From a functionality/architecture point of view, the idea of loosly coupled integrations with external services like wikis, or Google Apps, or other tools seems very attractive.

*however*

There are significant horizontal capability components that while not impossible to resolve may complicate that scenario. Initial thoughts:

* TOS – ensuring users understand external, but integrated tools may have separate terms of service, SLAs, data ownership/retention policies, etc.
* import/export – I think the ability to “package” and port a course/site/project or archive it is something that lots of people want. Again possible (treat external resources as links? Embed their content? Cry?) but I think it has some strong implications in user experience and architecture
* Search – this one might actually be a bit more straightforward

I will make the observation/parallel from the portal world – CampusEAI is currently heavily involved in building out a social portal, that combines the integration of enterprise services & applications with natively managed content like blogs, wikis, discussions, profile, etc. As we continue to get further down this road, some interesting intersections between user expectations and boundaries between external and internal content continue to present themselves up.

So far the balance we’ve come up with is largely – some stuff is in, some stuff is out, but there’s continual tension on the boarders of that distinction, and I’m not confident that that particular firewall will hold or be appropriate in the long run.

Not sure I have good answers for you Just a brain-dump of my internal thought processes these days.

This is pretty cool – I may have to replace my default Flickr photo bit with this…

Loading the kids in the car

The front yard

Its a bit creepy when Facebook shows you the birthday of a friend who has passed away. The FB kids weren’t thinking about death and divorce.

http://twitter.com/gwachob

* Redesigned to better support non-CAS protocols (e.g. SAML, etc.)
* Increased emphasis on SAML as a product
* Better admin tools (service administration, workflow for registering services)
* Eased configuration (w/o needing to edit deployerContext.xml)
* Better extension points: captcha, “password expired” messages
* Governance and other changes

Scott’s mentioned the timeframe is end of this year, with Rutgers looking to go-live over the summer. Cas 3.3.x is still the production maintenance release, and there are intentions for a transition period, though some of the details have not yet been worked out.

P.S. Ian Dolphin clarified over beers last night that he *has not* actually hit 2 million miles, and that’s a meme that Chuck Severance has propagated through the net space

Things I look for in resumes:

* Strong command of written & colloquial English (see below for more)
* Experience spanning multiple vendors, platforms, open-source, etc
* Specific accomplishments (less ‘managed/coordinated’ more ‘wrote/implemented’)

Things that are likely to put me off:

* Excessive keywords/technologies (with no examples)
* Cut and pasted roles/responsibilities for projects (e.g. every role listed)
* More experience with a technology than it’s been in existence
* Obvious grammatical/spelling/usage errors

It somewhat surprised me after thinking about it how little time/credence I give to scanning technologies listed by candidates. (I do read them, but mostly looking for items that show strong willingness to explore or personal preference; e.g. Grails, Git, IntelliJ). What really excites me for hiring say a Java developer is someone who’s also done, say Javascript, Ruby, scripting, C++, *and* has some great project samples of things they’ve done for projects where they came up with something clever, or leveraged a neat toolkit to solve some problem.

Really what I’m looking for generally boils down to 2 main factors: communication skills and passion.

Communication Skills: I increasingly view resumes/CVs as an expression of an individual’s ability to communicate in a technical forum. The quality of your resume reflects your ability to write requirements, express technical/design concepts, and communicate with customers. We work in an environment where the first impression people have of you increasingly comes via email, a written document, or some other non-verbal communication. With distributed teams becoming more common, the ability to clearly and accurately communicate without the luxury of all the bandwidth you have in personal settings becomes even more important.

Passion: I want to see some combination of jobs, project accomplishments, technologies, and familiarity with techniques that let me know you’re passionate for both delivering good software, and becoming better at the craft of software engineering. I like to see technologies like open-source libraries, frameworks, projects, and other tools that show you’ve investigated what’s out there in the course of your work. Practices like TDD, Agile, UCD, or others that show you’re continually looking to try, and adopt better ways of working are also a strong plus.

If those pieces are there, then I strongly believe the other fundamentals will follow, which makes it much more likely that someone will get an interview to see if things click in terms of team dynamics and the needs of a specific position.

ITWeb :Unisa embraces Microsoft: “[ Johannesburg, 3 December 2008 ] – At a time when many public organisations are migrating to open source solutions – the University of SA (Unisa) has chosen to embrace Microsoft.

From 2009, registered students at Unisa will be required to sign up for a Microsoft-provided e-mail service.

The free e-mail system – myLife – will be the only system Unisa will use to communicate with its students. This marks a move away from the university’s Sakai community source platform – myUnisa – which the university runs on a Linux platform.”

(Via car hire bulgariaGoogle.)

Based on the article at least (not having talked with the folks at UNISA about this item) it’s hard to tie moving to Live@EDU for email to moving away from Sakai. If anything, having guaranteed email accounts (which it sounds like may not currently be the case) seems likely to enhance core services like announcements, email notification, mailing lists and others.

PR-GB.com… News from origin – Hobsons Debuts Full CAS Integration at CGS Annual Meeting: “”

(Via Google.)

Another vendor server higher-ed supporting CAS out of the box can only be a good thing easing integration across the board.