[sakai-pmc] Executive Summary Sakai 10
Neal Caidin
neal.caidin at apereo.org
Thu May 22 09:52:04 PDT 2014
Yeah, you're right. When Aaron mentioned that we had discussed this last
year, that set off a little light bulb.
When I have an initial list set up (very very soon), I'll post to
sakai-dev to crowdsource (and maybe elsewhere).
-- Neal
> Anthony Whyte <mailto:arwhyte at umich.edu>
> May 22, 2014 at 12:44 PM
> 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
>
>
>
>
> Scott Siddall <mailto:siddall at longsight.com>
> May 22, 2014 at 10:25 AM
>
> “…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>
> [mailto: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
> <mailto: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* <mailto:neal.caidin at apereo.org>
>
> May 22, 2014 at 9:10 AM
>
> Those are two great features! Thank you for that.
>
> -- Neal
>
>
> *Bryan Holladay* <mailto: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* <mailto: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* <mailto: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* <mailto: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 <mailto:neal.caidin at apereo.org>
> Skype me! (but let me know in advance for the first interaction) -
> nealkdin
>
> Neal Caidin <mailto:neal.caidin at apereo.org>
> May 22, 2014 at 9:24 AM
> 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 <mailto:neal.caidin at apereo.org>
> May 22, 2014 at 9:10 AM
> Those are two great features! Thank you for that.
>
> -- Neal
>
>
>
> Bryan Holladay <mailto: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
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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