JA-SIG Newsletter - May 2008
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1 Welcome
1.1 Editor's Message
2 Project Updates
2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server
2.1.2 CAS Client for Java
2.1.3 CAS Roadmap and Vision
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 uPortal 3 Development
2.2.2 uPortal 3 Adoption
3 Community News
3.1 uPortal Steering Committee - Update
3.2 JA-SIG Board of Directors - Call for Nominations
3.3 JA-SIG UK Meeting
3.4 Unicon Announces uPortal 3 Commercial Support
3.5 CAS Presentation at Educause Security Professionals Conference
4 Upcoming Events
4.1 9th Sakai Conference - Paris, France (July 1-3, 2008)
4.2 9th Libre Software Meeting - Mont de Marsan, France (July 1-5, 2008)
4.3 2nd Annual JA-SIG Unconference - Madison, Wisconsin (October 6-8, 2008)
4.4 EDUCAUSE 2008 - Orlando, Florida (October 28-31, 2008)
5 JA-SIG in the Blogosphere
5.1 Mediashelf Blog - "Going way beyond Digital Asset Management"
5.2 Jonathan's JA-SIG Weblog
5.3 Michael Korcuska's Sakai Blog
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1 Welcome
1.1 Editor's Message
Welcome to the May 2008 issue of the JA-SIG Newsletter.
By all accounts, the JA-SIG Spring Conference in St. Paul, MN was a tremendous success and a shining example of collaboration among like-minded communities. The technical content was excellent and the opportunity to network with, and learn from, such a diverse group of attendees was exhilirating. The non-technical content was superb as well, and an absolutely wonderful closing talk by Dr. Kaye Howe (Executive Director, National Science Digital Library) entitled "Ubiquity, Interdependence, and the Age of Collaboration" made me wish I was a student again. For those of you not able to attend the conference, you will find presentation materials from many of the sessions here.
I hope you enjoy this month's content. As always, feel free to send your comments or content to newsletter at jasig dot org.
~mark_rogers@mac.com (University of Manitoba), Editor, JA-SIG Newsletter
2 Project Updates
2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server
The CAS Server team is currently hard at work on the next minor release of the CAS Server. This version will include minor enhancements, bug fixes, and some new features.
2.1.2 CAS Client for Java
The CAS Client for Java team is currently working on enhancements to support JIRA and Confluence, as well as the new uPortal 3.
2.1.3 CAS Roadmap and Vision
The CAS team is starting a document related to the future vision and roadmap for the CAS Server product, detailing the short term (CAS 3.x branch) and longer term (CAS 4.x) vision, as well as gauging interest and potential help.
The document can be found here:
http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CAS/CAS+Vision+and+Roadmap
We're looking for open discussion on the future of CAS on the CAS developers mailing list.
Contributed by:
Scott Battaglia (Rutgers University), Lead Developer, JA-SIG Central Authentication Service
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 uPortal 3 Development
Following the outstanding response to the GA release of uPortal 3, developers are now focussing their attention on the small number of outstanding issues for that release. The hope is to close those issues and release a 3.0.1 version of uPortal by mid-June. We also continue to work on documentation on the wiki.
2.2.2 uPortal 3 Adoption
"This is a page where people and organizations exploring adopting or upgrading to uPortal 3 can list themselves and their progress, allowing others to see how this is going, casually lend a hand where there are road blocks, and find peers and trailblazers in this endeavor."
"Please talk about adopting uPortal 3 on the uportal-user email list. (Discussion of development of uPortal happens on the uportal-dev email list.)"
"There's also a uPortal IRC chat room in which you're welcome to discuss uPortal."
http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UPC/uPortal3+Adoption
3 Community News
3.1 uPortal Steering Committee - Update
The uPortal steering committee (Colin Clark, Eric Dalquist, Jim Helwig, Jonathan Markow, Andy Newman, Andrew Petro, and Robin Yager) has been meeting regularly and discussing and strategizing around such topics as: WSRP in uPortal, drawing new participants and contributors into uPortal development, gathering user feedback and connecting with institutional efforts to draw out local user feedback, facilitating the adoption of uPortal 3 and the mutual support of those exploring uPortal 3, and ensuring the JA-SIG websites update project has adequate requirements for a new uPortal website. The committee has served as a point of contact for organizations looking to understand how to engage with uPortal and as a panel for fielding questions and concerns from within and without the uPortal community. The committee particularly enjoyed an opportunity to meet with the JA-SIG Board in St. Paul and discussing the exciting release of uPortal 3 and next steps for uPortal.
You can look forward to additional updates from the uPortal steering committee in future JA-SIG newsletters. You are also welcome to send an email to the steering committee by writing to uportal-steering-committee at lists dot ja-sig dot org.
~awp9
JA-SIG uPortal steering committee
3.2 JA-SIG Board of Directors - Call for Nominations
The JA-SIG Elections Committee is pleased to announce the opening of nominations for three (3) positions on the JA-SIG Board of Directors.
JA-SIG, Inc., is a non-profit, 501(c)3, international consortium of educational institutions and commercial affiliates supporting community-driven, open source software development and promoting open system architectures for higher education.
JA-SIG BOARD
The Board of Directors provides leadership for JA-SIG by serving the interests of the entire community, promoting JA-SIG's objectives, representing and coordinating sponsored projects, ensuring that project management is consistent with the organization's mission, and making sure that JA-SIG operates within its fiscal resources. The Board of Directors meets in person at least twice a year at such times and places as designated by the Chair. Board members are expected to attend monthly video-conferences and regularly conduct Board business electronically. Board members are not compensated for their work. Nominees will be expected to confirm that their institutional leadership approves of this commitment of time if elected.
The Board elections will fill three vacant Director positions that will result from an annual planned cycling of Board positions. This year, positions held by Ian Dolphin, William G. Thompson, and Barry Walsh will become vacant. Nominations for these positions will be open, and nominees will be selected by a vote of the JA-SIG Membership. Board Directors shall serve for a term of three years. Board Directors may serve two consecutive terms, if re-nominated.
ELECTION PROCESS
Nominations for Board Directors must be emailed to elections@ja-sig.org no later than 5:00 PM EDT (GMT-4) on Friday, May 30, 2008. Anyone can be nominated to stand for election to these positions. Self-nominations are also permitted. Receipt of any nomination you submit will be confirmed. The JA-SIG Elections Committee will notify all nominees, explain the expectations for Board Directors and confirm their willingness and ability to run for election. If they agree, additional information about them will be solicited and posted.
A current list of JA-SIG Members eligible to vote may be found on the JA-SIG website.
The elections are scheduled to be conducted for a period of three weeks via email, beginning Monday, June 2, 2008, with results announced soon after Friday, June 20, 2008. More complete directions will follow. Newly elected Directors will join Board video-conferences during the summer and officially assume their new responsibilities in September, 2008.
Thank you very much for helping us present the most qualified slate of candidates. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Carl Jacobson
Chair, JA-SIG Elections Committee
3.3 JA-SIG UK (June 25, 2008)
The next JA-SIG UK meeting will take place on June 25 and be hosted by Leeds University. The JA-SIG UK wiki page has been updated and will allow people to register their interest in attending. To ensure that we can prepare for this, please register by the 11th of June. Further suggestions for agenda items would be most welcome.
Link: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/JA-SIG+UK
Around this meeting, Unicon, Inc. is planning a three-day Portlet Development Training class. More details on this can be found at: http://www.unicon.net/node/1017
Contributed by: Robert Sherratt (University of Hull, UK)
3.4 Unicon Announces uPortal 3 Commercial Support
"Unicon, Inc., the leading provider of open source enterprise portals, applications, and top end technology consulting for higher education, today announced commercial support for uPortal 3, the next generation community source portal platform designed by and for the higher education community. uPortal 3 includes numerous new features, updated technologies, and platform enhancements, and also incorporates current best practices in enterprise Java. Unicon was directly involved with many of the architectural developments and contributions to uPortal 3, and has a dedicated team of uPortal administration and development specialists to provide comprehensive consulting, training, and support for institutions using uPortal or who wish to migrate to uPortal 3."
Read the full release at: http://www.uportal.org/news/unicon-up3-support.html
Source: uportal.org
3.5 CAS Presentation at EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference
Scott Battaglia from Rutgers and Adam Rybicki from Unicon spoke about CAS at the EDUCAUSE Security Professionals conference in Arlington, VA on May 5, 2008. The presentation gave an overview of CAS, its protocol, its features, and its future direction. The presentation was very similar to one given by Adam Rybicki a week earlier at the JA-SIG Spring 2008 conference.
4 Upcoming Events
4.1 9th Sakai Conference - Paris, France (July 1-3, 2008)
"Join us in Paris, France for the 9th Sakai Conference
The Sakai Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2008 Sakai Community Conference will be held in Paris, France. The dates will be Tuesday-Thursday, 1-3 July, with pre- and post-conference sessions and activities on Monday, 30 June and Friday, 4 July. All meetings and conference sessions will be held at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. The ever popular Sakai technical demonstrations will take place on Wednesday evening, 2 July, at the Marriott hotel nearby."
For further information, see the conference web site at:
https://sakai.educonference.com/paris/index.php
4.2 9th Libre Software Meeting - Mont de Marsan, France (July 1-5, 2008)
The LSM (Libre Software Meeting) provides an opportunity for interested parties to come together on the topic of free software. Over five days, conferences and workshops are open to everyone. This event is organized each year, with this year's event being hosted in the town of Mont de Marsan, from 1 to 5 July 2008.
For further information, see the meeting web site at:
http://2008.rmll.info/?lang=en (English)
4.3 2nd Annual JA-SIG Unconference - Madison, Wisconsin (October 6-8, 2008)
"An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance."
-Wikipedia
JA-SIG has always been about people coming together to share and learn in an open environment, and this is what an "unconference" is all about. The unconference format fits very well with our community values and goals. Last year's inaugural unconference was a rousing success and this year's promises to be even better.
This October event will provide both spontaneous and planned opportunities to collaborate on all JA-SIG community initiatives and initiatives from other open source communities as well. Mark your calendar and make plans to join us! More information about the conference will be available soon.
4.4 EDUCAUSE 2008 - Orlando, Florida (October 28-31, 2008)
"Mark your calendar for the premier information technology event in higher education, EDUCAUSE 2008, October 28-31 in Orlando, Florida. The program 'Interaction, Ideas, Inspiration' will include preconference seminars; track and poster sessions; small group meetings; and corporate exhibits, presentations, and workshops. ... "
Source: EDUCAUSE 2008 Web Site - http://www.educause.edu/e08
5 JA-SIG in the Blogosphere
5.1 MediaShelf Blog - "Going way beyond Digital Asset Management"
MediaShelf's Matt Zumwalt talks about all things Fedora, including his experience at the recent JA-SIG Conference, at:
http://yourmediashelf.com/blog/
5.2 Jonathan's JA-SIG Weblog
Be sure to read Executive Director, Jonathan Markow's most recent reflections on "some things that made (the) JA-SIG conference in St. Paul the best in recent memory" at:
http://blogs.ja-sig.org/jjmarkow
5.3 Michael Korcuska's Sakai Blog
Sakai Foundation Executive Director, Michael Korcuska writes about his impressions of the JA-SIG Spring 2008 conference in St. Paul, MN at:
http://sakaiblog.korcuska.net/2008/05/05/ja-sig-spring-2008-conference/
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JA-SIG Newsletter - May 2008
Archives available in the JA-SIG wiki at:
http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/Newsletter
If your institution or company has items of interest to the JA-SIG membership, please submit them via email to newsletter@ja-sig.org.
The next JA-SIG Newsletter will be published on or about June 17th, 2008. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, June 16th, 2008.
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