IT Social Hour: Meet the Team Behind ‘Big Iron Bits’ (Including Chaz and Reg!)
In this episode, we look behind the scenes of “Big Iron Bits,” a workplace mockumentary following a misinformed CIO’s mainframe awakening
Click here to listen to the audio-only version of this podcast
Click here to watch “Big Iron Bits”
The following transcript has been edited for clarity:
Andrew Wig: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of IT Social Hour. I’m your host, Andy Wig, senior editor at TechChannel. And today’s episode’s going to be a little bit different from the kind of stuff we normally cover. Today we’re covering a piece of marketing and entertainment called Big Iron Bits. It’s from Broadcom and it is a hit. It’s racking up thousands, tens of thousands of views. It is a mocumentary style show about a CIO who arrives at a company and he’s kind of got his own ideas about the mainframe and the people at the company kind of try to set him straight. You’ll learn all about that. But it is very funny. Pause this right now and go watch it if you haven’t seen it. But we’ve got five guests on today’s show who will tell us all about Big Iron Bits. We’ve got the marketing team from Broadcom that helped bring it into existence.
We got Keelia Estrada Mohler, John Kaplan and Joe Doria. Then we will bring on Pete Postiglione. He plays the show’s main character, Chaz. That’s going to be a lot of fun. And then we’re going to hear from Reg Harbeck, a real mainframer, a true mainframe enthusiast and a friend of Tech Channel. And he’s going to tell us about his experience at being part of the show. He’s, I believe, in episode five, and he’s going to tell us a little bit about that experience and he’s just going to share his enthusiasm about the mainframe like he does. So anyway, let’s get this going. Let’s learn about Big Iron Bits. Welcome, Keelia, John and Joe. How are you guys doing?
Keelia Estrada Moeller: Hi Andy. Good.
John Kaplan: Nice to see you. Hi, Andy.
Estrada Moeller: Yeah. Thanks for having us on.
Wig: Yeah, good to see you guys. Do you want to maybe we’ll just have you quick each introduce yourselves and just tell us what you do at Broadcom.
Joe Doria: I guess I’ll go first. I’m Joe Doria and I lead the marketing organization and division here at Broadcom for mainframe software.
Kaplan: All right. And I’m John Kaplan. I’m on the marketing team in charge of brand and large campaigns like this Big Iron Bits. So it’s been fun project to be working on.
Estrada Moeller:
And I am Kelia Estrada Moeller, also part of the marketing team at Broadcom. I work specifically on content. I do a lot of video projects and social media.
Wig: All right. And you are the team or part of the team that made Big Iron Bits happen. And so you’re in the best position to just tell us what is Big Iron Bits all about?
Kaplan: So Big Iron Bits was an idea we started with and not really knowing where it was going, but we wanted to make something fun that would be accessible to fun to mainframers, but also adjacent in the IT space. And at the root of it, it’s really a mainframe mythbusters show with a completely different take. We address common misconceptions about the mainframe through the lens of a new boss that enters that doesn’t have all the right information and a team of tried and true mainframers that want to believe in it and know all of its capabilities, use that to teach him. One of the fun things about the show is we designed the characters to be relatable. And we hope, and we’ve heard that as people watch, they say, “Oh, I know that guy.” Or, “I worked with a Larry before and, oh, I know someone like that.” Or, “I once had a boss like Chaz.” And so it’s designed to be relatable from a lot of different aspects. I know Keelia or Joe, do you have any different takes to add?
Estrada Moeller: Yeah. I mean, even the premise behind each of the episodes, it’s inspired by real situations that mainframers face every day. If you look at the latest episode we just dropped, it’s about Chaz saying, “Well, Larry’s retiring.” And that stemmed from the fact that people think all of this mainframe talent is retiring. There’s no one to replace them. There’s no new talent in the pipeline. Everything needs to shut down because there’s no talent there, but there is. And so things like that, real scenarios are inspirations behind each and every one of these episodes. And even though they’re fun and entertaining, everything is rooted in truth. The situations are rooted in truth. The facts that Alice cites just deadpan to the camera in episode one, all rooted in truth, the characters themselves. I’ve been in the mainframe space almost 10 years now, and I can tell you I’ve met a Chaz, I’ve met an Alice, I’ve met a Ravi, and I have definitely met many Larrys in the past. So that’s what I would add to that.
Doria: And I’ll jump in here too. For me, and I could trump Keelia’s 10. I’m 18 years since I started actually full-time working on mainframe. And for me, the premise is this idea that the platform has largely been misunderstood. And for my 18 years, I would say that’s true, misunderstood by many. And for those that are not in the know, it’s an interesting challenge to bring somebody like that along. And I think that’s where Chaz comes in episode one and he really does not have any background or knowledge or wherewithal with respect to mainframe. So the typical way we would take on a challenge like this would be, at least in my tenure on doing this type of stuff, is customer stories, talk about their success on the platform. We talk a lot about, and many others do too, about how technology that enables the business is where mainframe basically shoulders that for many decades now.
So that’s kind of where like, oh, okay, John talked about this, when we got sat down and Keelia too, and we’re looking at this situation of Big Iron Bits, which was an early name, by the way, that stuck, right? It kind of came up on the idea of SNL bits and that type of thing. And we’re like, “Hey, this could be a cool way to engage the audience maybe in a different way and maybe even a broader audience in a different way.” And that’s kind of where it all started to bring that fun and entertainment side to it, but for a very serious strategic purpose, which is to really talk about how the platform value is there. And so yeah, that’s kind of where it started for me when we were talking about this. And I can’t believe we’re actually here now with what we dropped three and soon we drop the fourth episode. So we’re well into season one.
Wig: And this is, I mean, so this is a story mainframers have been trying to tell for a long time about the value of the mainframe and dispelling certain misconceptions that are out there. But the way this is being told, as far as I know, is different, this humorous approach with this mockumentary series. Joe, when they first came to you with this idea, I’m curious what you thought of it.
Doria: Yeah. I mean, listen, I’ve been right in the middle of trying to tackle like how do we get the real story out for a long time. And at this point, 18 years in, I’m thinking, “Hey, this idea of being fun and engaging and funny is a great way to tell this story.” And so yeah, really, that was at the heart of it for me and I’ve embraced it. Of course, Keelia and John are producing and managing this program and they’ve just done fabulously to get it to where it is today. And I can already see season two in our future if I say it that way. But yeah, fun and engaging and also consumable because these episodes are what, three minutes in duration. So if you haven’t watched, if you haven’t paused the way Andrew asked you to pause and check it out, you can watch the first three episodes in about 10 minutes, which is also a key part of this.
It’s like, let’s make it very consumable so people can be able to watch and enjoy it and hopefully anticipate the next one that’s coming.
Kaplan: I’ll say that when we were starting on this, Joe was enthusiastic and gave us the green light to do three pilot episodes and then we worked through the first scripts and as soon as he and other leaders read them, they gave us a thumbs up and just said, “Go do all 12 for season one. We get it now. We get it. Go for it.” So it was really fun to go from idea to kind of scripting outlines, to seeing a script, to then filming. And then just every stage it’s gotten more exciting.
Estrada Moeller:
Yeah. Seeing the script, I think is really what made it most real for me because you go from, you outline 12 different episodes in a deck and you have a meeting with the writer and debrief him. And then he sends over the first script and we were like, “This is going to work. This is going to work.” And I think also it speaks to the spirit of teamwork because we went to the writer and we worked with the director and it’s like we have all of these collaborative conversations because we each have these individual strengths and ideas, but all of that collaboration is what led to a successful end product from outline to script to real episode.
Kaplan: And don’t forget all the collaboration with our subject matter experts around the business to make sure the things we are bringing out were problems or challenges that our customers and the ecosystem and are really talking about or facing or struggle with and that the solutions are accurate. So it was a lot of folks involved to make it what it is, which was awesome.
Estrada Moeller: Right. Because as important as it was for it to be funny and entertaining, it was even more important for the facts that we included and the real live situations and potential solutions to be factually accurate and grounded in truth, because otherwise it’s just another fun show; it doesn’t have business value. And it’s both.
Wig: And so, I mean, you were clearly confident this was going to work out pretty well. And so far, early returns, first episode, 85,000 views on YouTube just for that one episode alone. I think you’ve got some internal total numbers from across all platforms that are bigger than that. You can share those if you want. But what do you think so far? I mean, how satisfied are you so far in these, how well the show has been received?
Kaplan: Well, in this space, in B2B space and B2B mainframe, you typically get happy around—1,000 or 5,000 views is, wow, huge success. And after we launched, Keelia, myself, and another member of our team, Todd, had a chat going. And as fast as we could check and type back, the numbers were just growing and growing and growing. So we were beyond a ecstatic at like 16,000 views and they just keep going up. So we are very happy that it’s out there and people are enjoying it. And that was the goal. Rally the ecosystem has kind of been our mantra. Let’s make something that gets people excited to be mainframers. The number of people who have said, myself included, I shot it off to my family and said, “I know you guys really don’t know what I do. You don’t understand it. This is a product of what I do, the show, but also it speaks to the space I work in, in mainframe.” And a lot of people have shared similar stories of, “Oh, I can finally tell my family what I work on in the way that they care or they listen.”
Estrada Moeller: So that exact point, I’ll pick up on that. I think this show is relatable and funny and entertaining and informational, even if you don’t … So we all work in the mainframe space, right? So we can relate to all of the aspects of these episodes, but even when you are not a part of this ecosystem, it’s funny. And I know that because I watched my whole family just stream it in my mom’s living room for fun because my mom was so excited that this was a project that I had worked on. And so they were just cracking up. And by the end of the four videos, including the trailer, they were like, “That was so good. That was like The Office. I feel like I’m watching The Office.” And then by the end, they actually understood things about the mainframe that even though I had told them those things in the past, I guess they just didn’t listen because I didn’t do it in a funny enough way.
But I think that speaks to why this is also performing so exceptionally well because people outside of the ecosystem, not just mainframers are watching it.
Doria: Yeah. For me, I’ll add in too, the whole strategy for us is about bringing our expertise forward and just listening to you, Keelia, talk about, “Yeah, this is not just fun and entertainment.” We’re bringing our experts into these as themselves. When they’re coming to the real situations of the different episodes and trying to address maybe the things that are, as I said earlier, misunderstood and understand the platform better. I mean, that’s what it’s all about, but the expertise is one thing we know as mainframers … And by the way, I’ll say this to you, Andrew, too, Reg is not the only mainframer that’s coming on here. There’s three right here too. We’re marketers, but we’re mainframers too.
And so yeah, definitely getting that expertise around the platform to be understood too and that it’s available. To your comments, Keelia, about the whole skills challenge that’s out there. The skills challenge too is not a mainframe problem too. I feel like I want to say that. It’s really an IT-wide problem. And so there’s tremendous opportunity out there for folks that want to have a career in tech and technology, and mainframe is a haven for that too. There’s tons of opportunity there and you can be an expert in this space and really have a successful career here, a testament to the three of us right here.
Wig: So that message of the mainframe, everything we all know that it’s all about, the backbone of basically the global economy. So you had to get that message across to the actors too. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like working with them and kind of coaching them up on the mainframe and making sure everybody was kind of on the same page with all that?
Kaplan: That was one of the really fun unexpected parts or maybe it should have been expected, but you just weren’t thinking about it. And as we were on set and they’re professional actors and they don’t know anything about this space, jobs don’t put them in enterprise IT environments. So it was fun to watch them working and then we’d find moments to go, “Wait, let us explain this detail to you. ” And to watch them be completely blown away and amazed and as I learned more about it and by many days into filming, you could see that they were starting to discover things on their own and do their own research so that they could go into the next scene more informed and play the characters as authentically as they could. Keelia, I think you have the story best about the numbers being real, if you want to share that.
Estrada Moeller: Yeah. So in the first episode, there’s a section where Alice just starts rattling off statistics about the mainframe and all of the different industries that rely on the mainframe. And she has these exact numbers. And one of the actors came up and was practicing the lines as actors do, and he says it out loud and he’s like, “Is that real?” I said, “Yeah, that’s a real number. Those are all real numbers.” And later we talk about the number of transactions that the mainframe processes … Is that a real number too? Yep, that’s a real number. So we just talked about—
Kaplan: That led us to a whole conversation about how big a trillion really is. I think we lost half a day mapping out how big a trillion is because it’s unfathomable really for … So that was funny.
Estrada Moeller: It really is. And we just talked about, this is edutainment. I think I heard someone refer to it as education and entertainment, and it was education, but also entertainment for even the actors, for even the crew members who were there during our filming dates. So I think we saw that happening in real time and that gave us an indicator that it would serve that same purpose too for the people who saw the episodes once they were streamed.
Wig: So I think last question I have for the three of you here is, so Joe, you’re the boss here, right? You’ve been in the mainframe marketing 18 years. I’m curious how just this marketing approach of using humor to market the mainframe, how much of a departure is that from the norm in what you’ve seen in your long career?
Doria: I haven’t seen it in a digital program like this in my career. I think humor and entertainment in person, at events, in different ways that we engage and meet with customers maybe has come into the mix over my 18 years, but I’ve never seen it programmatically done like this where we actually lead on it and use it as a hook, if you will, for drawing in the audience and wanting to understand. And I think the way this works is even if they, maybe a little bit going too far with this, but if they come into it not trying to understand the mainframe better, they can’t help but leave understanding the mainframe better. You see what I’m saying? So it’s like a little bit of a … Strategically, that’s great, right? You’re getting folks to enjoy themselves, get to know these actors, get to know the story, get to see how the advocacy over the season starts to change for Chaz.
I know he’s coming on. And yeah, so it’s just a fabulous way to get people talking and engaging around the platform and understanding it better. So it’s fabulous. But I haven’t seen it done like this for sure in a big program campaign.
Wig: Yeah. I suppose, I mean, kind of knowing mainframe people and kind of feeling out the vibe among mainframers. I guess it’s not a surprise that a humorous approach would work, right? I mean, I think a lot of these folks are pretty funny people and enjoy like fun things, right?
Kaplan: Well, in B2B marketing is traditionally pretty dry information first and everyone that we’re marketing to, they’re still humans that have a lot of personality and you don’t go to work and suddenly put on a different hat that makes you excessively serious. Humor is universal. Not everyone enjoys the same type of humor, but why not bring some levity to a very serious, important, globally important product? It’s very serious, but we can still find a way to make it enjoyable.
Wig: All right. Well, this has been fascinating just to hear about the behind the scenes of how Big Iron Bits came to be. I think now is the time to bring on the star of the show Chaz, a.k.a. Pete Postiglione. How are you, Pete? Welcome. Oh, looks like we … Oh, there
Doria: Oh, there we are. There we are. You were frozen there for a second, Pete.
Kaplan: No, that was Pete being Pete.
Estrada Moeller:
Yeah. Oh, he’s muted.
Kaplan: No, you’re muted. He’s not. He’s not muted. Oh, okay.
Estrada Moeller: He’s just messing with us. How about now?
Wig: There we go.
Pete Postiglione: How are we doing?
Wig: Doing good. How’s it going?
Postiglione:
It’s going great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m a little nervous. I’m not going to lie. I’m a little nervous, but it’s fun.
Wig: So Pete, tell us about Chaz. What’s Chaz’s deal?
Postiglione:
Chaz. I’ll start off by saying I think there’s a little bit of Chaz in everybody. They don’t want to admit it, but I think there is. And Chaz, at his core, he’s a good human being, but he has these grandiose ideas in his mind that don’t always play out in the real world. And so in his mind, he’s got it all figured out. And he’s trying desperately to kill this whole mainframe idea. I don’t know why, because I think he goes and as the episodes progress, learns that it might not be such a bad thing, but he’s got his ideas that he wants to conquer this whole mainframe thing and sweep it under the rug. Cloud, the cloud. It’s the way to go.
Wig: And the Broadcom people here, they know all about Chaz. Isa Chazz type that comes in and has his own ideas. Who you folks, Broadcom people, what did you think of the way Chaz came out? Was it true to life? How real was his performance?
Kaplan: Was certainly over the top, but over the top by design. And I’ll say Pete brought a character to life that was far beyond, I think, our expectations. As I was saying earlier, idea to script, but then script, just seeing Pete and the other actors bring it to life and how they changed and evolved it, there was so much ad libbing because Pete would say, “This isn’t exactly how Chaz would say it. ” And we, because Chaz is in Pete and so he would say, “Can I say it like this? Is it still accurate?” And if it wasn’t one of the facts or something, we were like, “Yeah, absolutely.” And he was constantly pushing and asking us, “I think this is where Chaz would go. ” And that was super amazing to watch. So beyond my expectations.
Estrada Moeller: Yeah. And we were just talking about the actors learning about the mainframe too. I mean, we had a whole discussion with Pete about, in real life, there are indeed CIOs who come into organizations and they don’t know about the mainframe and they have this conception that they have to go all cloud, just like Pete was just talking about, but all of that is rooted in misinformation. And so we were educating him on, in real life, this is how a mainframe team would go about teaching their new CIO why the mainframe is actually incredibly crucial and important for an enterprise and for business success too. So all that was rooted in truth. So Pete was always asking questions and by the end of filming, he was just ad libbing and saying stuff about the mainframe that was catching us off guard. We’re like, “What did he just say? Oh, that was good.” Sorry, go ahead, Joe.
Doria: No, I was just going to say, for me, Pete’s rendition of Chaz is intelligently nuanced is the way I would put it. This is not laid out on a design board like how you do this. This guy does it and we all sit back in the production set and just, we sort of keep reliving how much we enjoy it because we see it happen on the production set and go to ourselves and look at one another, right? John and Keelia, we look at it as, “Well, we didn’t expect that. ” And then of course, when we see it all the way down to the final edit and release it, it’s all there. So Pete, hats off to you. The rendition is really fabulous.
Postiglione: Thank you, everyone. That’s very flattering. I was wonderfully surprised when I read the scripts. John had spoken with me and spoken with my agent, and when we were talking about this whole thing, I was in. I was like, “Yeah, I love this. I’ve been working for Broadcom for a long time.” And I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely. Yes.” And then when I read them and I read the brevity of them and how quick and razor sharp they work to the funny, I was like, “Yeah, this could absolutely work.” And then being in the environment and working with the team and Josh who was our director, being able to collaborate the way we did, allowing me to go off on these crazy tangents because that’s kind of how my mind works and what brings Chazz to life, being able to collaborate like that and then just sit back and have Josh just kind of throw lines or John throw lines out and say, “Say this or try this one.” That whole process, I think I thrive in as an actor and I think all of the other cast members do as well because it’s truly what we want to do.
It’s a team sport and when you’re working as a team to bring it to life, it’s like we all want the best version of whatever that’s going to be. And so for me, I loved every bit of it. I loved every bit of it. And I was the guy that was like a trillion, a trillion transactions and then I learned a new word. I think it was like septillion, right Joe? Something like that, was it? Something like that. I don’t even know those words exist. And the beauty of Chaz is, he’s so naive and as intelligently as Joe put it and nuanced as he put it, I didn’t want to know the facts because that helps Chaz stay dumbed down, so to speak, and not in the know of what the mainframe is really capable of. So I was learning, but like trying to deafen my ears to not understand those things and then be more surprised about what it was capable of doing, which hopefully came across.
And again, I do this because there’s this … I want people to laugh. That’s just the truth. I like making people laugh, but I had no idea the reach that this would have in this community alone and hearing the numbers blows me away. I’m blown away. I’ve done two other feature comedies, which I don’t even think came close to these numbers in these three-minute episodes about the mainframe. Who would have ever thought that this could be as big as it is, but I mean, I see a season two naturally. I’m like, Chaz can go crazy. He can go crazy with the information that he’s learning. And I don’t know, I feel like possibilities are endless and we’re doing it in the vein of The Office. We’re not trying to hide that, but it’s like a platform that most people are familiar with. So they’re comfortable with it immediately, which is also great.
And then the humor ensues and the education continues. So this Chaz guy, he’s like an international man of mystery. He’s Austin Powers who meets the most interesting man in the world and they have a love child with Peewee Herman. That’s Chaz.
Doria: Yeah. Well, I have to think about that one. I think I’m going to add to a shout out to the ensemble of Ravi, Larry, and Alice. And how that all came together and how you guys all do this creative process and this thing you guys do so well as actors in this, just amazing. So there’s a big shout out to the ensemble there too for all of us, for sure.
Wig: So Pete, you had heard of the mainframe, right, before? A lot of us have heard of it, right?
Postiglione:
Yes. I’ve heard of the mainframe.
Wig: Yeah.
Postiglione: My father used to work in data processing for a company called General Accident Insurance in Philadelphia. And he worked in this huge data production room, which was like a real to reel and a punch card, which I always kind of equate to the beginnings of mainframe in that world. So I was familiar, but not familiar with the hugeness of the transactions and how many industries it’s in and how many industries rely on it to do the computations and the transactions. And that blew me away. I heard some fact about a bank. I want to get this right. Was it Chase? John, am I saying that right? Was it Chase Bank who they had like X amount of transactions over X amount of years and not a single failed or missed transaction for this huge period of time. And that stuck in my head, I’m like, oh my.
I’m like, I go through a day, I make 75 mistakes daily. So to go through a series, I don’t even know what the number was, like 17 years, whatever it was. It was this huge number of years with no hiccups. And I’m like, wow, that’s crazy. For a bank, it’s crazy.
Sometimes, and I come from a generation where I had to fill out a withdrawal slip, right? I had to go to the bank and you get one number off and they’re like, “I’m sorry, we can’t do this. ” And I’m like, “Okay. All right. Well, let me try again.” But yeah, I was blown away by some of the stuff I was learning. And now, I always wanted to be a tech geek. That’s just the truth. I went to school to be a computer guy. I wanted to be a computer science major and I couldn’t pass Cobalt. And for all you people out there, I failed it twice, Andrew. Twice I failed it. And my guidance counselor or my advisor is like, “Hey, let’s try something else. Hey, what else do you like?” So then I became like this obsessed broadcast journalism person. So I got into communication arts and I’m like, “I love sports. Maybe I could do broadcast journalism. This is going to be great.” And then that went awry. So then I just started to write and then I became a graphics and computer, like a layout guy, and that’s kind of what happened. But I’ve always wanted to be in computers.
Doria: And now here you are. Let me ask you a question. Since you started in this program with us, how many dinners or gatherings in your circle of life where you’re with non-mainframers, have you started talking about, “Hey, do you guys know about this platform called…” Have you done that? Has that happened to you yet?
Postiglione: Not yet, but I do bring up Broadcom a lot, which I think is an interesting thing because I say, “Hey, you guys ever heard of Broadcom?” And majority of the people in my circle, some say yes, some say no, but they have no idea how big Broadcom is. And then I’m like, “You might want to look up Broadcom.” And then they look it up and they come back to me like, “You just did a what with who?” I’m like, “Yeah, we just did this whole web series with Broadcom.” And I’m like, “I can’t really explain it other than it’s coming out soon and it’s about the mainframe.” And it’s about this big, big company. So you might want to check that out. So those are the conversations I’m having.
Doria: Gotcha. Okay. I was just trying to see if you’re bringing Chaz out into the real world at all.
Postiglione: Well, like I said, Chaz lives in here. So every once in a while he’ll come out, but one thing about Chaz, he talks about himself in the third person. I never do that. Pete will never do that. Pete is like, he’s a geek in wearing this white guy’s face. He’s a super deep in there.
Wig: I’m glad you got to kind of fulfill your computer nerd dreams with this show. And yeah, I mean it’s appropriate.
Postiglione: COBOL is still used. I didn’t know that, but I found that out that it’s still used. It sure is. Amazing. And I’m like, “Well, okay. Well, maybe this is my time to … I’m going to pass this time.” Yeah.
Wig: And Chaz doesn’t know COBOL either, right? Right, I assume. So that’s perfect. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for telling us all about what it’s like to be Chaz, Pete, and you’re kind of having your eyes open to the mainframe world. It’s always fun to hear that outside perspective. So thanks for joining us and I hope it continues to be awesome, this series.
Postiglione: Yes, I am about to, when I sign off, I might go watch episode four that just dropped.
Wig: Oh, I can’t wait.
Postiglione: So I might watch that. I don’t even know what episode four … It was all a blur. What’s episode four?
Estrada Moeller: Oh, episode three. Episode three. That was Larry’s retiring.
Postiglione: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. With the croissants. Yep. Okay.
Estrada Moeller: Sometimes you got to break a few eggs.
Postiglione: Sometimes you got to break a few eggs. Yeah. I don’t even remember half of the stuff you said, which is so good. But Andrew, I just want to say thank you for having me on to talk about this. And you three have been so sweet to me and the whole team has been really so good to me. I just wanted to say thank you and whatever this leads to, great, but it was awesome to have worked on this and be a part of this team. So thank you very
Kaplan: Much. You’re the best. It’s been wonderful. Thanks for joining us.
Postiglione: All right, you guys, happy holidays and have a wonderful rest of the day.
Estrada Moeller: Thank you. You too. Bye, Pete. See you.
Wig:
All right. So now let’s bring in Reg Harbeck. I think our audience knows Reg, knows and loves Reg. Big time mainframer, mainframe enthusiast, the fourth mainframer we’ve got on this show. And he’s also our first return guest to IT Social Hour. If you’ve been watching IT Social Hour from the beginning, you maybe saw the IBM Champions episode we had him on. So he’s got that honor of being the first return guest to IT Social Hour. Very excited to have Reg Harbeck on. Reg, how are you doing?
Reg Harbeck: Doing great, thanks. Having a blast watching this conversation so far. And so excited about this whole concept of doing something really human about the mainframe. That’s always been a big emphasis for me is that the humanity of the mainframe and I’m just so impressed with what the team is doing.
Wig: Yeah. The humanity of the mainframe. And you appear as a human, as yourself, right? Is it episode five?
Estrada Moeller: It’s episode five.
Wig: Five, yep. Episode five. Why don’t you tell us, without giving any spoilers, maybe just tell us kind of what the premise of that episode is.
Harbeck: Well, basically what it comes down to is up until this point, everything happens inside the company. And so what they need is an outside person to give an objective confirmation of the facts about the mainframe just to really make it clear. And so as somebody who’s known to be an enthusiastic mainframe nerd, to bring me in is really, my opportunity is to just share that enthusiasm by just telling the truth that any mainframer out there knows and really confirm the exciting facts about just how important and relevant the mainframe is. And so I obviously have a lot of fun doing that.
Wig: Yeah. And I’m curious, this whole show is pretty unique idea in the mainframe space. What were your thoughts when you first heard about the idea and they came to you about it?
Harbeck: Well, I know the people who are doing this and each one of them is somebody I look up to and think is a pretty important and impressive member of the ecosystem. When they got together and put this together, it’s like, yes, I’m seeing the fruits of these people who’ve been working so hard to do something of real lasting value and it’s a brilliant new idea. I’ve been involved with a lot of ideas in the mainframe, writing songs for the mainframe. Obviously done a lot of interviews with people for the mainframe. And I’m even actually the SHARE keeper of the SHARE songbook. And so there’s all these wonderful human things we’ve had throughout the history of the mainframe, but this is the first time I’ve seen something at this level of professionalism and also this level of humanity that is a real opportunity to create an on-ramp for all the people in our lives who don’t know about the mainframe.
And we’ve tried so hard at dinners, at coffees, get-togethers to try and explain what it is we do with very limited success. And now we have something we can share with our friends and family and say, “This is it. ” And it’s like, ah, so I’m so impressed that these guys are doing this and I’m so excited to be part of it.
Wig: And what are mainframers like? Did you feel like the show was a pretty accurate representation of your community?
Harbeck: I was really impressed. I’ve encountered a lot of mainframers. I mean, the first thing that just strikes me about mainframers is their integrity and their confidence in the platform that gives them a level of confidence you don’t experience in every nerd, but that the mainframers may be nerds, but they have the confidence in the platform. And you see that in the characters here where it’s not about themselves, it’s about themselves in the context of something they know that works and they don’t have to have any fear about standing up and just sharing that truth. And so for me, it was so neat to see this representation of what we all experienced day in, day out for all the personalities we may encounter at work that this sort of unwritten commonality they have is that that mainframe, that’s just there, that’s just working and that’s going to work for the rest of my career.
Wig: They were saying kind of everyone knows a Chaz and the other characters too. Do you know a Chaz?
Harbeck: Well, I wouldn’t say I know a Chaz. The funny thing is in the world of mainframe, we all have that experience and most of us on the frontline don’t often encounter that Chaz directly. We encounter that Chaz through people who just had to talk to them, who had to move outside of the frontline and deal with upper management. There’s all these really interesting stories of CFOs especially who get all uptight because the mainframe is a single point of cost. And instead of seeing that as a strength, they see it as a problem. And so everybody talks about that. Companies that want to sunset the mainframe, one of my favorite stories is a company that finally admitted, they said, “We’ve been sunsetting this thing for so long, the sun’s coming up again.” And so we all have this experience of people who have been really stubborn about not understanding the role of the mainframe because the metrics in the mainframe don’t make sense in the distributed world.
They just make too much sense for a distributed computer to be depicted by them. And so part of our challenge here is to say, yeah, no, those are real numbers, just like we’re talking about a trillion, that these are numbers no other platform can even pretend to, and you have to get your head around the idea that it’s actually possible to do this stuff. And so you’ve got basically a whole world of people who just have to accept that these are really possible real numbers that are happening today on the mainframe. So that’s an exciting thing to be able to share.
Wig: And yeah, I mean, to get that message across, you kind of have to prepare yourself and get ready to act, I guess, like you did in Big Iron Bits. I’m wondering, did you, maybe this can be for the Broadcom folks. Did you do much coaching of Reg to get him ready? I know he had the knowledge he needed to do the job, but—
Doria: Actually it’s not about, for the folks that come in like an enthusiastic mainframer like Reg. By the way, I have to say, you’re like a classic example of an enthusiastic mainframer. And I mean, the platform, we haven’t said this, but it is about the people, the people that are the enthusiastic mainframers that run, develop, manage on the platform. So, sorry, I forgot the question now, but Reg is that entirely. Go ahead, Keelia. You pick it up from me.
Estrada Moeller: I’ll jump in here. So I mean, when I first entered the mainframe space almost 10 years ago, some of the first conversations I had were with Reg. My boss at the time said, “If you want to just learn about the mainframe, go talk to Reg. Try to talk to Reg maybe once a week.” And when you hear him talk, like for those of you who know Reg, he has a way of explaining things about the mainframe in a way that gets you to want to listen because he’s about the humanity of the mainframe too. It’s about making the mainframe accessible and relatable and understanding the humanity behind technology, behind the platform. So when we were trying to figure out during the writing process who to first bring into the show, to bring into the Big Iron Bits universe as a mainframer, Reg was the best option because that was my entrance into the mainframe, right?
Just hearing him explain it. And so for Chaz to go through that same process, hearing Reg talk about the mainframe. And Reg, by the way, has not seen a cut of his episode yet. And you will pretty soon hear, and I think you’re going to like it just as a heads up. It turned out fabulous, but he didn’t need to act and we didn’t need to prep him because he just needed to come onto the show and do what he’s so good at doing already.
Harbeck: All I had to do was act naturally.
Doria: Everybody who comes plays themselves, so they’re not acting, to Andrew’s original question. Go ahead.
Kaplan: I’ll say the only coaching I had to give Reg. I was on a Zoom type platform because that’s how Reg enters the show with Reg. And he was conversing with Larry and Reg was just having a conversation about the mainframe. Well, I had to remind Reg that this was an actor who doesn’t actually know anything about the mainframe because he was hitting him with some real good questions and the actor was just frozen. And so I’d have to feed him the answers, but that was the only reminder I had to give Reg. Like, “Hey, I know I told you his character knows everything about the mainframe. This guy doesn’t, so let’s throw him some easier questions.”
Harbeck: But I was so impressed. I mean, those actors clearly did their prep work and he came across so credibly that it was really comfortable essentially. I mean, starting with the script, but then improvising a conversation back and forth because he really played the role well.
Wig: Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like they’re pros for sure. And so we’ve talked about you being a mainframe enthusiast and the humanity of the mainframe. And kind of echoing Keelia, I think you were the first mainframer I ever talked to myself actually when I started doing this a little over a year ago. And so I remember coming away from that conversation very inspired and enthusiastic. And I’m just like, “Wow, this is all way deeper than I thought.” It was just fun stuff to ponder the way you frame things. So maybe I think it would be great to close this out by just having you tell us what is it about the mainframe that gets you so excited, especially about the humanity of the mainframe. And of course that ties into, we talked about that with the humor. We’re dealing with humans. Yeah. Why don’t you just, what gets you excited about the mainframe, Reg?
Harbeck: Well, I didn’t come from a technical family. I grew up in a very humanities family, but back when I first started my career, I discovered computers and I was hooked. But for my entire career, I’ve been paying close attention to the non-technical aspects of computing and then specifically, as of 1987, of the mainframe. And it’s really struck me that you have people talking about computing as other than humanity and even humanity becoming other than itself with computing with things like transhumanism. And I’m watching this whole time and saying, “No, this is a true expression of our humanity.” And you look specifically at the mainframe and everything that went into the creating of it and it has been a manifestation of thousands of years of the best of humanity. You go back to Socrates and Plato and they’re talking about techne and poasis or in any other direction back thousands of years and you move forward and you see how the mainframe has really taken up the mantle of what we’ve always been doing and embodied it with such excellence.
And it’s funny because on the one hand, for the past half century, we’ve been so focused on technology that we’ve kind of missed the fact that what’s really happening is humanity, that our inventions, our technology is exclusively a human thing. We don’t know any other animal around there that’s created computers. We’re the ones that are the computing-creating and the technology-creating species and we manifest who we are. And so this opportunity, having gotten to a milestone where we’ve really established an infrastructure, we’ve established a way of doing things using the mainframe, and we can take a step back and say, “Okay, what is it we’ve done?” Because the mainframe isn’t going away. Some people like to see the mainframes not going anywhere, but I like to see the mainframe is going everywhere and it becoming the underpinnings of whatever the future is because it’s become such a solid expression and manifestation of the very best of our humanity.
And now we can kind of rediscover all those other dimensions that make us human. I remember back in the early days of computing, one of the jokes, somebody’s going shopping for a computer and they say, “What colors does it come in?” These days, you can actually kind of have that, but just those human things, or Steven Jobs and his discovery of using fonts and not just a single way of doing text, all these little things that we thought were secondary turn out to be the stuff that we were doing computing for, the experience of living and being human, making ourselves more human. And so having established now this great platform that becomes the infrastructure for whatever the future is, is so cool knowing that what I do on the mainframe, whether it’s directly writing programs or configuring, or whether it’s creating stuff like this, this very episode, a thousand years from now, archeologists are going to be sitting there watching us and they’re going to have this weird aha experience as you hear us talking to them across the ages.
And this is what it was like in the early days of computing when computing really became a core aspect of our humanity when we were so focused on the technology and we were just rediscovering that it’s all only ever about humanity.
Wig: Reg, you’re blowing my mind over here, Reg.
Doria: Yeah, Reg. I don’t know. Maybe we should have you pull Pete aside and tell him some of that. Or hopefully he still listening. Oh, he’s heard all of it.
Harbeck: Well, you got more episodes to come.
Estrada Moeller: Yeah.
Wig: Yeah. Maybe we can do this again next year for season two. We’ll see. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you, Reg, Joe, Keelia, John, Pete. It’s been great learning about Big Iron Bits, hearing about all your enthusiasm for the mainframe, your mainframe learning journey, the behind the scenes, all of it. I really appreciate it. So to our audience, if you haven’t seen Big Iron Bits, go check it out. I promise you it is very hilarious. I think we’ve got 12 episodes total, right?
Estrada Moeller: Yeah.
Wig: Yep. And yeah, just explore that universe, get to know Chaz. And yeah, you can find that Broadcom Mainframe Software’s YouTube page, among other places probably. And also, don’t forget, visit techchannel.com/subscribe. You can sign up for our newsletter there, and that’s a way to make sure you’re getting all the latest on all things tech. All right, that’s it. Thanks everyone.