Blackboard BOF in Atlanta

When we presented our original Goal Aware ideas at the Baltimore Sakai Conference, I spoke with Deborah Everhart (Blackboard) in the halls after our presentation. She told me that Blackboard was working on requirements for a similar system. I had followed up with Deb on the phone after the conference. She had someone in their product development group call me at Syracuse. I described our ideas to her and we really weren't sure how to proceed. At that time, I felt that the intellectual property issues around the idea was an impediment to collaboration.

While our Goal Aware installation of Sakai in the School of Education is our center for innovation in pedagogy and technology to support that, our enterprise courseware installation is Blackboard. It would be great if "Goal Awareness" could be baked into that installation. It would be even better if Blackboard could facilitate that.

Today, Chris Coppola asked the Bb reps what they have done to date to contribute to open source and Sakai. They weren't able to respond with much. At this BOF I re-introduced the Goal Aware idea to the Blackboard representatives and suggested that contributing some development or design work to build in interoperable components in Bb that could work with our development effort in Sakai. We didn't get technical. I just threw it out as a potential way for Bb to demonstrate that they are contributing to innovation and open source efforts.

I followed this up with the following email to the OSP community (it should be on collab):

From: smkeesle@syr.edu
Subject: OSP/Goal Aware and Bb Integration
Date: December 7, 2006 7:22:39 AM EST
To: chris.coppola@rsmart.com, portfolio@collab.sakaiproject.org

In Vancouver we talked about the OSP community coming together to collectively determine how best to get OSP software to integrate with Bb and then see if we could connect with Bb to get that done once, in an open manner that might satisfy the community. We recognized that lots of schools run Bb in production, but are interested in a using OSP standalone for portfolios...Syracuse is really in that boat as well.

Yesterday at the Bb patent BOF I wandered in and listened to a LOT of rhetoric by folks that are just passionate about this patent issue and let them know about it. Repeatedly I heard Mr. Small ask what could be done to improve relationships between the two parties. Rather than hit him on the head with a hammer again (which just didn't feel productive to me) I reminded him of a discussion I had with Deb Everhart from Blackboard many moons ago in Baltimore, when I presented the Goal Aware idea. She seemed interested in collaboration at that time, since they too were working on requirements for a similar product. It turned out that this conversation was short lived because of the nature of the way the two groups handle intellectual property. C'est la vie.

Today we heard Chris Coppola ask the question, "What has Bb done to date to promote Open Source and/or Sakai?"

I struck me that, rather than pushing a drowning guy underwater, a gain could be achieved by both sides by offering a life ring. I asked the Bb team if they were interested in working on building in interoperability between Bb's tools and the Goal Aware tools in Sakai. We didn't get technical. In fact, I don't know how feasible it is but I've been thinking about it abstractly in my spare time (http://lsb.syr.edu/node/349).

With the 2.4 release of OSP, Matrix Cells and Wizard Pages are going to be Goal Aware. This is really an opportunity for Blackboard to demonstrate that they are interested in supporting Open Source and innovation. It strikes me that if that Bb team is sincere, the OSP/Bb integration may begin to happen under the guise of the Goal Aware idea. I wanted the community to be aware of this brief exchange that took all of 3 minutes. I will keep this list in the loop if we move forward.

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Sean Keesler
Project Manager
The Living SchoolBook
030 Huntington Hall
Syracuse University
315-443-3450