I have this talk to the Lansing Capital Area IT Council http://capitalareaitcouncil.org/ membership meeting November-29-2012. It was fun to reminisce about the Sakai project and open source in my town having given this talk all over the world at various venues. Thanks to Clarke for the invite and for setting this up.

1. Sakai: Free as In Freedom (Alpha)
Dr. Charles Severance
29-November-2012

3. The Past...

4. 1995

5. 1995

6. Internet: TCI Show 08
http://www.vimeo.com/4275919
1:22
0:52
1995

7. Sync-O-Matic
www.syncomat.com
1997

8. 2000 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/csev/projects/cb2k/index.htm

9. 2001 http://bit.ly/gGQ1e7

11. 2004

12. 120
Membership Level
Non-Profit
100
80
60
40
20
0
1/14/04 7/12/04 1/8/05 7/7/05 1/3/06 7/2/06 12/29/06

13. Learning Tools Interoperability
2004

14. 2005 Common Cartridge

15. 2006

16. Dr. Chuck Travel 2004-2006

17. Dr. Chuck - Up in the Air

18. Sakai: The Social Network

20. Cat Herding
2007-02
Ant Farm

21. 2007-05

22. Self-Service Exit Interview
Bring an enterprise-level open source LMS into the Market
Collect bright worldwide developer community and open up
campus IT staff to a world of fun possibility
X Enable the rapid creation of new tools
08-2007
X Create a "Learning Tool App Store"
X Empower teachers to write, share and use lots of tools

23. Teach
Relax
Reflect
Recharge
2007-2008

24. 2007

26. Tools
Commercial Interoperability
Common Publishers
Cartridge
LMS
Open Source
Standards
2008
www.imsglobal.org

28. Early Work on
Standards
• IMS Learning Tools Interoperability
• Lots of convincing and cajoling (and beer)
• Strategic chess game
• Sakai, Blackboard, Moodle, ...
2009 http://www.vimeo.com/7825070 1:48

29. 05-2010

30. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY-Ogkc7Mnw

31. Getting a bit restless...
Later that day, I receive a text message from an unknown 202 area code number:
You will soon work for me.
February 15, 2012

32. March 26, 2012

33. Chuck and Blackboard
• Sakai Chief Strategist
• Continue as full-time faculty member at University of Michigan
• I am paid to work on Sakai and contribute to the trunk
• I can use internal resources such as documentation and QA
• I can hire contractors to work on Sakai
• Advocate internally for Standards, Interoperability, and Open Source

34. I am not speaking on
behalf of Blackboard

35. Blackboard, Inc.
I am not speaking on
behalf of Blackboard

36. Blackboard, Inc.
I am not speaking on
behalf of Blackboard

37. The New LMS Market...

40. The Market is Different in 2012
• Vendors are rushing to support IMS standards for Interoperability
• Common Cartridge
• Learning Tools Interoperability
• Standards save everyone money and make them money - expands the
entire market place - interoperability is the "new normal"

41. Instructure: Rapid Penetration
• Instructure Canvas is open source - Affero GPL - to avoid being sued!
• Zero engineering investment in proprietary expansion points for users
• LTI Expansion is perfectly engineered for hosted multi-tenant instance
• Publisher content using IMS Common Cartridge
• We did all the hard work and made this way too easy for Instructure!

42. New Effect:Venture Capital
• Between 1999 and 2010, the LMS marketplace was a village
• Everyone knows everyone
• Changes slowly - Blackboard / Pearson buy folks once in a while
• New level of investment, new tolerance for risk, new pace of innovation

43. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjgg63cGRLY

44. Moving Towards the Cloud
• The forefront of innovation will move away from the LMS and toward new
tools and groups of tools
• The LMS will still carry the load of much of your local work and be the
place that you innovate locally
• Increasingly core teaching tools like assessment and structured content
will be common across LMS systems and integrated using standards.

45. Thank You
Dr. Charles Severance
University of Michigan School of Information
www.dr-chuck.com
csev@umich.edu
@drchuck on Twitter