This is a talk I gave to the Sakai South Africa User's Group via the web March 5, 2013 because I could not go due to a conflict with SXSW.

1. The First Ten Years
and
The Next* Ten Years
Ten Years
Ten Years
Dr. Charles Severance
University of Michigan School of Information
Blackboard Chief Sakai Strategist
X* Some ideas about the next ten years

3. D'Arcy Norman's Law of
eLearning Tool Convergance
Any eLearning tool, no matter how
openly designed, will eventually
become indistinguishable from a
Learning Management System once
a threshold of supported use-cases
has been reached.
http://darcynorman.net/2013/02/15/normans-law-of-elearning-tool-convergence/

4. http://www.deltainitiative.com/bloggers/state-of-the-higher-education-lms-market-a-graphical-view

5. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/07/tech-officials-weigh-big-data-moocs-and-open-source

6. 1.0 1.5
2.0
2.9
2.82.72.6
2.5
X

7. Sakai 2.9
• Out first release where the overall UI is
market leading out of the box
• Our first release with structured content
(LessonBuilder)
• Our first release with support for IMS
interoperability standards

8. Sakai 2.9 - Our first "LMS"

9. Sakai is Not a Clone
• Still far and away the best at combining
research, collaboration, and learning
• Most powerful / flexible role system
• Highly customizable for local needs
• Real Apache-Style open source

12. Open-Open-Open
Rutgers University and Stanford
University do not have TCC
representatives but have made
major contributions to Sakai
over the years.

14. What might*
we see NeXT?
* This is just one person's ramblings...
X

15. A New Strategy
• With Sakai 2.9, we could actually relax for a
while - it is a solid and beautiful product
• When you have a solid product in hand,
your thinking and planning changes from
filling gaping holes to polishing and
reinforcement
• You can take more risks...
X

16. Some Rumblings...
• Amsterdam, Montreal, UPMC are all doing
MOOC experiments with Sakai....
• Two new search technologies: SOLR from
Oxford and ElasticSearch from rSmart
• Complete sakai.web tool replacement
• KNL-1011 - SiteService Caching
Performance Improvement
X

17. Sakai.X
• We can attack larger and larger areas that
need improvement in Sakai if we work
together in larger teams
• Get a collective focus on fewer, larger, more
impactful improvements.
• Fix things we never thought could be fixed
- sticky sessions as an example...
X

18. What might be in Sakai.X?
• Big, fast, powerful, scalable Sakai CLE.
• Scalable to millions of users
• Spin up spin down instances easily
• Easy upgrades - continuous migration....
• Software as Service Model
X

19. When is Sakai.X?
• I don't know when - we will know
collectively
• Once we start, it might be 2 years between
major Sakai releases
• We will make bold changes and then
collectively test and validate those changes
together...
X

20. This is just an idea...
• I have no resources other than my own
spare time...
• I cannot make this happen - I can only
present an idea and see if people resonate
with that idea...

21. Thank you for your
time..