Student competition in mainframe programming

As students, most of us are looking for our own knowledge, skills and the desire to acquire quality skills, but, unfortunately, not always those who study IT specialties today are given the opportunity to take part in really high-level work related to programming for complex systems.

For this reason, for the third time IBM has been organizing a student competition on mainframe programming on the System Z platform - “z / Master 2011”, which is held in Russia , Ukraine and Kazakhstan , for the first time in domestic spaces. The contest started on November 1, but for another month, until December 12, everyone has the opportunity to register (this can be done in the " Students " tab of the contest page or on a separate page ).

Actually, the main incentive to participate in the competition is that it has a training focus - to win it is not necessary to have initial experience with the IBM mainframe, as the organizers give each participant access to a real machine, and in the course of performing the tasks all students receive necessary theory and practice. The only thing you need to win - the desire, ability and desire to learn.


The competition is held in three stages : I. Introduction to the mainframe; Ii. Practical skills and III. Final test; it is important to complete the tasks in the sequence indicated But in order to take part in the next stage - you do not need to be the winner of the previous one, you just need to successfully complete the contest tasks. In addition, we prepared a pleasant surprise for all participants - those who successfully pass the second stage of the competition will be able to leave their resume in the IBM Student Opportunity System database, which is used by IBM customers and business partners around the world to search for potential job candidates. .
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As for the prizes, they are unlikely to disappoint the participants - all winners of the first round will be presented with T-shirts with the contest logo, those who came out the strongest in the second round will be given an mp3 player, finally, the most successful in the final round will receive tablet computers.

In order to preset all points above i, we also note that in order to participate in the competition, at least one of your teachers at the university must be registered in the IBM Academic Initiative program. But even if you don’t have such a person at a university or institute - you can personally ask him to do it, since the registration takes about 10 minutes and is available on the tab “ Teachers ” of the contest page.

The dates of the competition are as follows:

Registration takes place from 10/17/2011 to 12/12/2011
Competitive tests are issued from 11/01/2011 to 01/31/2012, after which the results will be summed up and prizes will be given to all the winners of different rounds.

If you want to gain valuable experience, learn how to work with mainframes and take part in the race for valuable prizes - hurry, the contest tasks have already begun to be performed by the participants!

Additional information, questions, suggestions can be sent to the organizing committee of the contest z / Master 2011: zmaster@ru.ibm.com

Good luck!

Update: fixed a bug with the registration deadlines for participation in the contest, now the publication is fully adequate and reality-relevant information.