I have to think very hard to remember how I used to work before the advent of VMSHARE. It is the same exercise as to try and answer the familiar question "how did I spend my evenings before the arrival of television".
VMSHARE was designed as a means of conducting the business of the SHARE VM group between conferences. However, this original purpose was quickly overshadowed by its role as a means of assisting the function of the system programmer:
The original impetus behind VMSHARE was the need to provide a means of taking care of VM Project business between SHARE meetings. But, about three minutes after the first person logged on, VMSHARE became primarily a technical forum for VM system programmers and user support people. Of course, the conference is still used for SHARE business, such as the drafting of requirements. And, all-in-all, it now provides the functional equivalent of a SHARE meeting.
VMSHARE was announced to the VM community of SHARE at the 47th Conference in Montreal in August, 1976. It was introduced as the "VM Communal Bath and Login". Dave Smith convinced his employer TYMSHARE to provide the conference and the networking to the SHARE VM Project at no charge.
Hiltz and Turoff report that the most important time for any new conference, the time when it will either succeed or fail, is the period between commencement and reaching critical mass. Critical mass is defined as the number of users required to make contributions to the conference in order to make it worthwhile for users to be interested in logging in regularly. VMSHARE survived this period in an interesting way:
Then, Dave (Smith) came to SHARE and told the VM Project to start using the conference. If you've ever tried to start a conference yourself you know that it can be very difficult to get off the ground. A conference is of no value until a goodly number o people have begun participating regularly. But, Dave knew how to take care of that problem Members of the VM Project soon learned that to go a week without logging onto VMSHARE was to invite a call from Dave. Dave's stature within the project - physical, intellectual, and moral - was such that nobody said "no" to him. As a result, the conference soon blossomed into the heart and soul of the VM community and became absolutely essential to people supporting VM systems. (Varian, 1986)
Why reaching this critical mass leads to a self-sustaining conference can be understood in the light of the following observation:
We have used electronic mail when our bosses have.. Once the manager of a group begins to pass around information, meeting announcements or even work assignments by means of electronic mail, the people in that group become frequent users of the mail system. (McQuillan, 1980:8 quoted in Kerr and Hiltz, 1982)
By the time the next conference came around in March of 1977, more than half of the project members had registered to use the conference. The critical mass had been reached and surpassed! VMSHARE was growing strongly because it was producing results and capturing people's imagination.
Indeed, within three years the VMSHARE conference was extended to Europe when Charles Daney invited members of SEAS to join in 1979. The availability of cheap and reliable international networking had allowed the conference to bridge the Atlantic.
Between 1976 and 1985, VMSHARE was supported without cost by TYMSHARE. By 1985, the network costs were impinging on TYMSHARE to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per month. The decision was then made to transfer the conference to McGill University and to be self-supporting. The move was made in September of 1985 and has been there ever since. (See "Becoming Self-Supporting".)
After the switch to McGill network charges were introduced. It is interesting to note that at first there was a drop in membership of around one-third to a half. After this initial loss there a period of regrowth was entered. (See "Becoming Self-Supporting".)
The level of growth is shown in "Growth of VMSHARE 1985-1988".
For users in North America the cost per month is $US100 and that includes all network charges. For users outside North America the network charges are absorbed by the user but the monthly charge is only $US50. If it were all possible the charge would be $US0!
After 13 years of operation the VMSHARE conference now consists of 4000 plus files taking up almost 70Mb of DASD. The conference is organized into fora pertaining to various areas of interest or problems. Each forum takes the form of a file. Each file is identified by a file type and file name. File types may be among the following:
The filename identifies the particular area of interest to which the discussion, problem etc. refers. For example,
The types of discussions held on the system include:
Today the contents of the conference are shadowed (i.e. copied) in over 200 sites world wide. It is keenly watched by IBM authors and developers who contribute often to the discussions. This alone has made VMSHARE an incredibly useful tool. VMSHARE has also provided much to IBM in return.
VMSHARE saved IBM expense and embarrassment over and over in the years that followed, as well as providing customers with expert assistance and early warning of problems. It also allowed more dialogue between IBM and customer technical people than had ever been possible before. (Varian, 1989)
VMSHARE is serviced by very small bureaucracy that is made up of the members who fill honorary positions. The conduct of the conference is regulated by a peer group system. There is an ettiquette which is not legislated but adhered to owing to a strong sense of community. There is a lot of encouragement given to new users of the system by the so called old hands. A user is able to identify specialists in a given field and almost always that person is accessible and willing to help. Appendix B. "Benefits of VMSHARE" illustrates the types of reactions many VMSHARE users have to the system.