Have you read this thoroughly?

Going into the summer I just want to point my readers (who are you, anyway!) to a very interesting article that I recently reread.
It is a very good interview of Christina Smart (JISC) with Patrick Masson. Patrick Masson is the former Director of Technology for the SUNY Learning Network. He talks extensively, and very honestly (!), about what happened when they tried to implement a Service Oriented Architecture at the State University of New York, an institution with 64 campuses, 30,000 faculty and 414,000 students.
I will leave you with some quotes from this interview, that you read as a sort of summary. About what the original vision was: "(..) we decided to move away from tool development – because that was already happening in lots of different places, the SLN 2.0 strategy was about providing a framework for those tools to plug in to. (..) We also wanted to take on a versionless approach with our development. (..) This would allow us to introduce new features incrementally. "
The SLN (SUNY Learning Network) 2.0 strategy went wrong because of this vision of moving away from tools and products. Read this: "(..) the administration didn’t like the SLN 2.0 strategy because it couldn't be easily communicated as an “out-of-the-box” solution, you had to understand then educate the users about new concepts like SOA, loose-coupling, data hubs, service buses and message brokers. We ran into the “Build vs. Buy” argument and fears over open source. We lost our support from senior management."
So, senior management was key here, as always :-). Read this last quote: "(..)At the high level people still don’t get it. How many senior managers in charge of technology on campus have a technical background? They might be procurement officers that are put in place to control the costs of technology and find single solution systems for the lowest price. Or maybe they are faculty and they are now responsible for e-learning and IT – how many information technologists are now Chief Information Officers? Not many. And where does the CIO fit in the overall management of a campus? Fundamentally there is a conflict between where we (the developers) are and where the decision makers are."
As I said: highly recommended reading! Patrick also has some things to say about creative students and teacher who already have abandoned, to a certain extent, the central LMS of their institution because it just doesn't do what they want!

{Dutch} Vlaanderen loopt voorop?

Op de Edusite is deze week een verhaal verschenen met als titel Open source elo groot in Vlaamse hoger onderwijs . Het artikel begint met de bewering dat het in Nederland maar niet wil lukken:
"Open source software heeft in het Vlaamse hoger onderwijs een steviger voet aan de grond dan in Nederland. Aanjager is de Universiteit Gent, dat als eerste universiteit de elektronische leeromgeving Dokeos in gebruik nam."
Ik heb een korte reactie geschreven, die ik hier zal herhalen:
De sceptische ondertoon over de situatie in Nederland, is mij iets te kort door de bocht. Je zult je verbazen over het aantal serieuze gebruikers (of testers) van Sakai en Moodle in Nederland.
Kijk maar eens wie er allemaal naar de Sakai SIG NL bijeenkomsten komen en zijn gekomen. Een indrukwekkend lijstje (hopelijk vergeet ik niets): UvA, UT, EUR, UU, HS Leiden, Hotelschool Den Haag, ISS, TU/e en Saxion Hogescholen.
Meer informatie over Sakai in Nederland vindt je op http://elearning.surf.nl/sakai

The Netherlands and Sakai

We are only three weeks away from the next (the 7th) Sakai conference, which will be held in Amsterdam. Registration is still possible. Your investment is only $395 for three days of Sakai!

The number of sessions is considerable: there are 125 sessions in the schedule right now. So there is something for everyone!

The number of sessions with (one or more) Dutch speakers is quite good. On my last count there were 3 sessions planned on the first day, June 12. On June 13 there is one session, which is mine. And on the last day, June 14, you can attend 4 Dutch-oriented sessions.