November 21, 2011
Jasig Celebrates Another Successful Annual Unconference in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
Jasig, the higher-ed open source consortium of educational institutions and commercial affiliates, held its annual unconference Unconference and related “developer days” outside of Boston the week of November 7th. This year, UMassOnline hosted the event, and participants were able to attend without a registration fee. A small, passionate group of over 30 attendees dynamically determined discussion topics at the beginning of each day, listing possible topics and then gridding mapping them into onto timeslots and meeting spaces. Throughout each day there were at least three separate in depth conversations ranging from technical road maps to local implementation efforts to inter-project collaboration. The group participated in a successful week of collaboration, innovation, and learning. Highlights of the unconference included:
- Many 10-minute "lightning talks" introduced participants to new initiatives in many across the wide range of Jasig projects.
- Several organizations considering implementing a Jasig project projects were able to listen to overview sessions, and follow up with detailed discussions on local concerns.
- Roadmap discussions were held for CAS, uPortal, uMobile, and Bedework.
- Demos were held for CAS, Bedework, uMobile, Scheduling Assistant, Grouper, and more.
- Ongoing Identity Management conversations were held to discern explore the current ecosystem, related projects, and the requirements of local institutions.
Jasig plans to expand its unconference Unconference to include more participants, more Open Source open source projects, and more topics in 2012.