Biography
Jim Helwig is a project manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He leads the Portal Infrastructure team for My UW-Madison, the uPortal-based campus wide enterprise portal for applicants, students, faculty and staff with over 50,000 active users and 2,000,000 logins a month. He also leads the Shared Tools team within the Division of Information Technology, responsible for implementing tools for use across the division's groups. Jim has also been heavily involved within the Jasig community for over six years, presenting at conferences and serving on numerous conference planning committees. He currently serves on the Jasig Board of Directors, is the board liaison to the uPortal Steering Committee and chairs the 2010 Jasig Spring Conference planning committee.
Jim has worked in information technology since receiving his Masters of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1996. His focus has been primarily on Java-based Internet applications. He spent several years in Seattle working on distributed Internet applications with the UK-based Harlequin software company. He then moved back to Wisconsin and worked for Quad/Graphics, the nation's third largest printer, overseeing implementation of their customer portal. He joined UW-Madison in 2001 and is currently part of the Internet Infrastructure and Applications Technology group.
Platform Statement
I was first introduced to the Jasig community in 2002. Ever since then I have been impressed by the vibrancy of the people and the projects. Since then, I have continued to attend the conferences, participated on discussion lists and served on committees. This has made me even more appreciative of what this community has to offer. Not only do we make open source projects available to the world, we form a network of support and a source of new ideas around these projects.
Over the last 10 years, Jasig has emerged as an influence force in how higher education views open source. Collectively we have made uPortal and CAS powerful, popular and viable software choices. We have also served as sources of inspiration for other open source projects like Sakai and Kuali. I want to see our next decade be one of continued influence and innovation. This includes being a vocal champion of open source in higher education as well as looking for opportunities to incubate new projects.
I am particularly interested in focusing efforts on these initiatives:
- Continued enhancement of our public web presence
- Continued development of information that makes it easier for individuals and organizations to find out about our projects
- Increased authoring of documentation and materials that support decision makers as they evaluate uPortal, CAS, Bedework and our other projects
- Continued improvement of uPortal and expansion of a robust and full featured portlet bundle
- Continued adoption of additional higher education open source projects looking for a permanent home
- Increased awareness of what Jasig offers to higher education
- Continued advocacy for open source in higher education, particularly through involvement with other conferences and publicized articles
While I have not contributed a line of code to Jasig, over the last six years I have contributed many hours of effort in support of the community and our mission. I have presented at conferences and served as a member of several conference planning committees, the website redesign committee, the Board of Directors and the uPortal Steering Committee. I have enjoyed my involvement with the community and look forward to continued involvement for years to come. I ask you to consider electing me to another term on the Board of Directors where I can continue to apply my experience, energy and leadership as we bring Jasig into its second decade.