CICSdev Community

Don't you hate it too ? You're looking at a site which has (flashy !, flashy !!) a new holiday promotion. But when you're looking a bit closer, it turns out to be for 2009. To quote Homer : "Duh!". So when last week my sister asked me about setting up a website for a club we started to discuss the content of the site. So far, so good. But then I pointed out we hadn't talked about the most important part of it : updating and maintaining the website. Regularly adding new content, updating the agenda, removing older items etc. etc. Ouch ! So this means you have to at least once a week spend time maintaining the thing. Yes, it does. And if you don't : no information, no visitors, no nothing. So the idea was put to rest there and then.

For the same reason, I'm always a bit sceptical when I'm looking at yet another new community site. We've seen them come and go or perhaps rather stay but with no interesting content after a while.

But this one, that's apparently active since the beginning of the year, seems to be different : CICSdev or The CICSdev community. As they say themselves : "The CICSdev Community is the place to discuss, share and learn about developing for CICS". Well, I must say, it looks good : very easy navigation but also very interesting content. There's a blog that's e.g. mentioning on July 13 that the CICS TS V5.1 open beta, I also wrote about, is now available for download. There's a download tab where you find the information where to download this beta and the CICS TS V4.2 Developer Trial I also talked about earlier. There's a learning tab with articles, videos and presentation. I also like the participation tab. Did you know there's a forum ? I also found out (shame on me) , there's a CICS discussion list just like e.g. the IBM-MAIN list. If you're looking for the links, I deliberately let them out. So you have to go and have a look for yourself.

I hope I didn't put the expectations too high, or perhaps I do. So keep coming with new and interesting content !