[sakai-pmc] Executive Summary Sakai 10

Thu May 22 09:44:20 PDT 2014

We had this debate last year.  I suggested back then that we include a list
of contributing institutions/organizations listed independent of the
feature set.  I recommended that you crowd source the list in order to
surface contributors who may have been missed by the list compiler (as the
case of Bryan amply demonstrates).

Linking deliverables to specific organizational/institutional contributors
is a bad idea for two reasons.  First, it tends to over focus on the "big"
contributors and neglects others who assisted getting the deliverable
across the line in a variety of ways, some humble, some not.  Take signup
tool for instance.  Sure Yale contributed the tool but Michigan prepped it
for its move to trunk and inclusion in the release.  Similar examples can
be found in a variety of bug fixes and other work flowing into trunk and
10.x from a variety of sources.  The approach ends up downplaying the
collective effort that goes into Sakai development.  Second, lists of A did
X and B did Y tends to undercut a key message that we should be developing:
viz, we are one community, one project, one team, one code base.

Anth

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Scott Siddall <siddall at longsight.com>wrote:

> “…outside of our community messages go around that say Sakai is dead.”
>
>
>
> That was on the EDUCAUSE CIO list, arguably one of the most widely read
> lists in the campus CIO community.   The message was refuted a little bit
> and wasn’t from a credible source anyway, so no, the Sakai sky isn’t
> falling and Neal’s right that we shouldn’t be alarmist about it.
>
>
>
> OTOH, the Sakai community has to be proactive because campus leaders are
> under constant pressure to embrace the newest, greatest, trendy best.   If
> faculty or CIOs sense that Sakai isn’t the best, or is dying, or they don’t
> understand why their campus is using Sakai, they will (and should) look
> again at the market.
>
>
>
> Neal shouldn’t feel that he has to apologize for market speak.   I have
> academic DNA too, and have lived on both sides of this issue, but someone
> other than a vendor has to get the word out not that Sakai isn’t dead
> (geez…that’s awful), and explain WHY higher ed should care about Sakai.
>
>
>
> Sakai’s ten years old.   On average, that’s three times longer than the
> tenure of the average CIO.   Does the current crop of CIOs get it?
>
>
>
>             Scott
>
>
>
> *From:* sakai-pmc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:
> sakai-pmc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] *On Behalf Of *Neal Caidin
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 22, 2014 9:24 AM
> *To:* Bryan Holladay
> *Cc:* sakai-pmc at collab.sakaiproject.org
>
> *Subject:* Re: [sakai-pmc] Executive Summary Sakai 10
>
>
>
> So, I think Acknowledgements could be about vanity, but I see them as
> playing a potential "marketing" role, to show a number of institutions
> involved the ongoing development and improvement of Sakai. A list of
> commercial affiliates (and see, I also forgot to include Flying Kite! But
> this was just a first draft, in my defense) and institutions shows, not
> just our community, but the world, that there is active development on
> Sakai and that it is true community source, which is one of it's big
> differentiators.
>
>
> Believe it or not, outside of our community messages go around that say
> Sakai is dead. These messages could hurt additional adoption of Sakai, not
> based on merits, but perception. I don't think we should be overly alarmist
> about such messages, but I do think we should take every reasonable
> opportunity to show the value of our great community!
>
> Perhaps this could be the message that helps with Crowdsourcing. Don't
> promote that you contributed to Sakai for you or your institution's vanity,
> promote that your institution contributed because that sends the right
> message to the world about the value proposition (ouch, corporate marketing
> speak).
>
> I'm leaning towards Steve's suggestion of an alphabetical list of
> contributing institutions, to keep it simple. (not sure it is up to me, but
> if nobody stops me that's probably what I would "do"-ocracy ;-).
>
> 2 cents.
>
>
> -- Neal
>
>
>
>  *Neal Caidin* <neal.caidin at apereo.org>
>
> May 22, 2014 at 9:10 AM
>
> Those are two great features! Thank you for that.
>
> -- Neal
>
>
>  *Bryan Holladay* <holladay at longsight.com>
>
> May 22, 2014 at 9:02 AM
>
> I'm not a big fan of the acknowledgments section either.  For example you
> missed two feature contributions: Peer Review and Delegated Access.  Both
> were developed by me (so Longsight) but were financed and co-project
> managed by separate institutions (Peer Review - NYU and Delegated Access -
> Columbia).  Are we so vein we need recognition (ha I'm not trying to get on
> this list, I'm just using me as an example)?  This just ends up leaving
> people out and minimizing their contributions.
>
>
>
> -Bryan
>
>
>
> *Neal Caidin* <neal.caidin at apereo.org>
>
> May 22, 2014 at 8:54 AM
>
> True. But it is also more meaningful, imho, to link organizations with
> specific contributions. But you are right, it is tricky for the reasons you
> mention. In theory Crowdsourcing the acknowledgements would be a solution
> but from my experience I am doubtful that will be effective.
>
> Perhaps your strategy is the best one. Still a chance of missing an
> institution, but maybe if the Sakai core team and PMC and Sakai Commercial
> Affiliates could help, maybe we could get it 80-90% right.
>
> ?
>
> Thanks,
> Neal
>
>
>  *Steve Swinsburg* <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>
>
> May 21, 2014 at 8:21 PM
>
> The problem with acknowledgements is that if you miss someone out, they
> feel their contribution isn't valuable. There are also a number of people
> that worked on some of those features (volunteer or not) that may not be
> part of the organisation. I would drop the binding between feature and
> organisation and list everyone in alphabetical order, or not at all.
>
> cheers
> Steve
>
>
>
>  *Neal Caidin* <neal.caidin at apereo.org>
>
> May 21, 2014 at 3:21 PM
>
> Hi PMC,
>
> In addition to the detail release notes for Sakai 10, with a list of every
> feature and contribution we can find and add, I think it would be good to
> have an "Executive Summary" and an "Acknowledgements" area on the release
> notes [1].   I've started these sections and pasting in this email for your
> convenience. If anyone is a talented copy writer/editor, happy to accept
> the help!
>
> *Sakai 10 Overview*
>
> Sakai 10 builds on the solid work of the Sakai 2.9.3 release. We have two
> new tool contributions, better support for audio and video using HTML 5,
> infrastructure improvements, about 50 security fixes, performance
> improvements, a number of new features, and close to 2,000 fixes!
> Highlights include, but are not limited to:
>
>    - Signup tool, previously a Contrib tool, is now part of Sakai core
>    - Delegated Access tool, previously a Contrib tool, is now part of
>    Sakai core
>    - LTI - first LMS with support for LTI 2.0
>    - Peer graded Assignments
>    - Group Assignments
>    - Test and Quizzes has new question types: Calculated question and
>    Extended Matching Items, improved precision on numeric answers, a new
>    accordion-style interface for quiz setup.
>    - Lessons toolbar has been redesigned and simplified, better support
>    for embedded Audio and video, new Table of Contents feature, support for
>    inline use of polls, and better overall look and feel.
>    - Resources has support for drag and drop adding of files from desktop
>    for all browsers, and support for folder drag and drop in Chrome.
>    - Student pages can be owned by a group as well as individuals
>    - Syllabus Tool updated with a new interface, bulk update of syllabus
>    items, accordion view, and better handling of link migration
>    - Gradebook added support for extra credit.
>    - Distributed Cacheing provides support for JCache/JSR-107 which
>    includes improvement to the default cache sizes and better control by
>    configuration. Session replication to failover from one server to another
>    without losing session data. Overall provides better performance for large
>    Sakai installation (though please note that these features are not turned
>    on by default OOTB).
>    - Security Updates. The Sakai community fixed about 50 security issues
>    including various XSS issues and CSRF issues.  AntiSamy is on by default in
>    Sakai 2.9.3 and Sakai 10. AntiSamy ensures that user supplied HTML/CSS is
>    in compliance within an application's rules.
>    - Student Success Portal - new integration available.
>    - Java - added support for JDK 7.x. JDK 8.x support is in process of
>    being added.
>    - Sakai technical organization simplified. Reincorporated many of the
>    "Indies" to make management of Sakai releases and reporting of issues
>    easier.
>
>
> *Sakai 10 Acknowledgements*
>
>    - Yale for the contribution of the Signup Tool to Sakai core.
>    - Rutgers for ongoing development of the Lessons tool.
>    - S2U (Spanish speaking users group, a consortium of several
>    institutions) for making many contributions to the Sakai 10 release,
>    especially fixing security issues.
>    - Unicon as the lead and primary contributor for the new Sakai
>    cacheing framework
>    - Longsight for conversion of Audio recording from Java applet to HTML
>    5 based
>    - Sakai documentation group for creating brand new Sakai 10 help
>    documentation and to the Apereo Foundation to fund licensing of the
>    software used to support the effort.
>    - Asahi Net for contribution of the new ElasticSearch engine for the
>    Sakai search tool and as primary contributor for the Resources
>    Drag-and-Drop feature.
>    - Oxford for a new Contrib Search tool - Solr
>    - University of Michigan for CSS contributions to Sakai 10 and in
>    Lessons
>
>
> *Questions about these sections*
> Is the Sakai 10 Overview too long? Should it be more in prose rather than
> bullet points?
>
> There are some other cool features I know about, but didn't include
> (because it was getting to be a long list!). Examples Project Keitai
> [probably this one needs to be up in that list], some fixes to Forums like
> Ranking / Moving a thread to a different topic/ showing topics with unread
> messages, Messages tool has an improved interface, Joinable Groups, Video
> chat is now in core (though off by default), CK Editor improvements
> including Audio recording, .. and I could probably dig up more candidates
> for the "summary".
>
> Can I start with this as a good starting set of Acknowledgements and
> Crowdsource it? Maybe I should put it in alphabetical order of contributor
> so I don't get into trying to rank the importance of the contributions?
>
> Is it okay to say about 2,000 fixes? I count 1750, which seems like an
> incredible amount of Jiras that went into Sakai 10, but suspect it was
> partially due to the Sakai 2.9 delays and fixes aggregating [2]
>
> [1] Sakai 10 draft release notes (still in progress) -
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=86245732
> [2] over 1750 issues fixed - use JQL - fixVersion in
> versionMatches("10.*") and resolution = Fixed
>
> Thanks,
> Neal
>
>
>
> --
> Neal Caidin
> Sakai Community Coordinator
> Apereo Foundation
> neal.caidin at apereo.org
> Skype me! (but let me know in advance for the first interaction) - nealkdin
>
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>
>
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