Patrick Berry - California State University, Chico

Bio

I have been working as a web developer for over 10 years with 5 years of project management experience.  My projects have been developed mostly in the popular web languages (Java, Perl, Ruby, PHP).  The details of my work experience are as follows:

CSU, Chico

My duties at Chico started with the maintenance of the existing portal, Campus Pipeline, and to research new portal products for "Version 2." Chico went with uPortal and I lead the implementation, which included CAS for authentication.  I continue to manage the portal and CAS, version upgrades, and much of the content.  Other duties include management and/or implementation of JIRA, Confluence, the campus web server, and Mailman for mailing lists.  Web Application Development will be leading the implementation of the CSU Accessible Technology Initiative.

I'm a strong advocate for accessibility and usability, and those efforts are reflected in our deployed applications.

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Webmaster

My duties at EFF revolved solely around the website.  I started the transition from static HTML to a dynamic publishing system that allowed for a more flexible way to implement new designs.

Freestyle Interactive - Engineer/Project Management

A small interactive advertising agency based in San Francisco.  My roles and duties spanned from system and desktop administration to web development to project management, and all other things in-between.

Platform Statement

The purpose of the JA-SIG is clear and I feel that many of the actions currently being taken will advance the organization and benefit the entire educational community.  The launch of a membership program was an excellent step, and even though its growth is slow, it will provide strength for the organization. The current realignment of the uPortal 3 project from revolution to evolution will be critical for institutional adoption.

An area of potential improvement that I see is for the delineation of product from framework.  CAS is nearly a drop-in product at this point with the main part of implementation being configuration and not custom development.  uPortal is more framework than product.  In portal "face-offs" this often costs uPortal points, which is unfair in an "apples to oranges" way.  I feel that JA-SIG needs to make it clear that uPortal was not designed to be a turn-key portal solution, but that it is the strongest framework that you can build your portal upon.  When we show that we understand you, the deployer, need your portal to be a window to the services that you already have in place, we will be seen as a more compelling solution.

I have been an advocate of CAS and uPortal inside the CSU system since our initial deployment.  A number of CSU campuses have consulted with Chico about our use of CAS and uPortal.  We chose uPortal/CAS when many other institutions went with PeopleSoft Portal due to the CSU-wide move to PeopleSoft.  I believe that I have a firm understand of how the product CAS and the framework uPortal need to be pitched to potential implementors.