e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Chris Vento

  • The Future of Sakai: My View

    As a member of the Sakai Foundation Board, I have at least the appearance of conflict of interest in any analysis I write about Sakai. That’s why I encouraged Phil to write his own, independent analysis of the recent developments around Sakai OAE. I was happy to support him as one source for the article but not as editor. In fact, in keeping with his previous coverage of the Sakai OAE woes, Phil did not show me his post draft before he published it. This is as it should be. We strive for objectivity and independence here at e-Literate.

    But now that Phil has done his work, I would like to offer up my own personal reflections on the current state of the Sakai software and community and where they could go from here. In the process, I will do my best to make my relationship to the project clear.

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  • A New Job

    After four and a half really interesting years at Oracle, I am moving on. As of Monday, April 4th, I will have a new job in a different company. I’d like to tell you a bit about what I’ll be doing next and how it will—and won’t—affect my blogging.

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  • Three Tests for the 'New' Blackboard

    Today Blackboard announced that ANGEL’s Ray Henderson will be the new President of the Blackboard Learn division. This is great news. Ray is one of the best executives in educational technology today, known for his competence, his integrity, and his leadership in supporting open standards and openness in general. Does this mean a new beginning for Blackboard?

    Many of us remember when WebCT’s Chris Vento was made Blackboard’s Senior Vice President of Technology and Product Development after that merger. Like Ray, Chris was regarded as a leader in the field. And like Ray, he was a champion of open standards. I remember listening to Chris, soon after the merger, speaking with great confidence about how Blackboard was committed to standards like Tool Interoperability, how openness was good for Blackboard’s business, and how it was a new day. A year later, he was gone. Blackboard is not known today for its leadership in open standards. Nor is it known for its leadership in customer service—something that the company claimed it was going to learn from WebCT and claims again that it will learn from ANGEL. Going by the tweets from the ANGEL user conference, Blackboard’s leadership wasn’t talking a whole lot this week about how Chris and the WebCT leadership helped to change Blackboard’s culture for the better. When the speakers mentioned WebCT at all, it seemed to be mostly to say that they underestimated how buggy the software was. That’s not change we can believe in.

    So the question is whether Blackboard will prove more willing to be changed by Ray and ANGEL than they were by Chris and WebCT. Are they ready to learn? Time will tell. But there are three specific actions I will be watching for as early tests of just how serious Blackboard is about learning from ANGEL, particularly with regard to openness.

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