Robert Sherratt - University of Hull

Biography

I began my varied career shortly after graduating by clearing tables on board a ferry sailing several times a day between England and France. Things improved slightly following studying for a Masters in Information Systems and I began to work for a small company in Leicestershire. As the only IT person in the company I did everything from fixing printers to writing new database systems.

A more dramatic improvement came when I began to work in higher education. I spent four years working at the University of Leicester both as a developer and a manager of development. This work was both technically (does anyone remember Toolbook?) and intellectually challenging, creating new software working in collaboration with academic staff to produce learning and teaching materials to be used by universities in the UK.  This work was funded by an external agency and as the money dried up I moved 20 miles north to Loughborough University where I spent a very productive year looking at online assessment systems having my first serious professional encounter with the Web and learning about a range of new technologies including ASP, Java and Perl.

By June 1999 I had taken up the post of Intranet Development Officer at the University of Hull where I have remained, taking on a number of different roles over for the years. I started work on the intranet gaining significant experience and understanding of how large scale web systems worked, including a large amount of programming using Perl.  It was around this time, 2001, Hull became interested in portals.  It was also at this time that I visited my first JA-SIG conference at La Jolla, the t-shirt was only thrown out last year.

 
Between 2001 and 2003 I worked exclusively on two projects, the first developing a content management system, the second implementing a portal for Hull using uPortal.  The CMS was developed in Java specifically to provide a means of publishing HTML content for our new portal.  The portal eventually went live on a date I still remember five years later, 15 September 2003. It was also around this time my career moved from being a developer into a more managerial role, managing the small team responsible for developing the portal at the University and renewing and revisiting the CMS. During this time we have remained committed to uPortal and were also for a long time the single largest user of the JA-SIG sponsored CMS, Hypercontent, the system that replaced our original in-house system.

 

Although the team I lead is small I have continued to contribute where possible both locally and internationally, telling people about our experiences, both good and bad. Since last summer I have taken on an additional management role overseeing the implementation of our new LMS, Sakai. These have been exciting times, partially moving back to where I started talking to academics about learning and teaching, as well as maintaining a focus on the deployment of the systems to facilitate these activities.  It is also a very exciting time as we move forward with uPortal and CAS, particularly our intended implementation of uPortal 3.0 this summer and we start to see increasing opportunities around the combining of the portal and LMS.

Platform Statement

JA-SlG has for nearly ten years now provided leadership to a wide and diverse community not just in terms of technology but also how to share and collaborate, and it is on these foundations that we must continue to build towards a second decade. It is important to recognize that the community started in a very different environment to our current situation, for example portals are now a mature software framework, nearly every vendor will supply you with their own portal and alternative open source products are available. Building on the very successful recent conference in St. Paul involving a number of communities, I see this continued forming of stronger relationships and alliances across a number of higher education specific communities as a critical requirement for the future. The communities need to continue to share not just knowledge but also expertise and resource where appropriate.

JA-SIG has a strong core of products, particularly CAS and uPortal, that we need to continue to develop, maintaining and where possible looking to increase market share. Again drawing on the most recent conference, we should be looking to act on advice offered by Ira Fuchs from the Mellon Foundation. JA-SIG needs to review evidence from a large number of universities about the use of open source software, providing appropriate information to staff in a number of roles within an institution including senior executives. This comes down to finding ways to market ourselves as successfully as we currently develop software both within the community and in partnership with our commercial affiliates.

CAS and uPortal both have software development roadmaps. I think we can also use these to strengthen our offering, demonstrating a clear understanding, in a similar way to commercial vendors, of where we are headed. These roadmaps become a key piece of the overall JA-SIG strategy, reassuring all about the maturity of both the community and the products and keeping everyone informed of the potential and expected benefits of each release.

Since first attending JA-SIG seven years ago my experience and abilities in leading teams both within and outside an institutional context, including extensive work with cross-institutional groups, has continued to grow. I have significant expertise in dealing with the technical, cultural and political challenges that need to be met in these situations. This has been broadened in the last year as I also take forward the management of the implementation of Sakai as an LMS. My approach is open, always looking to learn from others, encouraging contributions from all and sharing my knowledge.