Paper 7

I don't have any really new ideas to suggest. Part of my concern is that it's hard at this stage to know exactly what the issues are going to be, so I'm skeptical about detailed governance plans. I would rather see a moderately informal initial plan with periodic reviews.

In general I agree with Joseph Hardin's version 0.1 proposal. Pretty clearly there will need to be a board of some sort. I favor having it primarily represent institutions rather than individuals. Strategic decisions for the project should be made by people who are making decisions about how Sakai is being used. I agree with some of the email contributions that this is going to involve user interface, pedagogy, and research/instruction interaction, more than specific technical issues. If that's the case, then Hardin's idea of a project development team that provides technical leadership seems to make sense.

In contrast, Craig Counterman's model (email of April 20) seems more of a techie model. It has a single board focused primarily on technical issues. We certainly need that kind of technical leadership, but I think the separate board and technical team makes more sense.

I agree with some of the discussion that Sakai is not just a Blackboard replacement. However at Rutgers (and I suspect elsewhere) it is going to be difficult to put the necessary resources into supporting both Sakai and Blackboard or another commercial product. Thus Sakai needs to be a credible alternative to the commercial CMSs, or we won't be able to use it, whatever its long-term advantages.

I am concerned that we maintain a good central staff. Even if most of the activity is occurring elsewhere, there need to be core facilities that are under solid control, and we also need to pay attention to integration. New members of the community can't be forced to go on a treasure hunt throughout the world's education institutions to assemble a working system.