Arkansawyer

Here’s a worthy effort. I haven’t taken the daughter to a demonstration in over a year–I think it’s time.

I’ve been meaning to add The Iconoclast for some time, and I’m only now getting around to it, so shame on me.

Here’s a bit from Jonah Tebbit’s most recent post, NWA’s New Charter School Seg Academies:

The charter schools in Northwest Arkansas have become the 21st century equivalent of the old segregation academies, providing education for privileged whites and effectively excluding minority and Hispanic students. Haas Hall Academy has a minority population of only 11.1%, while nearby public school Springdale is 47.5% minority and Fayetteville is 25.6%. It is even worse in Benton County where the charter School of the Arts has 7.7% minority enrollment, compared with 40.1% in the Rogers public schools.

These bastions of ethnic segregation are supported by the $800,000 Walton-financed charter school promotion subsidiary at the University of Arkansas College of Education, headed by a Walton Foundation-nominated director, Caroline Proctor, formerly of the failed charter school in lily-white Maumelle. So much for the University’s supposed commitment to diversity, either on its own campus or in the charter schools it supports for the Walton interests.

And here’s his incredibly-kind commentary on a really stupid editorial from Arkansas’ worst newspaper, the Northwest Arkansas Times:

It is significant that the editorial hinged on the fact that “Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, J. B. Hunt Transport Services Center, and the Willard Walker Pavilion had all been struck.” The editor appears to believe that graffiti on the exterior of UA buildings, unlike wealthy corporate moguls’ names affixed on those buildings, creates an unsightly chaotic atmosphere. If these artists have a message, let them give millions for another business building or pay thousands for space on the Bud Walton scoreboard. Otherwise, STFU.

People way smarter than me have argued that the contemporary graffiti subculture is a system of action that renegotiates the social significance of public space in Fayetteville and on the UA campus. Someone spray painting my house might make me think otherwise, but graffiti is an artistic form of expressing thoughts, wishes, ideas, and peaceful protest — a subversive form of communication that cannot be handily reduced to simple vandalism.

Even though I can’t fully appreciate it, graffiti can perform a valuable symbolic resistance and defend a cultural space by introducing and bringing attention to alternative voices in our community. Whose community? It suggests that our city is everyone’s territory, not just the rich and famous Donrey/Hunt/WalMart crowd, the glad-handers at the Chamber, the badged bullies posing as bike cops, the handsomely paid college administrators at the country club, the obscenely compensated coaches on the take for displaying corporate logos, the comfortable residents of Candlewood, or even the local editors in the employ of the corporate media chains.

I’d seen that same editorial and considered commenting on its idiocy, but Jonah Tebbitts beat me to it and probably did a better job than I’d've done.

I’ve been looking for quite a while for a worthwhile blog from northwest Arkansas. The Iconoclast is it.

As I enter the session, the subject is Top Down versus Bottom Up in IMS development

Top Down is shown as 1997-2005, and Bottom Up from 2005-on; examples are given.

The IMS development cycle:

1. Problem identified
2. Working group established; implementers committed; charter written
3. Specification drafted; prototypes developed; reviewed by tech board
4. prototypes demonstrated; lessons learned inform specifications; draft specification made public
5. After 1 year spec finalized

At each phase of development and review:

• Consensus grows
• Details are clarified
• Examples are developed

What is Blackboard doing?

Tracking standards. Which ones? A long list, broken into Content Reuse, Data integration, Authentication and Authorization Integration (Shibboleth and Athens), and Usability/Privacy.

Blackboard has various members on various specifications working groups.

Content Reuse: IMS content and packaging; SCORM; IMS ePortfolio; IMS Common Cartridge

Data Integration: IMS Metadata; WSRP; IMS Learning Tools Interoperability; IMS Enterprise; SIF

Authentication and Authorization: Shibboleth; Athens; Microsoft Passport; OpenID (described as a nice decentralized, not as heavyweight, system)

Accessibility and Usability: Ongoing audits and feedback; W3C WCAG

Current projects in which Blackboard is interested

IMS Common Cartridge: A set of formats for representing electronic courses, with well-defined profiles of several other specifications. An uber-specification of units of shareable content.

IMS Enterprise Services V2: An enhancement of the IMS Enterprise data model (defining course, user, and enrollment data passed between back office systems and learning systems) with a set of Web Services defined for how the data model is shared between systems. Many institutions are doing this, but their methods are not very well aligned. Part of bottom-up specification is to help keep from having to make 180-degree turns when integrating with SISes.

IMS Learning Tools Interoperability: A set of Web Services that define how a Virtual Learning Environment interacts with other systems supporting on-line teaching and learning. a descriptor for API parameters. (Formerly the Tools and Interoperability Framework.)

What about Open Source?

There is significant interest: 2/3 of CIOs considering a major Open Source activity. 25% of institutions implementing some education-specific Open Source project. Moodle, Sakai, uPortal–abuot 25% of attendees here looking at them.

Blackboard works with open source by:

• Collaboration on elearning specification development and co-development projects: IMS Common Cartridge, IMS TIF
• Attending and presenting at Moodle Moots
• Attending and presenting at the Sakai conference

Cooperation part of their patent pledge

Open architecture (in building blocks and powerlinks) enables open source.
Lots more people here using Powerlinks than Building Blocks, by the show of hands.

Blackboard Building Blocks Open Source Developers group–their first product is the Pixhibit photo upload and slideshow building block. It is out now and will be available as open source to the community. Instructors upload a zip file of photos and slides. Students click on slides and page through the slides. Next step: A player (currently click to go forward), descriptions, other stuff.

Projects:

• Calendar import-export
• Smart Content UPload
• Building blocks community developement
• Shared secret SSO
• And others

Hosted at OSCELOT by Learning Objects

Interoperability standards are a win-win:

Stability
Predictability
Sustainability
Enables innovation

Why are standards important?

• Enables cheaper production
• Supports accessibility
• Allows for reusability
• Enables interoperability

How are standards developed?

• Consensus
• Voluntary
• Industry-wide

These standards are to enable students and teachers, and the community is in touch with them closely–even non-technical people contribute in this manner.

The question from the floor is about the involved nature of IMS specification and the need to get non-technical people involved in it–it needs to be less technically spoken. The answer is that we need to talk about this, as well as how to get students and faculty involved in this. The IMS is looking at this need–getting the annual meetings more open to non-technical people, the quarterly meeting (next week) to have a session for non-techs.

The question from the floor is about powerlinks versus building blocks in open source development. The answer is that the conference has a PowerLinks track. Last year, the open source day was open only to Blackboard–this year, it’s open to both. Finally, the different licensing model for PowerLinks from WebCT was different–that’s changed, and the PowerLinks license is now freer.

The question from the floor is, is there a short-term plan for an adaptor so you can build your own platform. The answer is, not in the short term, but maybe in the long term.

The question from the floor is about a working Shibboleth implementation. The answer is that there’s an older one in Blackboard, supported since 6.2.

The question from the floor was about openness and open standards. The answer is that they’re hearing a lot from their development community about openness, but also that they want more engagement with the standards community. Peter Segall has joined the IMS board, and is on the Learning Tools Interoperability committee. They are interested in making their tool more open, but also see Blackboard as part of an ecosystem which includes other tools, some of which provide functionality which is duplicated within Blackboard.

The question from the floor is about the Next Generation initiatives announced yesterday and the timing of that roadmap. The answer is that NG is not a product, but a series of releases. The claim is that is based on customer feedback. The first release is tentatively planned for next year. The follow up is the timing of the new grade book, and the answer is deferred due to the presence in the room of the corporate counsel–no, no, it’s tentatively planned for late this year.

The question on the floor is about whether Blackboard and WebCT will be kept in sync, or if one will fall behind. The answer is that they’re focusing on a best of breed solution and the NG releases, and not to have a split focus. their focus now is on pulling best of breed solutions together. There will be application pack releases on the separate code bases. The new capabilities of current releases in one system will be part of the NG project. They’ll be releasing with both Building Blocks and Powerlinks.

The question from the floor is about the future product, from a customer who uses both Blackboard and WebCT CE 6 in various parts of a distributed campus. Will we be able to merge into one product, or will we continue having separate platforms? The answer is that the plan is definitely to become one product. The first step is making all the products work with the academic suite, beginning with the new functionalities discussed this year. They’re thinking more about common learning system capabilities further in the future. Client feedback has been that people want to connect CE 4 and CE 6, and the community system product is a first step toward that. If you have an existing Blackboard system, it too can be stirred into that.

The question from the floor is when to expect a WebCT portfolio system which will work with the Blackboard Academic Suite. The answer is that the current portfolio system on WebCT talks to CE 4 and CE 6, and that the blackboard portfolio system works with all three products. The plan is not to make the WebCT system talk to Blackboard, but to move to the Blackboard portfolio system. There is no specific timeline, beyond not this month–but this century, even this decade.

The questions from the floor are when Vista 3 support will end, and what are they doing for better integration with SCT/Banner. The answer is that end of life for CE 4 has been extended for one year to January 1, 2009; with Vista clients, they’re being told that Vista systems (which tend to be very large-scale) will take longer to adopt new platforms. They anticipate supporting that code base for some time into the future. As to Banner, they’re working with various SIS partners; WebCT and Blackboard have historically taken separate approaches, and now they’re re-engaging to look for other ways to fit into the campus IT ecosystem.

A comment from the floor is better integration for two-way communication from (for instance) the grade book into the SIS system.

The question from the floor is that cross-lists always come across with cross-listed course in the title, and that management by terms from Banner would be very useful. Is there a way to get early institutional input into this integration. The answer is to participate in the Blackboard Idea Exchange.

The question from the floor involves Banner and grade book. For example, an issue is that students who withdraw from Banner are flagged with a red X in the grade book, but that students still stay in all the groups. This keeps faculty from being able to automatically create groups; worse, the students are not flagged in the group listings. They also do not show up with Xes in e-mail. Assignments made to all students are also made to all students, and faculty have to manually remove them; there’s a workaround, but it is a workaround. The answer is that’s good feedback.

The comment from the floor is on the University of South Florida’s building block for grade book integration, and would they consider reviving the Luminis/Sungard portal. The answer is that’s good feedback.

The comment from the floor is about transferring content within sections in Vista 4 being complicated by the cross-listing title problem. The answer is that’s good feedback, and also that such comments can also be sent in as product enhancement requests. The enhancement requests are used when subsystems are looked at for improvement. The follow-up is to ask whether enhancement requests are visible across institutions; Blackboard is looking into that.

The question from the floor is about NG, and how we will go forward. It’s a good question. The answer is that they are reviewing the answer above about upcoming application pack releases and the common code base initiative. We are not going to be seeing database migrations in the near or mid-term future. The answer is not being seen as clear by the audience. The answer is that a combined learning system first release will come out next year. Not all aspects will be common to this release.

The comment from the floor is that what we’re hearing is that there’s really a third new product coming out, but that’s not being made very clear. The answer to that comment is that they have a major R and D development in the current code bases, particularly since they’re both Java-based applications. The applications all have common functionalities with vastly different implementations. They’re committed to the Web 2.0 flexible interface approach. From the audience, a Blackboard person is explaining this is an incremental upgrade path.

The question from the floor is about faculty support and the Make a Suggestion functionality on the Blackboard website. An e-mail from a faculty member says that he’s getting no direct feedback once his ideas come in. (Clearly, the Web 2.0 approach is not being appreciated in terms of client relations.) The answer is that the feedback site on the website give trouble to system administrators when Blackboard interacts with faculty without admins in the cycle, since we may have (for instance) disabled blogs, which the faculty members may not know are available, so that is a one-way process of feedback. (This strikes me as quite silly. Don’t they realize faculty members talk across institutions?)

The question from the floor is about the difficulties of refreshing test systems. Can portability be increased? Transferring e-mail from system to system is quite easy; what about doing something similar? The answer was pretty much what we’d been hearing.

The question from the floor is about the portfolio system. It’s difficult to install across the enterprise because portfolios can’t be backed up and restored individually and can’t be created by a scripted method. The answer is there’s no portfolio release planned for this year.

The suggestion from the floor is to survey their clients about their practices–specifically their SIS systems–and give us the results. The answer is that’s a good idea. The further question is about administration by college and department, which has recently become a pricey add-on. Also, what about the Caliper system? Turns out that’s the Blackboard Outcome System. The final question is about content management in CE 6/Vista 4. They’ll show that at the booth.

The presenter is from Lebanese American University. I’m late, and did not get their educational vision down, but it’s on their website, as Mission, Values, Vision. It’s worth reading, as a preamble to the presentation. I’d also like to point out that I’m not doing this presentation justice–the audiovisual snippets mentioned later are quite powerful.

The presenter works with the English Language Laboratory. Given a certain range score on the TOEFL, students are required to take some level of English instruction, given on a pass-no pass basis. (English is the language of instruction at LAU.)

At LAU, online classes are being used as a supplement to regular classes. Some instructors use it as a repository for class materials.

She’s using it as:

• An online lab and class
• An interactive online educational reference lab area.

Her case study covers Summer and Fall from 2006-2007 year, during which Beruit was under attack. There were two exceptional incidents:

• Instructor’s case: Without notice, the instructor (a grad student) left Lebanon, as well as his courses and his on-line class. He did not pursue his on-line teaching–he could have, but disappeared. In a traditional class, this unethical behavior would have caused a big hassle–finding a replacement would’ve been very difficult. Not so, in this case.
• Academic Emergency updates: There was an extremely large number of emergency announcements during this period. Often, there were make-up dates scheduled, which themselves sometimes required make-up dates. Often, students could not find ways to make it to these makeups. Accordingly, students had some level of disengagement.

Communication: Online learners were given access to:

• The rather active discussion areas
• The e-mail tool (helpful to inform the teacher about problems/concerns)
• The chat tool (students enjoyed learning about each other synchronously)

She found that online communication via oral communication was very good–the audio diary compensated for the speaking component. The warmth of face-to-face interaction was lacking, but this may have been an advantage, because they avoided some heated and aggressive interactions (quarrels over who was and wasn’t oppressed, for instance.)

(I’ve added the emphasis, as it’s a drastic difference from received wisdom on flame wars and online interactions generally. Many of us have taken such behavior and its rapid escalation as part of the “nature” of online communication. Here’s a possible counter-example that show where physical world culture determines online interaction in a way different from what many of us have taken for granted.)

We are now hearing one of the students, a student from Korea explaining how she told people in Lebanon how to pronounce her name. It’s an affecting, if brief, audiovisual snippet.

Students said that on-line directed discussions were useful. Some students felt that on-line was better than face-to-face, as:

• Students get inflamed very quickly
• Misunderstanding is difficult to clarify and reaction is based on emotions rather than logical reasoning
• Many students are not ready for or used to listening to each other
• Many times face-to-face just turns into chaos

Student reactions said they were able to:

• Communicate with learners from different fields
• Work based on their own pace
• Share words and pictures,
• Reflect on the assigned topics, which helped them be more reflective (time to think and synthesize)

Students had to be more responsible, since they couldn’t just produce any kind of work–everything is documented and assessed–it’s non-repudiable.

Now, another audiovisual snippet from a student. She says e-learning is safe, both physically and emotionally, in a way that physical studies are not…I can’t do her justice. I hope this woman would be willing to place her video, or at least the audio from it, out publicly.

Saturday classes–students say: Very stressful, meaningless, attended only if exams are scheduled, of no benefit due to missing social events.

Instructors say: Saturday classes were hectic and uncontrolled, some canceled for various reasons, other struggled to abide by the rules, some ended up not sure of what to do in sessions with (for instance) more than half the class absent.

On-line classes: Ran smoothly and actively. 68 percent of accesses were during the days the university was closed. There’s a very high gender split in visits to content, assignments, and discussions–the first two much more accessed by women, the latter much more accessed by men. In the Q&A afterward, we discussed whether this skew in on-line discussion areas was greater or lesser than in face-to-face, but came to no firm conclusions.

Face-to-face: very high rate of valid absences: Strikes, road blockages, curfew (sometimes self-imposed), traffic, mourning assassinated politicians.

On-line: very low rate: Bad/no internet connections (weather, ISP, power shortages), problems with time management and pressure.

Dropout rate: Traditional to online ratio was 3:1. Learners who dropped online ‘had to’ because they also had to drop traditional courses, otherwise,they wouldn’t've dropped (urged by parents to leave the country during the crisis).

Instructors: demotivation is contagious and has a drastic effect on the class atmosphere. Factors in student behavior:

• Sitting in class (sleeping positions)
• Behavior (nonchalance, laziness, repeating courses)
• Whether they bring books and materials to class
• Use of mobile phones (SMSing, playing games, etc)

These factors can’t contaminate an on-line class.

Conclusion: In a country where you have always have to be on your guard expecting the unexpected, the effective use of the online class:

• Solved the physical attendance problem (mandatory at LAU)
• Helped in implementing the ELL objectives by:
  • Giving students an environment to communicate in the target languages
  • Offering the learners a multimedia environment to interact with
  • Giving students the opportunity to sharpen their computer literacy.
  • Enabling the learners to practice articulating their ideas clearly, having time to reflect on what they have to say, leading to a higher lever of thinking.
• Ensured the advancement of the University’s mission
• Smooth interaction among parties of different backgrounds (learning to listen/read and tolerate differing /opposing views
• Offered the avid learner a safe environment so leaving the country less necessary
• Therapy for learners distressed by their sufferings.

(I missed a point or two)

Using Blackboard classes helped fulfill their mission, and built an environment of Democracy where every user has the freedom to attend or not, to learn or not

Many faculty became interested in supplementing their classes with WebCT. After the workshops (in Beiruit and Byblos), faculty assessments were extremely favorable.

Next steps: Training sessions. Helpdesk (for technology, class design, educational innovation) Training for students.

What is academic continuity? Pretty much the same as business continuity. It’s not just about full-blown disasters–Katrina, pandemic flu–but snow days in (for instance) Washington, DC.

• Project Initiation and Management
• Risk Evaluation and Control
• Business Impact Analysis
• Developing Business Continuity Strategies
• Emergency Response and Operations
• Developing and Implementing Business Continuity Plans
• Awareness Programs and Training
• Maintaining and Exercising the Business Continuity Plans
• Crisis communication
• Coordination with External Agencies

First and foremost, you have to protect people–faculty and students. After that, records of research, and the other things professors do to bring money into the organization. We don’t, says the gentleman on the screen, do enough to protect either of those things, nor do we consider what the impact of damage to these things would be. As a result, we don’t plan effectively to mitigate that damage.

From the sales point of view, to propose such a project, first do your homework. What do you have to do to keep the cash flow that keeps you alive? For instance, what if you are contracted going forward to do a certain research program? Then, don’t ask for resources, but explain what you can do to mitigate this risk.

Current training can be used as an entry point for disaster recovery training, without much additional expense or time.

Now, as to our presenters. They’re from George Washington University, right near the White House, the World Bank, and the State Department. They have over a hundred buildings, twenty thousand students (eight thousand resident), seven thousand faculty and staff, a major medical center, and two smaller satellite campuses.

They have dual data centers, one in DC and one in VA at a satellite campus. Production is not at a single site. They have designed to move through most disasters without requiring recovery. (I’d like to get more detail on this, as it’s easier said than done.) E-mail and financials are their especially critical systems. for this purpose, they’ve got some cutting-dege tech, using many high availability and redundancy methods. The slide being shown shows a very redundant system (good redundancy, in this case).

For Blackboard, they’re using ASP hosting. They’ve got five application servers and on4e database server, with a tier 2 business continuity setup and a separate data center. (RTO 24 hours, RPO 12 hours.) They have sites at both of Blackboard’s facilities (both in northern Virginia).

They are using Blackboard as an anchor for their Academic Continuity Solution. Why? Long experience with course management systems (since 1997), and have accordingly high penetration of CMSes into their curricula–roughly half of their courses use Blackboard in some capacity–so extending it to continuity is a logical step.

They’re using Elluminate Live, Colonial Cast (the GWU implementation of iTunes U), and Anystream Apreso, integrated with Blackboard.

It important to know that you can do a variety of things with these solutions. For instance, there is pandemic (or emergency) licensing, where you can quickly activate licensing beyond normal capacity in the event of an emergency. Here’s an opportunity for cost savings in disaster recovery planning.

Now, a group exercise:

• Individually, list the assets that may be brought together at your institution to become a part of your Academic Continuity Plan
• In a small group, discuss the commonality of your assets
• As a small group, develop a strategy to sell the plan to the decision makers at your institution
• Share some of these with the group at large

Other people are mentioning dedicated phone lines and good support from the provost and chancellor level.

Now, if the support comes from the top, still, the seed of the plan often comes from below, typically from the IT department and the business staff.

So, how to sell it? Identify what you don’t have that you need. Show that you have the technology available but don’t necessarily have a plan to use it. Work out a schedule for how long it would take to recover, first without and then with the planning. Partner with a department on campus to test and measure what recovery would take. Look at what you’re already doing that you can repurpose for recovery.

References: Sloan-C
DRI International

So there I was, standing at a urinal in the men’s room, when I looked down and saw a mat placed there for sanitary purposes, which said, “Kills Odor Causing Bacteria”, and my next thought was, “I don’t think killing odor causes bacteria.” So, if I can imagine a comma, why not a hyphen.

The keynote was preceeded by an art history teacher from UMass-Amherst, who spoke about uses of Blackboard’s Vista product on their campus. She touched on its use in art and theater courses.

Peter Segall is now introducing Guy Kawasaki. He’s drawing a comparison between beginning e-learning systems and entrepeneurship, jumping off from Kawasaki’s new The Art of the Start.

Kawasaki begins by reviewing his history at Apple, and Apple’s possible survival during the lean years due to its ties to higher education, as well as the ego-ridden atmosphere at the Macintosh division. A joke:

Q: How many Macintosh developers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one. He holds up the light bulb and expects the whole universe to revolve around him.

Kawasaki points out that most high tech speakers suck, and have no sense of time, so you don’t know how much longer they’ll suck. Accordingly, he’s going to use a “top ten” format for his talk, “The Art of Innovation”.

1. Make meaning.
   Change the world. End bad things and perpetuate good things. Enable people to do things they’d never done before. He is quoting, and showing, the memorable Nike ad for women’s shoes, which ends, “measurements are only statistics, and statistics lie.” The audience laughs, but not uniformly, as there’s a lesson there for the accountabilists.
2. Make mantra. Tell why your organization exists. Too many organizations make mission statements. How? Have a two-day off-site at a hotel with a golf course–there’s a high correlation between mission statements and golf courses. You hire a coordinator, because high-level executives can’t communicate or lead. And so on–we’ve all been through these things, which produce statements like: “The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and parnterships.” As a parent who eats at Wendy’s, this is meaningless to him, as it is to their employees. He suggests instead:
   • Wendy’s: “Healthy fast food.”
   • Nike “Authentic athletic performance.”
   • FedEx: “Peace of mind.”
   • ebay: “democratize commerce.” (Can two people in Iowa really stand toe to toe with Wal-Mart? And is that really democracy?)

   If you must have a mission statment, he suggests using the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator.

3. Jump to the next curve.
   Innovation is not about being ten or fifteen percent better. He uses the history of daisy wheel printing, and jumping to the laser printer rather than expanding font selection. Now, he mentions the ice harvesting business, then the ice factory, then the refrigerator (the start of the PC business–personal chillers), then biotech. None of these companies went up a level–they tried to do better sameness.
4. Roll the DICEE.
   “Until they brought Guy in to speak, I was going to create something crap. Now I know better.” (This got a good laugh.)
   • D: Deep. Illustrated by the Fanning (Reef) sandal, which includes a beer bottle opener–this is a deep sandal. A new model has a little flask–the Dram model.
   • I: Intelligent. Illustrated by the BF-104 Flashlight (Panasonic). This is a flashlight that takes three sizes of batteries, which improves your chances of finding a working battery.
   • C: Complete. Illustrated by the Lexus, and the support model around it.
   • E: Elegant. Illustrated by the Nano (Apple). The wheel is a single control–you look at it and say, “I can use that.”
   • E: Emotive. Illustrated by the Harley Davidson. You can’t be neutral toward it.
5. Don’t worry, be crappy.
   Illustrated by the early Apple. No software, no hard drive, but revolutionary. If we’d waited, we wouldn’t made it. Ship, then test.
6. Polarize people.
   He’s not saying try to piss people off, just not to worry about it if you do. If no one cares about your product, good or bad, you’re in trouble. He likes TiVo–he’d like CSI: Cupertino, too–and some people hate TiVo. People aren’t neutral. The Toyota Scion–some people love it, others hate it.
7. Let a hundred flowers blossom
   When you ship a revolution, you may notice something interesting–you may have different customerrs than you expect–”Oh my god, the wrong people are buying our product, in massive quantities!” (A laugh) “We need a new mission statment” (A bigger laugh). And they’ll use it in different ways–Apple thought they had a word processing, spreadsheet, database machine, but they had a desktop publishing machine, and that saved them. He believes in God, because there’s no other explanation for Apple’s continued survival.
8. Churn, baby, churn
   It’s okay to be crappy, but not to stay crappy. You have to go 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.0–this is hard for an innovator. Innovators have to be in denial. Google–Why did we need a tenth search engine? YouTube–We need infinite server space, infinite bandwidth, so people can post what they stole for other people to steal. Now there’s a business plan.
9. Niche thyself
   All the marketing you need to know: The ability to provide a unique product or service mapped against value to customer. If you give great value but are not unique, you compete on price–not a bad place to be, like Dell, but perilous. If you give no value but have a unique product, you compete on stupidity. If you give neither, you’re a dot-com, and Kawasaki funds people to compete with you. Dog food–it’s simple. You have a horse on one end and a dog on the other. Why do you need a dog food store? asked pets.com. The problem is that a dead horse weighs a lot, thus shipping costs, and you had to be home when the dead horse arrived–plus there was lots of competition for that market. In the high right corner is where you want to be.
   • He says (and I wonder about this) Fandango is a good example. (He says this is the only way to do it in California–not my environment, so I’ll defer to him.)
   • The Breitling Emergency watch–take out the antenna, and it broadcasts an emergency signal if you’re lost or deeply distressed and need, say, the Coast Guard.
   • The Smart Car, which can park perpedicular.
   • The Trek Lime bike–it has an automatic transmission.
   • The LG Kimchi refrigerator–there’s nothing worse than sub-optimal Kimchi refrigeration. Kimchi needs a higher temperature, and will make the rest of your food stink. (They also make a microwave with a button for shishkabobs marketed to the Middle East.)

   Be like George Bush: High and to the right

10. Follow the 10/20/30 rule
    You have to pitch. You’re always pitching. But he hears some very crazy pitches–a geodesic dome to manage pollution in LA, buying Israel to build an amusement park for the Middle East. The best one is to get the market for drowning–a way to spot people at night who are in distress. Will it be a GPS-based product? No. It’s a roll of red tape. When you’re drowning, you wrap one end around your wrist, and throw the roll out. When the plane goes over you, they see the tape. So, the rule: For a presentation, 10 slides, given in 20 minutes, using 30-point font. (This rule alone is possibly the single most digestible, and thus most generally valuable, part of the talk.) People think you’re an idiot if you read your slides–they can read ahead of you. Talk from your slides instead. Use a font size half the age of your audience.
11. Extra bonus rule: Don’t let the bozos grind you down
    There are two sorts of bozos. First, the one you look at–bad breath, pocket protector, no social skills–and know is a loser. The other is the one in a sleek German car carrying Prada–that’s a big-league bozo, and you’ll be tempted to listen to them. We’re now to the history of companies who scoffed at: Computers (IBM), Telephones (Western Union), Home computers (DEC), and himself–”It’s too far to drive, and I don’t see how it can be a business,” his answer when offered an interview for the CEO position at Yahoo!, an answer which he figures may cost him about two billion dollars. “Why was I so stupid?” he asks. He valued his family over his career–he made the right decision. (Applause). But also, he didn’t understand the jump from the personal computer to the internet.
    • Blog: guykawasaki.com
    • Copies of talk: I’m redacting this–drop me a note if you were here and I’ll forward it on
    • Source of photos: iStockPhoto.com

Last slide:

He’s now reviewing the ten points from his talk, and I don’t believe he’s using a prompter–he really knows his points. He’s emphasizing the point about bozos, pointing out that, while criticism from bozos doesn’t mean you’ll succeed, letting them keep you from trying guarantees you’ll fail.

Now a few more words from Peter Segall.

The listening session started ten minutes ago. Unsurprisingly, the people from Blackboard are talking as I walked in. We have forty minutes left to see if they can listen.

The question from the floor is the high turnover of TSMs. They seem to either get promoted or fired. The answer is that it takes time to get people up to speed, even though they’ve been hiring smart people. That’s a reasonable point; nonetheless, it doesn’t solve our problems. They’re acknowledging the difficulties of coping with a high attrition rate, on both our part and theirs. They’re discussing what sort of information about our systems they need to keep on file. (My call: Network diagrams, yes; access information, NFW.)

The question from the floor is more turnover of TSMs and the relatively good support that came from WebCT’s now-closed Vancouver office. We’re also hearing about a problem beginning last April which has been bounced around among the various groups inside Blackboard which has still not been resolved or taken ownership of. We’re also hearing about a trouble report containing nine issues which sat for two weeks before a request came back from support to split the issues into separate incidents. Nine universities have been mentioned by this woman who are looking into moving to various open source products. The reply includes the support managers escalation e-mail (which I’ve certainly used judiciously, as just they’ve asked)–that’s they key item. We’re also getting an explanation of how level two and level three support works (they call it tier two and tier three–same difference).

The comment from the floor is about the precipitous drop (”through the floor”) in support quality as the Blackboard/WebCT merger took place. Also, we’re hearing about long delays in response times on incidents, and a question about how long the reorganization of Blackboard’s support organization will take. The response sounds honest: That the improvement will not come in thirty days, but that we will see improvement within six months. We’re also hearing about new metrics to measure support performance.

The comment from the floor is about the ratio of TSMs to clients, and the question of whether the TSMs are being burned out from having too many institutions to support. The answer is that it’s less an issue the ratio of clients to TSM than the ratio of incidents to TSM. The more sophisticated installations require more support. Reasonable, though I wonder whether some of those larger installations are suffering in the ways smaller ones are. There’s also discussion of how cases bottleneck when escalation isn’t performed in a timely basis.

The comment from the floor is, again, that TSMs are overworked, subject to attrition, sometimes promoted more quickly than is fair to them, and slow in response. It’s suggested that the TSMs might be paid better and not so overloaded. The multi-release approach mentioned earlier has been questioned, since upgrades have been so painful and support has been so thin. The response is pretty much that they feel our pain.

The comment from the floor is first that its good of Blackboard management to listen to us. (This client is using hosted services.) Their migration from Blackboard 6 to 7 is going to be painful, as they have nine years worth of courses to move. The further comment is that the session title “Client Services & Global Support” is surprising, because the speaker wasn’t sure those departments spoke to each other. She’s got a story about how a person from one group wasn’t invited to a planning meeting involving their school planned by another group. The answer is that there should have been tighter integration between the complex hosting team and the global services team. They claim we should expect to see improvements, and that they should appear to be one organization when we contact them.

The comment from the floor is, again, that clients are unhappy with TSMs, and notes that the keynote did not address service improvements. She also notes that WebCT clients were used to a high standard of service, which is not present now. The answer is that the closing of the Vancouver office and loss of so many trained, experienced personnel did hurt service, as did the lousiness (my word, with which I think the room would agree) of the initial CE 6/Vista 4 release.

The suggestion from the floor is two-fold. First, that we in academic IT don’t require our students and faculty to understand our structure, and so it’s odd that we have to go to such effort to understand how Blackboard works. Second, that we work with our TSMs day in and day out, that it’s hard for us to criticize them, and that we need to be part of a 360-degree evaluation process, just as we do evaluation on the interface between our own people and the departments with which they work. The answer is that is a great suggestion. The current surveys are looked at an used. The question in return is how we’d like to time that review. The answer is that it should be in sync with the process already in place at Blackboard. The question to the floor is how many of us would like to participate in such a review process. The hands all went up. The comments are that the questions have to be meaningful and not feel-good, and that something needs looked at whenever a TSM change happens. The comment was also made that the environment at Blackboard seems to be part of the problem.

The comment from the floor from a small university is that it’s nice to know they’re getting the same level of service as larger institutions. (This got a good laugh.) The comment continues that getting TSMs to work together with staff at the institution, and that TSMs quite often show low levels of general technical competence. The structure of information in Behind the Blackboard is being criticized, especially when TSMs ask us to go there to find information to help them to support us, such as where a particular log file is kept. The level of service has not greatly ramped up (I have seem improvement, but he’s right that it hasn’t been all thast rapid). Finally, the disastrous Java 1.6 upgrade failure, the slowness of the fix, and the slowness of support to pick up on the issue is being criticized strongly (but, in my opinion, not strongly enough). The answer is to talk to the product development listening session–reasonable enough, but it sounds like buck-passing. He also admits that they didn’t handle this well.

A last comment from the floor: We Mac OS X users cannot do WYSIWYG editing, since it only works in IE, and that math courses in particular are badly affected by this. No response–the session is ending with some pleasant generalities.

Now that the forward-looking statements have been flashed on the screen, Blackboard’s CEO Michael Chasen has introduced the iBoard–a moderately funny iPhone parody.

Okay, now that those two jokes are past, let’s see what they’ve got to say. Here’s Peter Segall, the VP in charge of North American Higher Education, starting with a review of the history of Blackboard. After that review, he claims that our impact on students and faculty has been great, that we’re doing noble work, and that we’re having a major role in the direction of our institutions, positioning them better.

Here he starts to work from a Blackboard white paper, “Building the 21st Centruy Campus: The Higher Education Executive Issues Study.” First, he claims we’re helping to engage students. Second, we’re driving revenue. Third, we’re enabling accountability, measuring outcomes against goals. Finally, we’re globalizing education. We’re hearing about an institution in China whose students on a required junior year abroad are staying in contact by (for instance) voting in student government elections. (But I wonder–how much a year abroad is it, if you are expected to stay in such close contact with your home insitution? If every technology of liberation is also a technology of control, which way is this one running?)

He’s now talking about the vibrant community we’re creating, including 300+ products, 1900+ developers, and 25000+ downloads of (often open source) products.

We’re back to the CEO now. He’s trumpeting Application Pack 2 for CE 6/Vista 4. He’s praising the combination of the strong architecture of of CE 6/Vista 4 and the QA process of Blackboard. He’s announcing that all the Blackboard products are now usable with both CE 6/Vista 4 and with CE 4 (good news for those of us who’ve painfully back-migrated from CE 6/Vista 4), showing us their academic portal which joins both products and provides (or enables–I think the latter) single sign-on in the institution.

He’s also announcing Application Pack 3 for Blackboard 7. He’s also announcing an Arabic Language Pack (including right-to-left display), useful for both classes taught in Arabic and classes teaching Arabic. He’s also noting that classes can now have languasge preferences set by the student. (How does this affect immersion techniques?) I’m hearing that Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling their new grade center. (I find Web 2.0 and grade books an odd combination–I’ll need to think about this.) They’re adding a self- and peer-assessment building block. Librarians and copyright offices have asked for collaboration and workflow functionality, which has been provided.

Now we’re hearing about a plagarism detection tool, Safeassign, which is embedded into all their enterprise products–rather, it’s available now as a Building Block or a Powerlink, and will ship with future products. It will intrusively direct students on plagarism and attribution. It has one wonderful feature, if it’s as advertised–student submission of assignments to Blackboard’s database will be optional. However, I think I’ve also just heard that teachers will get reporting on this, so I wonder just how optional this will really be. It’s going to search the internet and proprietary databases, as well as the proprietary database they’re building.

Again, we see the paradox of Web 2.0–the harnessing of community effort for the benefit of private business. Can Blackboard turn off access to this database to former clients? Surely so. Can they decide to start charging current clients? We’ll have to see the terms to know. Will students have access down the line to the database they’ve built? I doubt it.

He’s talking now about Web 2.0, Learning 2.0, and Blackboard 2.0, lifelong learning, and social networking. I personally am given the creeps by the idea that my social networking is intermediated by the university; however, commercial social networking is also a creepy idea, so perhaps I’m over-reacting here.

He’s talking now about personalization efforts. for instance, means of allowing students to use the tool to group around a class for which Blackboard is not used. He’s also talking about letting students do more ad hoc group creation. Finally, he’s now showing an instructor dashboard, allowing closer tracking of student behavior and contributions.

Finally, he’s now talking about taking the dot-com into the dot-edu. This isn’t the horror it sounds like–he’s talking about easier access to (for instance) YouTube or Delicious. He’s also talking about putting portalized information into iGoogle, Yahoo, cell phones, and Facebook.

The next slide is titled, “Our Components Or Yours”. He’s talking about open standards and interoperability. (Here we’re getting to the slides I saw two months ago.) This is a management system that’s supposed to portalize Blackboard and WebCT, and open source and commercial systems, via a set of APIs.

This is a gutsy move. Given how distressed so many of us have been about the implementation of CE 6/Vista 4 and the horrors of supporting it, making it easier for us to experiment with their competitors. I give them many points here on the confidence this must show for the near-term iterations of their products.

This is the key slide:

Blackboard’s Project NG

• Approach
  • This is a project not a product
  • Best of WebCT and Blackboard solutions and more
  • Multi-year multi-release phased delivery
  • No required database migration. Easy transfer course from current to future systems via standards-based content formats
  • Already under development and will begin showing in next verstion of products where we will also being standardizing version numbers
• Design Philosophy
  • Ease of use
  • Reliability, Scalability and Performance
  • Interoperability and Open Standards

If they do this, they’ll succeed.

We’ve switched back to Peter Segall.

Now, Blackboard and Beyond, and student engagement. First, Scholar. The Scholar account is the student’s for life. That’s good, if it works. He’s going through some use cases, tracked along the axes of Social/Personal and Formal/Informal, and now walking through an implementation. It’s very pretty, though not anything new in appearance.

Now, back to Michael Chasen.

He’s pitching community. First, the Blackboard Idea Exchange. Next, Ask Dr. C. Also, the Blackboard Greenhouse Program. Finally, the conference itself.