Guests: Derek Britton, Dr. Cameron Seay, Reg Harbeck
Project: Open Mainframe Project (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk
Keyword: COBOL

Summary: The COBOL Working Group is a group that’s contained within the Open Mainframe Project. It aims to provide accurate information about COBOL, who’s using it, how it is used, and where it is used. Reg Harbeck, founding member of the COBOL Working Group, Derek Britton, co-chair of the COBOL Working Group, and Dr. Cameron Seay, also co-chair of the COBOL Working Group, join us from the Open Mainframe Project to delve deeper into what the COBOL Working Group is all about, how it works with other Open Mainframe Projects and more.

“I think it’s really neat to see that everybody got together and realized there was a need to give COBOL some visibility. COBOL is the opposite of a squeaky wheel. As they say, it’s like housework, something that nobody notices unless you don’t do it,” says Reg Harbeck. “We’ve been doing COBOL so consistently for so long that everybody’s forgotten that it’s running the world economy.”

Highlights of the show:

• What is the COBOL Working Group? What is the primary goal of the group?
• What is the significance of COBOL in today’s modern world?
• What are the details of the survey? What are the key learnings?
• How is the Group working on translating these learnings into actions to help the community?
• How does the COBOL Working Group work with other Open Mainframe Projects (like the COBOL Programming Course)?

About Derek Britton: Derek is the CO-Chair of Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Working Group and is the Director of Communications and Brand at Micro Focus.

About Dr. Cameron Seay: Dr. Cameron Seay is the CO-Chair of the Open Mainframe Project COBOL Working Group. He is also an Adjunct Professor for East Carolina University.

About Reg Harbeck: Reg is a founding member of the Open mainframe Project’s COBOL Working Group and is the chief strategist at Mainframe Analytics ltd.

About COBOL Working Group: The Group aims to promote the language by changing its perception and making materials more accessible to help more developers and students learn it on their mainframe journey.

About Open Mainframe Project: The Open Mainframe Project was founded in 2015, as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment.