you have for someone that’s new to main A mainframe.
[21:00] – Speaker 1
Someone that’s new to mainframe? Somebody that’s new to DB2, for sure, I can comment on that. So I know at IDug, the one plugin that I put in is for DB2 fundamentals. So IDug does offer a DB2 fundamentals course, which is fully customizable to the attendees. It’s intended to be a beginner intermediate advance for all walks. It’s really for the newer DBA that hasn’t really touched DB2 and you want to learn from the ground up. But now, the group I was talking to the instructor yesterday, and he said that they’re doing it all advanced. So all the DBAs that are in there, all the CISPROGs, they’re more advanced, and they want to learn the really advanced stuff, which I think is really cool. So whatever walk you’re from, if you’re from really beginner to really advanced, that’s there that runs in parallel with the IDUG. And again, if you feel that you already have that knowledge there, you can either attend IDug, and they’re both running at the same cost as well. So they both run in parallel. And with the DB2 fundamentals, you also get the added bonus of sitting in the IDug keynotes as well as some of the partner presentations.
[22:01] – Speaker 1
You get some of the additional benefit of IDug, too. But one of the big things for learning and continuing to learn, attend webinars, listen, want to learn. It and tech is a lifelong learning. I have that ingrained in my mind. I knew, like I said, when I was a really young kid, that I wanted to be in tech, and I learned very, very, very quickly that tech means you’re learning nonstop. If you stop learning, you’re going to be stale and your craft, your skills are no longer going to grow. I would say you have to really retrain yourself again. I would just with how much DB2 has changed, the mainframe has changed. Keep with it. Work with mentors, work with peers, attend conferences, I done. One of the big things I would say, too, is if you are really new in the industry, find a mentor at your shop and get them to take you under their wing to show you the ropes, to show you how things are done, the processes are as well. Because the main thing, it’s very logical. Even if you are on the green screen, everything is complex but yet simple.
[23:09] – Speaker 1
But it does take time to learn. Those people that have that experience, they’ve been at the companies for a long time. We have very experienced people that are at Sun and even at my old shop as well, people that have been there for decades, and they’re willing, they want to teach others as well, so this way they can retire. Because if they get that skill set out of their heads into newer, younger individuals, and they’re at that age or past the age of retirement, well, hey, the company will be okay. They can move on to the next stage of life and then have the younger generation become the more advanced. It’s learning from experience. For me, it was learning from doing. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s why we have our development regions. That’s why we have our sandboxes. That’s how I learn. It’s just from hands-on.
[23:59] – Speaker 2
Well, I think that’s great advice because if there’s anything, this is such a welcoming community. I don’t think that anyone can argue that coming to a conference like this and asking a question is not the best place to be.
[24:14] – Speaker 1
For sure. I mean, one of the things that I love saying to people is, I love hearing stupid questions because the people that are like, Oh, I don’t want to ask, that’s a dumb question. But a dumb question means that you don’t know and you want to be certain. They’ll answer it. It’s like, Hey, that means you’re paying attention. That means you to learn. Because the only way to solve ignorance, for me, is to ask. If I don’t know something, I’ll ask and find out. I’ll make a mistake for sure. I’m going to make mistakes along the way. It’s part of being human because you pick yourself up again and learn from your mistakes and move on. And that’s why it’s all experience-based. You’re learning from it, you learn from doing, and learn from others as well.
[24:53] – Speaker 2
Absolutely. Well, Chris, thank you so much for giving me some time today.
[24:56] – Speaker 1
Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thank you.
[25:01] – Speaker 3
Thank you for tuning in to another enlightening episode of the Planet Mainframe podcast. We hope you’ve gained valuable insights and discovered new horizons in the world of technology. This is the Planet Mainframe podcast signing off. Stay curious.
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