Bblog: The Blackboard Weblog

I had an absolutely wonderful time at the 2005 MERLOT International Conference. It was delightful to meet so many faculty members who use Blackboard on a daily basis. Many of these attendees hadn't had the opportunity to go to the Blackboard Global Users Conference so I encouraged them to join Blackboard's Communities website at http://communities.blackboard.com and find a user group that meets in their region. If one of the 21 US Higher Education user groups didn't meet in their area I encouraged them to start one of their own :)

The MERLOT Search Building Block was the highlight of our booth. Attendees were amazed to see how easily instructors can use the Building Block to search for and retrieve links to MERLOT learning materials. I was happy to learn from the MERLOT team that since its release in April that it has been installed at 63 institutions. Traffic on the MERLOT servers has doubled - coincidence? I think not!

At the closing reception sponsored by Blackboard we enjoyed Tennessee grown wine. The vitners were on hand to guide people to selections they would enjoy most. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the experience and the wines were delicious!

Congratulations to the MERLOT team for putting on a solid conference with great sessions, enthusiastic and knowlegable speakers, and growing (and passionate) community of practice.

This week I'm at the MERLOT International Conference in Nashville, TN. The conference opened with a well received keynote by Sir John Daniel, President and CEO of Commonwealth Learning.

Meanwhile, in the exhibit hall I've been busy demo-ing the MERLOT Search Building Block. More than 80 institutions are using the free and open source Building Block that allows instructors to seamlessly search for and incorporate MERLOT resources into their Blackboard courses. The response from users here has been very positive. As expected, folks have ideas of how we can improve upon the Building Block so I've been busy taking notes!

Feedback from last year's conference told us that we needed to put more time in the schedule for networking. This year we made sure that there was plenty of time for folks to chat with one another. At some times it was hard to walk through the hallways because there were so many small groups deep in conversation. I enjoyed talking with many of the attendees, learning about what they're developing, the challenges they're facing and how they plan to use Building Blocks technology to help overcome them.

During the conference a number of visitors to the hotel would pass by our session rooms and see the Blackboard logo. One passerby, a teacher who uses Blackboard in Amsterdam stopped and asked me about Building Blocks. When I told her about some of the tools available to teachers through Building Blocks her face lit up and she said that as soon as she got home from chaperoning the school trip to DC she was going to talk to her System Administrator about getting some of these free Building Blocks installed on their system.

One of the best sessions for me was the feedback session that George Calvert, SVP of Product Development and I had. We got some excellent ideas from the attendees about how we can make the Building Blocks documentation much better, clarify the internal processes that Blackboard uses to develop and test our software, provide more training and educational opportunities for clients and more. George and I will meet this week to see about how we can begin to implement many of these suggestions.

There are over 150 developers and system administrators here at the conference. I've seen lots of familiar faces, been able to put faces to the names of folks I've been corresponding with, and have met many new people. The System Administration sessions have been full to overflowing so we're scrambling to make more space for this track.

Between sessions the halls have been filled with small groups of people gathering to chat, demonstrate Building Blocks to one another, and renew friendships. I've got some great feedback on the conference (folks love the program, the new Building Blocks logo and the food) and some valuable suggestions for improving our documentation, requests for exposing new APIs, as well as questions about the Building Blocks Architect position.

The Poster Sessions were very busy. Our 6 presenters were swamped with attendees who saw demonstrations of Building Blocks and asked lots of questions. Based on the feedback I got and the enthusiasm of attendees, I think we'll be repeating the Poster Session idea next year.

After the conference we went over to Sequoia restaurant. The highlight of the evening was the Rubik's Cube puzzle solving contest. Paul Jarc from Case Western Reserve University wowed the crowd by solving the puzzle in 2 minutes and finished it without even looking at it!

I took a bunch of pictures.

This morning Dave Lambert, CIO of Georgetown University opened the 3rd Annual Building Blocks Developers Conference. In his opening remarks he noted that eLearning systems are mission critical, more so than HR and Financial systems. He said that the biggest hurdle to migrating from Blackboard 5 to Blackboard 6 was finding the window of time in which to take the system down for the switchover.

He also said that Building Blocks is at the intersection of opensource, commercially developed and client innovations. At this confluence is where the real edge of innovation exists for campuses running eLearning systems. I couldn't agree with him more.

After his opening remarks he introduced Matthew Pittinsky, Chairman of Blackboard. Matthew's Keynote covered three topics:

• A "State of the Developer Community" Update which showed the growth in Building Blocks usage, community members, and collaboration amongst developers as well as the growth in the System Administrator Community.
• A view into the Building Blocks roadmap as part of the overall Blackboard Product Roadmap. This section highlighted the new Building Blocks Catalog (launching Fall 2005), new Beta APIs and much more.
• Blackboard's committment to and activities within the Standards community and interoperabililty with other systems. Bob Alcorn took the stage to discuss the recent collaboration for the IMS Tools Interoperability Framework demonstration at the Alt-i-Lab conference. Bob also demonstrated the MERLOT Search Building Block.

It was a great start to the largest Blackboard developer conference ever!

Has it really been that long since I last posted to this blog? Sorry about being so quiet but while the rest of the northern hemisphere has been on Summer Vacation, it seems like I've never been busier. In the past 6 weeks when haven't been working on the Third Annual Blackboard Building Blocks Developers Conference (July 18-19, Georgetown University) I've been working with our Standards & Interoperability team and our activities most recently with the IMS and also looking ahead to some regional user group meetings including ones in London (June 27), Missouri (August 4), Pittsburg (October), and more!

Most recently Bob Alcorn and I were in Sheffield, England for the Alt-i-Lab 2005 conference. Bob demonstrated the Blackboard implementation of the IMS Tools Interoperability Framework (TIF) specification. Our target application was ConceptTutor. You can read more about the demonstration in this press release. We were really pleased with how everything about the experience went. The TIF team was made up of a great group of collaborators and in the months and weeks leading up to the demonstration rarely lost focus - and when they did, Kevin Riley (IMS taskmaster extraordinaire) was on hand to remind them of their deadlines. The IMS TIF experience was so productive and positive that the IMS is looking as this as a new model for encouraging consensus building and collaboration amongst specifications developers.

After Alt-i-Lab Bob and I visited the Royal Veterinary College, host to the London Users Group meeting (June 27). We were so excited to see nearly 50 attendees from 32 institutions in and around London. Some folks had travelled all the way from Scotland to join us! Our talks covered everything from what is up and coming with future releases, what Blackboard is doing in terms of supporting standards, and what is happening in the world of Building Blocks. Bob gave a technical overview of using Building Blocks for information exchange and working with custom databases. I think the highlight was the fabulous opportunities everyone had for meeting and networking with one another.

A personal highlight for me was the tour of the RVC itself. Our gracious hosts Aoun Shamsi and Nick Short showed us all sorts of treasures - the computing center, the library (home to a skeleton of a polar bear! and Napoleon's saddle) and finally the barns. I took a few pictures. I most enjoyed the fact that the RVC has the only cow in central London! Not only did I get a picture of it, Aoun took a photo of me taking a photo of it!

As our fearless chairman mentioned in a previous entry, we're looking at launching a more formal, long-term Blackboard blog soon. (Although "soon" sometimes feels like a relative word. I keep hearing my beloved and beleaguered Redskins are going to be a good football team again "soon," too.)

Since last month's Users Conference, we've been having a lively set of conversations here at Blackboard HQ about exactly what a Blackboard blog should be, who from Blackboard should be involved, what kind of information the world outside our offices wants to see on a company blog . . . as well as what stuff would bore the socks off readers.

In one of those slap-your-forehead moments, it dawned on me this afternoon that we don't have to guess. We can just ask you, our loyal readers. Both of you. ;-)

So: what kind of company blog would you like Blackboard to have? What do you want us to do with the Bblog?