Anyone going to Berlin?

Something I also sent out to Euro Sakai mailing list recently. Please reply ASAP.
What started out at the bar in Amsterdam as just an idea, seems to become something real...
What am I talking about?
I am talking about a great marketing opportunity to make ourselves and Sakai known, by doing some promotion at the Online Educa conference in Berlin, on Berlin (Germany), November 28 - 30, 2007. See http://www.online-educa.com/.
At this largest elearning conference in Europe there is a possibility that we can use the booth of the SURFfoundation and JISC (they have a combined booth) at the trade floor. If so, then we need a few (between 5 and 8) people that will be answering questions, show some stuff etc at the booth.
So, my main questions are:
1/ Who is going to the Online Educa conference?
2/ Who is willing to spend some hours in the booth to do some 'marketing' stuff?

Ofcourse, if we are going to do this, we will need to do some preparation (posters etc), but that should not be an issue.

Please respond ASAP, as we need to finalize our arrangements with SURFfoundation and JISC soon.
Thanks in advance!

Visit to Rotterdam

Yesterday I paid a visit to Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). They invited me to give them a introduction to Sakai in 25 minutes. I talked to a group of about 20 people, that are considered to be the elearning experts of this university. The presentation (Google doc; Dutch) went quite well!
What striked me was that there was quite a bit of frustation within the group about Blackboard (their current VLE). It was called inflexible, hard to manage etc. There were also the questions about what opensource is about. For example the question how security and bugs are handled with these type of software communities. Well, as Chris already wrote yesterday: we are doing quite good.

Security releases of Sakai

Last friday two security releases of Sakai became available. Go to the release page for the latest info on this 2.4.1 release.
In the meantime the community is working hard for Sakai 2.5 to come out on November 12. Some news on this release:

• Open Source Portfolio will be promoted to the core of Sakai
• Abilities to delete unwanted stuff in Forum, Messages and Chat
• Some good stuff in Resources
• iCal subscription export service and import, available in Schedule (yeah!!)
  
• and much more....

I you have some spare time, please devote it to the QA of Sakai 2.5. Check out confluence for more information on how to help.

Help NIET mee aan de SURFgroepen campagne

[this is in Dutch] SURFnet is wel erg druk om SURFgroepen te promoten.... Nu wordt er zelfs een oproep geplaatst om mee te helpen om SURFgroepen bekend te maken (bron). Ik zou de collega's in het land willen oproepen om NIET mee te doen aan deze campagne!
Wil je weten waarom ik deze oproep plaats? Omdat ik vind dat SURFnet hiermee nogal inbreuk maakt op wat er gaande is in onze instellingen, waar we net met veel moeite een Electronische Leeromgeving hebben geïntroduceerd.

Meeting in Amsterdam: meeting notes available

IMG_5725
Originally uploaded by wytze

Yesterday we had a cosy meeting in Amsterdam. We came together in the Albert Einstein room. Sound a lot better than "0.10" or whatever. It inspired us to be creative and constructive at the same time. Check it out at our website:
Meeting notes of edition 2.1 of Sakai SIG NL (19 sep 2007) !
I am very happy with one result from the meeting: other people, namely Jaeques, Jan and Frank stood up to assist me in creating our pre-conference "Everything you need to know about Sakai" for the next SURF Onderwijsdagen (only in Dutch). One of the keynote speakers at the Onderwijsdagen is Stephen Downes; don't miss it!

Agenda for Sep 19, 2007

Next week the Sakai Special Interest Group NL will meet in Amsterdam, as announced before. Everyone is cordially invited to attend. There is no obligation to register or whatever (although a little note is appreciated!).
We will discuss the plans for the coming year (the current members of the Sakai SIG NL already received a draft document concering our plans), as well as current developments within our institutions. Especially the Saxion University and the University of Amsterdam (the host for this meeting) will fill us in on their current projects.
Furthermore I surely want to discuss how we will create a great pre-conference workshop at the largest elearning fair in The Netherlands for Higher Ed, the SURF Onderwijsdagen. This pre-conference workshop will take place on November 13. Mark your agenda's!
All details on the agenda for next week are, as always, available online (in Dutch). If you cannot attend our meeting, please let me know.

It is now public: Sakai is on hold

Sakai in de ijskast - UT Nieuws
Originally uploaded by wytze

Several weeks ago we mentioned that our final report of our Sakai pilots was available. Today our university newspaper features an article where you can read (in Dutch) the decisions that have been made by our board, with some comments by my colleague Stanley Portier.
Our board has urged us to put some serious effort in evaluating the MS Sharepoint 2007 product. This should be our sole focus for the coming months.
The fact that very few institutions in The Netherlands are investigating Sakai, is an important factor in the decision of our board to steer in the direction of Sharepoint (for which there seems to be more interest within our sector).
Final decisions will made early in 2008. We will keep you posted.

Did you know?

Did you know that all board meetings of the Sakai Foundation are documented and are available for everyone to see? Check here for all the minutes. Don't get disappointed too quickly, because you see a long list of documents... You want to read the minutes of the last meeting, don't you? Well, click here.
Did you know that there are several interesting listings. Just to name a few:

1. the Sakai installations that we know of on a map,
2. the Sakai sites in a long list (143 items and still counting) with all technical details (e.g. Georgia Tech, or Lubeck), or
3. a status page where you will find information on all Contrib projects?