Destination z's Article about women on Mainframe and Verhoef's 25th Aniversary

https://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/ibm-z-your-mothers-mainframe?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091919-r_DzInsider%20(1)%20Live%20Send&utm_content=Article%202

Above is the link to Destination z's Article about women in Mainframe. It prompted my thinking about women in the Mainframe world, its connection to Verhoef Training's 25th Birthday on 1st November and where the Verhoef group of companies started. This is what I was told:

It started with the late Bryan Cornelius Verhoef, a Dutch South African (and a surprisingly nice one - if you get the link to spitting Image). He worked for IBM in Rochester, New York and was involved with two projects:

1. The Scheduling Control Block for the MVS Operating System, the forerunner to z/OS.
2. A field project between IBM, San Francisco Power and Light and United Airlines called the Passenger Airline Reservation System (PARS) which then mutated into TPF I believe? TPF is now and OS in its own right used extensively by the Airline industry. This was the first time a user could browse, update, amend and delete records in what is effectively real time. The PARS project was subsequently shipped to IBM Hursley in return for the PL/1 programming language and the geniuses at Hursley developed it into CICS. As you know CICS became a global product.

So, back in 1993 Bryan told me the PARS project was headed up by a lady named Caroline Pogue. Caroline would receive my vote for our lady of the Mainframe because I couldn't imagine an IT industry where only Batch Processing was available any more than I can imagine IT without that new fangled webby thing, what do they call it, oh yes, the Internet.

Shortly after that, in 1980, Bryan Cornelius Verhoef started Verhoef Information Packages in New Jersey. Quite some going Bryan, 39 years in total and, come November 1st, 25 in the UK.

Another ditty next week

PS. I'm not precious about these facts so do correct thiem if you know differently.

Regards

David