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Present is Prologue

Tag: Michael-Chasen

  • US Department of Justice Investigating Blackboard ANGEL Acquisition

    This just in from Desire2Learn’s patent blog:

    Blackboard issued two press releases regarding its acquisition of ANGEL Learning (ANGEL) – one on May 6, announcing the intention to acquire, and one on May 11, stating that the acquisition was complete. Indeed, Matthew Small, Blackboard’s chief business officer (and general counsel) stated “I don’t think that there’s any anti-trust concern with this combination.“

    On May 14, 2009, nearly 2 weeks ago (and the day that Michael Chasen addressed the attendees at the ANGEL users’ conference), the United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (DOJ) opened an investigation on the Blackboard acquisition of ANGEL. We were notified that same day (presumably Blackboard and ANGEL Learning were notified well before then). At that time we thought this information was confidential, so we did not disclose it.

    Today the DOJ advised us that the investigation is not, and has never been, confidential. In the coming days and weeks, it is likely that we will be responding to requests from the DOJ about the market.

    Given the interest of the educational community in these developments, we thought it important to share this information.

  • 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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  • Openness: Finally, We're Getting Somewhere

    Update: The Sannier vs. Wheeler smackdown is available on video here. Microsoft Silverlight is required.

    As I sit on the flight home from the EDUCAUSE conference thinking back on the themes of the week, it is clear to me that various flavors of openness have finally arrived in a big way in higher education, with more on the way. Certainly, a critical mass of universities are recognizing the value of open standards and accepting that open source is a viable and important approach. Open access and open educational resources are coming on too, although they are much earlier in their adoption cycle. Further down the road, open governance and open business practices are looming on the horizon.

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  • Blackboard CEO Responds on the Patent Issue

    The gents at EdTechTalk ran a terrific Skypecast discussion last night (archived here) on the Blackboard patent and DOPA. I’ll leave it to others to comment on the discussion itself. What I find interesting is the letter that Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen wrote to our hosts in response to their invitation to join the talk. The full letter is on web page for the Skypecast archive, but here’s an excerpt that I find interesting: (more…)