During the keynote, Blackboard announced that they had purchased TerriblyClever, a company that specializes in creating software applications for mobile devices for the higher education market. Specifically, they have created mobile apps that access consolidated data from disparate sources on a college campus.
I consider myself to have pretty deep and broad technical knowledge, but listening to Steve Feldman always leaves me wondering which key on my keyboard is the “any” key. I leave his sessions feeling like I was full after the first 15 minutes and somehow missed all the really important stuff that happened after that because I was in some sort of geek coma. 
UPDATE: See this post for updated information on this topic.
This session was run by Paul Grist (Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing) and Matt Davis (Sr. Solutions Engineer). Their objective was to “provide a nucleus of a plan for you to move to BB 9(.x)”.
The upshot of the meeting is that 9.1 is still on track to be released in late 2009 or early 2010. It contains a couple features that most CE/Vista schools can’t really live without: learning modules and course files. Supposedly, the learning module changes also include better import from CE/Vista sections; this would be good, because the current import is “lossy” (that’s programmer slang for “it sucks”).
» Continue reading “Upgrading to Blackboard Learn 9 for CE/Vista clients”
Is it bad that I listed Ray Henderson first in the title of this post? I think Ray is a breath of fresh air in the Blackboard organization… a “green shoot” if you will (to borrow the current economic phrase). I hope he sticks around.
“You can’t over-communicate with your clients” – Ray Henderson
I love this quote. It’s so true. Even if your product sucks, or your support is awful, some of that… a lot of it… can be mitigated by open, honest communication. If I know that you know that you have issues and that you are working on them, I’ll be much more forgiving of your flaws. If you try to hide them or make excuses, I’ll likely hold a grudge for a long time.
