USG

Index of posts:

1. RE 2007: GeorgiaVIEW Meeting (Pre-Conference)
2. RE 2007: Birds of Feather: GeorgiaVIEW Vista
3. RE 2007: Top Ten Disruptive Trends
4. RE 2007: Birds of a Feather: Luminis
5. RE 2007: Administering Sakai
6. RE 2007: GeorgiaVIEW Vista File and Content Sharing
7. RE 2007: USG Digital Content Repositories: Resources to Share

After this point, I got wrapped up in other things, moderating, fireworks, a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, and dealing with tickets. The above are all sessions which affect my area even tangentially. Hope you enjoy.

Harold Powers, Georgia State University

• Template
• Copy files in File Manager
• Learning Module - Only content pages and assessments are exported in a learning module. Other tools such as discussion, chat, urls, etc. are not exported.

Kathy Kral, University of West Georgia

• Luminis IV CPIP connector: Clayton, Augusta, West GA.
• Issues with IMS when allowing IMAP from outside the Luminis application? VSU no issues with IMAP and POP allowed outside. Augusta initially restricted but opened up access without advertisement. Mention on one of email lists Blackberries fail to do a close with connection resulting in stale sessions accumulating.
• Mailbox sizes: West GA 10MB, Augusta 40MB for students and 125MB for faculty, Valdosta 250MB.
• Makarand Kulkarani, Sungard - Created a replacement so mailbox is Gmail. This is a professional service engagement. Engagements start at 90 hours with unused hours un-billed. When GCF connectors are built Training similar, typically 48 hours.
• Name changes are a pita.

Jesse Lyman built a Luminis to Vista 4 single-sign on connector to handle multiple institutions.

Rock Eagle 2007

Keynote - David Cearley, Gartner

Way too many unfamiliar acronyms an terminology. It moved really fast without spending much time to explain anything.

Disruptive trends selected by timing, speed, and likelihood.

1. Multricore to fabric - Core on processors will double every two years through 2015. Applications will have to adapt to multi-cores. Software licensing around cores, influences purchasing. Sets the stage for hybrid systems where power core and cell processor cores integrated. 3D chip (cube of cores) is coming. Next evolution in blade technology is to have shared memory. Fabric allows dynamic allocation and partioning of memory and processors and I/O for servers.
2. Tera-Archicture Compute Element - Self-assembling and self-managing applications.
3. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - Developers will create modularized applications for a dynamic, flexible environment. They will need new tools, training, vizualization. Way platforms are built change. Vendors will not off the components, instead, we will need to create these ourselves. Pervasive… It will hit every level of the enterprise.
4. Open Source - Development tools, Application Servers, Security, Operating Systems currently hold the most maturity. It will have viable alternatives for 80% of software choices.
5. Web 2.0 - Biggest disruption over next 10 years as it has been the last 10 years. Web 2-.0 - applications built on web tech and design prin that may exploit community based development and social networking and/or new web-based business models. Long-term journey for increasing community, business involvement. Web Oriented Architecture = SOA + WWW+ REST. WOA replaces complex public API calls in current SOA model in favor in simple interfaces.
   1. Mashups - Composite applications on the web. Classic portal model built complex APIs. Mashups use WOA using RSS and Atom to provide feeds of info. Typically used in simple, high value applications.
   2. Web Platform - Everything as a service. Service providers offering infrastructure. Google and IBM offering a service to universities to build applications using the Googleplex infrastructure and IBM support.
   3. Symantic Web - Microformats - Simple way offering metadata.
6. Social software - RS, podcasts, folksonomies, blogs, wiki, social bookmarks, content rating, prediction parket, taste sharing, social networks. The Participatory Web. Threadless makes user designed teeshirts sold back to users. How can we create communities and harness the power of the collective. Start with a purpose. Nuture the community. Open socially mediated spaces work better than technically managed systems. Have a tipping point plan.
7. Netowrk Virtual Worlds - Games - People are 3D, have a profound impact on people.
8. Displays - UIs are changing.
9. Video - Counterfeit reality - how are you sure video has not changed?

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• Wimba has a PowerLink (version 1.5) for their version 5.0 to work with Vista 3.
• First look for USG admins look at Vista 4.2.3.
  • Anyone remember WebCT CE?
• Definitely a period of time Vista 3 and 4 are both in production. (Ref)

I am blogging from the pre-conference GeorgiaVIEW meeting @ Rock Eagle yesterday afternoon and this morning. I enjoy connecting with people around the state of Georgia who use our Vista system. Most of them do not make it to BbWorld. Some hot topics:

• Alternatives to Blackboard Vista
• Training
  • Content repository
• Returning Reports and Tracking to instructors.
  • Some reports still failing. One approach may be to remove tracking data from Vista database and make it available elsewhere.
• Upgrade to Vista 4. People want a timeline, access to a training instance ASAP, please not do an in-place upgrade.
  • Limited shelf life on internals of Vista 3 / 4.0 - 4.1.2
  • More of customers have moved or are moving to Vista 4 / CE 6 than a year ago.
  • Can take advantage of new tools available in Vista 4.
  • Data retention - policy, reponsibilities (faculty, campus, OIIT)
  • Phased approach - parallel environments, at some point Vista 3 goes away and no longer available.
  • End of Fall 2008 or Spring 2009.
• People are both quite happy we are going to Vista 4 and disconcerted at the prospect of having to move to Vista 4 in even over a year from now (at the worst by April 2009).
  • Export / import of non-SIS created users.
  • Training

Lovely (yeah a real person and she is) says Lovely Freelove would be one of the best names ever.

So, you want to know who I am…. Hopefully you are in it for the long haul so you will post some comments, drop me some email (sneezypb at the most popular free email sites like GMail), subscribe to my blog.

Click for larger…

Am I my job? In that case, I could say I am a Database Administrator. Many of you probably don’t even know what that means. That’s okay, I’m not sure it means much. LOL Mainly I work with Blackboard Vista and ensure to the health of the software. My kicks come from taking something nebulous and determining scope and solution to the issue. The GeorgiaVIEW project has grown one of the largest implementations of Blackboard Vista world wide. Previously, at Valdosta State University, I worked with Vista, Luminis, Banner, Apache, and web design.

Am I my hobbies? In that case, I could say I am a computer geek, an amateur photographer, a bookworm, a blogger, or a social network junkie.

Am I my list of friends? Certainly, I don’t have an extraordinary EQ, so the huge list of contacts should not be interpreted as my list of friends. Yes, I know lots and lots of people. I just don’t know them well. Do check out my blogroll. Those are all exceptional people who in some shape or form impact my opinions.

I use a Canon Digital Rebel XT and Canon Power-Shot SD800 IS (Elph) digital cameras. The Elph goes everywhere with me. The Rebel I break out for special events. One can find more about my cameras and lenses in my profile at Flickr.

My Digital Footprint:

• Blogs:
  • Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric Version 4 - This one.
  • Ezra - Was main blog for a time. Mainly keep it up as some friends blog there “Friends Only” on LiveJournal.
  • Voice on Xylene - Hosted on Vox, a competitor to LJ and Blogger. Pretty much unused.
  • Sneezy Speaks - Hosted on Blogger, another competitor to LJ and Vox.
  • Technorati -Technorati Reactions - RRRv4
• Books
  • Goodreads - More social. Compare books is kind of cool.
  • Google Books - This one provides great details on the books. Made from an export of Goodreads.
  • LibraryThing - Lots of detail about books, authors, and users.
• Bookmarks
  • Del.icio.us
• Microblogs / Nanoblog
  • Friendfeed
  • Jaiku
  • Plurk
  • Pownce
  • 
• Music
  • Last.fm Music
• Photography
  • My Flickr - Initially just photos. As I’ve gotten more into photography, its come along nicely and perhaps has the more interesting stuff.
  • Freelove Photography
• Social
  • 
  • LinkedIn
  • Mashable
  • Myspace
  • Plaxo
• Travel
  • 43Places - Where I have been and wish to go.
• Video
  • YouTube Videos

A more comprehensive “About Me” page. I’m not for hire. This especially goes for snooping folks from Blackboard, Inc.!!