Agenda for Wednesday, August 17 Meeting

1) Thoughts on survey and lessons learned
2) Review track and session ideas
3) Process for soliciting and managing the tracks and sessions
4) Program Cmte. meetings – time/dates

August 17 Meeting Notes from Mara

I am posting decisions and action items that I believe emerged from our meeting. I am hoping that this will help us fairly quickly clarify issues and move forward. Please make additions or edits using the "Reply to This" feature.

Decisions:

1. Top level categories or tracks:
   1. Education & Research
   2. Technology
   3. Management
   4. Community Source
2. Topic categories need to be fleshed out (these may be applied to different categories). Some that were mentioned are:
   1. Newbie
   2. Overview
   3. Hands-on
   4. Implementation
   5. Design
   6. Develop
   7. Pedagogy
   8. EResearch
   9. Governance
3. OSP sessions will be integrated throughout the conference with an overview or plenary session at the start of the conference.
4. C-Level needs to have a CIO or other Senior Admin(s) to draw more of the other C-Level folks
5. Governance discussions should be broken into discrete sessions, some being clearly marked as decision-making sessions and others being more about information sharing, licensing and open source being an example.
6. Program Cmte. will meet weekly to start off
7. Sept. 1 registration will go up online
8. Call for session and demo proposals will go out within the next couple of weeks (after next week's meeting is goal).
9. We will have some repeat sessions for critical overview sessions

Action Items

1. Susan will send around data regarding the roles of Baltimore conference attendees
2. Form for call for sessions and demos will be developed and shared with group by next week
3. Committee should review and comment on project plan (front worksheet in Austin Template under Documents) by next week.

Other important points in discussion

1. We need to define the goals for the conference. Some goals that came up (my apologies for the paraphrasing!):
   1. Motivate and prepare people to be productive open source contributors
   2. Expand the engagement in the Sakai community through induction of new groups and new members
   3. Build confidence in the Sakai foundation and the community and product as we transition from the Mellon grant

(Also posted in "session ideas" track)

Talking points for Friday August 26 Phone Conference

Mara is out of the office this week, so I'm offering talking points for tomorrow's phone conference. I'm sure Mara will be back in full swing next week (right, Mara?).

1. If we have between 500 and 800 attendees - and we do need in the next few weeks to settle on a number target to work with for planning – we are looking at a minimum of 10 and as many as 14 concurrent sessions during each set of sessions (the number affects how targeted we want our sessions to be). I'm assuming that our meeting rooms won't hold more than 50 - but please correct me if this is wrong - although one or two rooms might be available during each session-block that can hold more. Nor do I think it's good to have sessions with more than 50 since Q&A loses value beyond that point.
2. With somewhere between 10 and 14 sessions, speaking on behalf of OSP, I'd like 4 to 6 sessions focused on portfolios in each time slot, 2 or 3 appropriate to both Sakai and OSPI, and 4 to 6 sessions focused on Sakai. I'm speaking for myself and OSPI only. I don't know yet what Mara's thinking is on this.
3. I advocate for multiple OSP sessions because portfolios are strongly "coming of age" this year. At least 18 US companies, including Oracle and IBM, are already in or entering the market this fall, most of whom focus almost entirely on electronic portfolios. You will not find one higher ed institution that is not thinking of or actually implementing a portfolio this year (or which has already done so). This is the "year of the portfolio." And, of course, OSP 2.0 was just introduced in June, so interest is high on that account as well.
4. In other words, information about portfolio information will be in demand at SEPP.
5. Finally, "portfolios" is an umbrella term that includes reflective portfolio, assessment management systems, advising management systems, citizen portfolios, resume-builders, faculty portfolios, showcase portfolios, student development portfolios and a few other instantiations of portfolio technology. This means SEPP attendees will arrive with a range of portfolio-information needs which should be addressed with a range of presentations.

Summary of OSPI suggestions for this email and recent discussions:

*plenary portfolio summary, 30 minutes at beginning of conference
*a substantial % of sessions in each time slot focused on portfolios
*And, some repeated sessions, especially for OSP developers and implementers
*And, meeting times and spaces at 2 or 3 times set aside for the "OSPNext" group to meet

OSPI will have sessions appropriate for all four main tracks:

Teaching, Learning, Research, and Assessment
Technology
Community Source
Management and Implementation

Some sessions will address both projects, such as how both open source and commercial can be proprietary and therefore what "support" means in the community source arena. But others, such as implementing assessment management portfolios for tracking student outcomes will be specific to OSP.

Title:

conversation starters (to include OSPI):

SEPP/OSPI Winter Conference
SEPP Winter Conference with OSPI
SEPP Winter Conference Including OSPI
etc.

Maybe none of these is good, but the goal is to identify to OSPI former attendees that this is their next conference.

These talking points are very OSPI-centric, so must be balanced with committee input on behalf of Sakai.

Cheers
Trent

August 25 Meeting Notes from Mara

Agenda

1. Conference Track/Session
2. Review Schedule
3. F2F in Educause
4. Number of tracks/Rooms

Decisions:

1. Top level categories or tracks revised:
   1. Teaching, Learning & Assessment (new name)
   2. Technology
   3. Management & Campus Implementation (NOTE the addition of Campus to help distinguish from tech implementation.)
   4. Sakai Foundation, Community Source & Governance (new name)
   5. Research & Collaboration (New)
2. The Program Cmte. (with the help of some others) will act as conveners for each session, setting context, providing structure, and acting as time keepers and providing summaries.
3. We will start adding content as soon as possible (we can add the sessions we have "called for" and not wait until all sessions defined).
4. Program Cmte. will convene in a f2f meeting at Educause on Oct. 18. Mary will help us find a Suite/Space.
5. There will be 5 different session formats supported:
   1. Panels
   2. Workshops (How-To)
   3. Discussions (Round-tables)
   4. Lecture Sessions (Trad. Papers)
   5. Poster session(s)

Action Items

1. The organizing cmte. will get back to us on the # of rooms. Mara will meet with them to determine room availability and start to flesh out the conference template. There should be at least 8 rooms, with possibly 12.
2. Form for call for sessions and demos will be developed and shared with group by next week
3. Discussion regarding naming and a way to "Celebrate the coming together of Sakai and OSP" so as to ensure that the portfolio track is visible to both Sakai and OSP folks will continue via email and be on the agenda for next week.

Other important points in discussion

1. Ways to engage the learning and pedagogy folks in paradigm that makes sense, speaks in their language, and leads to impactful efforts. Maybe some sort of thread through the TLA track...
2. Motivate and prepare people to be productive open source contributors
3. Is there a way to use response systems for use with panels or other sessions?