A quick report from DevCon 2010 in Orlando Florida. This is our largest ever conference with over 330 attendees including 290+ clients and a number of Blackboard staff. I just finished my keynote where I talked about some of the promises kept in the last year and announced the availability of the openDB. Blackboard has made a major shift in its position with regard to transparence of the underlying database schema for customers. Today’s we’ve made documentation available on Behind the Blackboard that enables customers to analyze and investigate the Blackboard Learn(tm) database schema. We’re also providing tools integrated with BIRT to make developing and sharing reports through Blackboard Building Blocks(tm). This is really going to be a revolution. Working with customers we’ve already seen some incredible results from this effort. Seneca College and GRCC have created a project under a greenhouse grant called “ASTRO” which creates some powerful reports. I also spoke with a representative from Hofstra who was using the open database information to put together a multi-million dollar grant proposal.
The second major piece of news was an update on Blackboard’s Commitment to Standards. I called Ray on stage and had him make some clear commitments about timelines on LIS and LTI two key IMS standards that are showing real traction in the market. He also gave an update on our partnership with SunGard and how we are working with them to create a defined profile that will lead the way for the rest of the community. This raises our level of engagement to move forward on this standard.
Finally I was able to share a White Paper I’ve written on Blackboard’s technology vision for collaborating with customers in the web 2.0 world to enable education innovation. I hope to have this white paper available for download in a few days.