GSE-NL National Conference 2017
Over 200 Mainframe professionals gathered in Almere last Thursday to attend the “National Conference 2017″ organised by the Dutch region of Guide Share Europe. This year’s theme was Digital Transformation and zdevops was one of the many sponsors.
Besides the known suspects from the various Dutch Enterprises there were also Belgian Students who attended a “Master the Mainframe”-meetup.
Above a picture of the ‘main room’. This is where the keynotes where presented.
Richard Gamblin & Frank van der Wal (both working at European level in the domain of Digital Transformation) kicked off with a marvellous session titled “Gluren bij de buren - How organisations are adopting Digital Transformation” sharing real-life examples of the projects they are involved in. Their success factors, pitfalls and the motivation for major enterprises whose business critical processes are centred around IBM Z.
After eight breakout sessions and a lovely lunch-break Peter Korsten, Global Thought Leader for IBM took us one step further and talked about the next phase of Digital Transformation in his keynote titled : “Digital ReinventionTM, the next phase of using your digital assets and processes” sharing the possibilities that arise once an enterprise goes ‘all-in’ on digitalization.
Eight breakout sessions further into the day we were treated to an awesome keynote, presented by Zoe Chilton of Red Bull Racing about they way they run their IT. Very enlightening to hear how, in the Formula-1 sphere, there’s only a “one-week-sprint” to deliver a ‘brand new car’ tuned up to the bolts for the next race. Awesome stuff!
All in all a very awesome day. If you want to see what other people had to say, go and #natconf17 on twitter :)
For those who missed it: here’s some pictures...
And yes, that was a real Formula-1 car standing at the entrance!!!
Keep an eye out for next years conference, as this event is getting better every year!! If you want to stay connected to GSE-NL, and their upcoming events, make sure to leave your email address at their MailChimp signup page.
We’ll be there next year, hope to see you there!














