AuSakai 09

AuSakai 09 Logo

I just returned from a great week in Australia, primarily for AuSakai 09. I also had meetings with many groups at Charles Sturt University (where the conference was held) and visited University of New England in Armidale.

Clay Fenlason and I arrived early Monday morning on the same flight from SFO and took the short flight to Bathurst, where Charles Sturt has one of its campuses. Monday was spent recovering from the trip and going out to dinner with Ian Boston and Matt Morton-Allen. On Tuesday Clay and I had a series of meetings with groups at CSU. Charles Sturt has just taken an official decision to provide resources for Sakai 3 development. This is great news for everyone, including CSU. They are currently running 2.4.x and have several substantial local customizations. This makes upgrading more difficult, a fact that they have recognized. By engaging early in Sakai 3 development, they should be able to ensure that their requirements are met by the base version of Sakai 3 and, therefore, reduce their customization costs.

Sakai Staff Meetings

I’m writing this blog post from Bathurst Australia, home of Charles Sturt University which is hosting AuSakai 09, the Australian Sakai Conference. I traveled here with Clay Fenlason, Sakai Product Manager, after he spent last week in Berkeley for the Sakai staff meetings. All the other staff members were in attendance, including Lance Speelmon who has joined the staff on a temporary but long-term assignment.

The meetings were half tactical, half strategic and several staff members used the time to make local site visits (to Stanford and Berkeley) and participate in some ongoing work (Groups and Test & Quizzes). In terms of the staff meeting itself, though, we covered the following items: