JA-SIG Board Announcement regarding uPortal
- John Fereira
- William G. Thompson, Jr.
December 5th 2005
JA-SIG Winter Conference
Austin, TX
The JA-SIG Board is committed to ensuring the health and sustainability of its sponsored projects and for providing strategic direction that is consistent with our stated purpose and the needs of the community and our commercial partners. It is in this light that the Board issues the following statements regarding the uPortal project.
1) Strategic Direction
The JA-SIG Board is committed to ensuring the health and sustainability of its sponsored projects and for providing strategic direction that is consistent with our stated purpose and the needs of the community and our commercial partners. The role of Project Liaison is the primary way the Board executes this responsibility. The Project Liaison maintains close relationship with project leaders and commercial partners and is the single point of contact for the JA-SIG Board and project stakeholders. William G. Thompson, Jr. is currently serving as Project Liaison for the uPortal project.
2) Next Generation uPortal Development
Funding for the last two years of research and development on the next generation uPortal has been made possible by our partnership with the Sakai project and through a generous Mellon Foundation grant. This work has made significant progress on the next generation uPortal and has had considerable impact on improving the current production version. The initial grant expires at the end of this year and the responsibility of charting a path for the uPortal 3.x branch and the next generation uPortal shifts to the uPortal community process.
3) uPortal Development Roadmap
JA-SIG is committed to providing strategic direction for uPortal that is consistent with our stated purpose and the needs of the community and our commercial partners. JA-SIG is now moving forward to gather requirements that will guide the next generation of uPortal. Over the next six months and in partnership with the uPortal community we will merge requirements identified as part of the Sakai/uPortal grant project with those identified by working with the current and future uPortal users, both commercial and institutional. This effort will result in a uPortal Development Roadmap and is expected to be released at the Vancouver JA-SIG meeting in June, 2006.