More news from the world of VLE's: We had a meeting with the Surf special interest group on Sakai. It was very interesting to hear what the various institutions had to say on Sakai and especially what their ideas where on the adoption of this community source VLE.

Wytze Koopal has already written a report on the meeting which is available on the Sakai-nl blog. Willem van Valkenburg has also given his views on his weblog. So what is there left for me to add?

My general impression that everybody present was enthousiastic. People were also rightly critical. However it is quite a job to get a large institution to switch to another VLE and mentioning such a switch is something one has to do carefully. I believe now is the time to start up pilots and to invest in Sakai. If we wish to have a say in the direction in which Sakai is heading the European point of view can better offered now than later. In that respect I am very pleased to hear that the arts faculty in Utrecht has now started a pilot with Sakai. I am very intrigued what their experiences will be and I hope Utrecht can contribute to the Dutch effort. And no, we will not be programming source code ourselves. But there are other possibilities to get involved.

In view of my last posting I believe it would be wise if Utrecht University chooses to make a small investment in the future by becoming an active member of the Surf special interest group and in the development of Sakai. Two years can simply fly by....

Two other things struck me at the meeting. A smaller (Haagse Hotelschool) and more business led (LOI) institution were capable of adopting quickly and are now seriously working on introducing SAKAI. I am also interested in the new release of SAKAI, I hope to be able to see it up and running somewhere soon.

Sadly I will not be able to make the European user conference of SAKAI in Luebeck as I will be rather busy that week.