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KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Hal Abelson is a founding director of the Free Software Foundation and of Creative Commons. He also serves as consultant to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. At MIT, Abelson is co-director of the MIT-Microsoft Research Alliance in educational technology and co-head of MIT's Council on Educational Technology. He is also active in MIT's OpenCourseWare and DSpace (institutional digital archiving) initiatives.

Abelson is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is winner of several teaching awards, including the IEEE's Booth Education Award, cited for his contributions to the teaching of undergraduate computer science. Abelson's research at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory focuses on 'amorphous computing', an effort to create programming technologies that can harness the power of the new computing substrates emerging from advances in microfabrication and molecular biology. He is also engaged in the interaction of law, policy, and technology as they relate to societal tensions sparked by the growth of the Internet, and he is active in projects at MIT and elsewhere to help bolster our intellectual commons.

The Sakai Foundation is pleased to announce that the June 2007 Sakai Community Conference will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  The dates will be Tuesday-Thursday, June 12-14, with pre and post conference sessions and activities on Monday the 11th, and Friday, the 15th.  This will be the first European venue for the Sakai Community Conference and we look forward to working with all our community and especially the Universiteit van Amsterdam on the conference.  The site will be the new Movenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Center for the Tuesday-Thursday meetings.   See you in Atlanta this December, and Amsterdam next June.

     - Joseph Hardin, Sakai Conference Chair

 
The Universiteit van Amsterdam and the City of Amsterdam are very pleased that Amsterdam will host the Sakai 2007 June conference. The university will work closely with the Sakai Foundation and the Sakai Community to make the meeting a huge success.  The conference itself is happening in one of the most modern buildings of Amsterdam in an astonishing setting on the waterfront, next to the canal area and the city center, and we intend to host the pre- and post- conference meetings in university buildings in the historic center. The open cosmopolitan spirit of Amsterdam fits perfectly with the open source spirit of the Sakai community.

      - Frank Benneker, Universiteit van Amsterdam
 

Comments from Attendees about the 6th Sakai Conference in Altanta, Dec. 2006

"As my first introduction to formal Sakai conferences, the winter Sakai conference in Atlanta was extremely worthwhile.  The Implementation Track, of which I have particular interest, was strong and eye-opening for institutions in all phases (just looking through production) of Sakai implementation.  It is apparent that many institutions are getting out of the technical weeds and are searching for experience and inspiration on how to migrate to Sakai and drive people to use it.  I believe conferences like this past one are instrumental in allowing institutions to share their success stories and their lessons learned."

-- Katie Valenti, Unicon


"The conference made it obvious that Sakai is maturing as one would hope and is becoming a viable CMS for institutions using vendor software to begin to consider adopting instead of or in addition to their current system."

-- Dale Voorhees, University of Central Florida

"I think that it's very useful for us, and I suppose also for the rest of the community, to be able to see in these conferences which problems other entities have had and how they have solved these problems.

Some of the presentations we attended in Vancouver have been very useful for us for solving similar problems that we had at our institution, and I think that some presentations at the Atlanta conference will also be very useful for us in the following months."

- Federico Jesus Carvajal Rodrigo, Technical University of Valencim Spain


"When I asked various people at the conference what they felt was the emerging theme of the week, the most common answer I got was along the lines of 'Sakai is growing up.' The healthy profusion of community-driven projects, increasingly visible focus on pedagogy and user experience, and rising awareness of organizational growing pains that the community is experiencing around planning and communication are all signs of healthy growth."

-- Michael Feldstein


"Enjoyed the conference, was able to get some insight as to what is being focused on at the moment, what's coming up and importantly, a chance to speak face-to-face. Also what struck me is how important communicating is becoming, who is doing what and where to get information, especially as the community is getting bigger.

To the organizers, thank you, a job well done."
-- Gregory Doyle, University of Capetown, South Africa


"The deeper involved I get with Sakai and the Sakai community, the more the conferences become a kind of family reunion.  It's great to see everyone all together, but I'll need a few months to recover.... :)"

-- Tony Atkins, Virginia Tech


"Sakai moves fast, don't miss this train !

Sakai is no longer an interesting project but collaboration movement every university should look at seriously when developing an elearning infrastructure. The Sakai framework is getting mature and a growing number of additional tools are available.

From a European perspective the emphasis is still on developing
software and tools. We hope that pedagogy and new innovative ways of using Sakai by teachers and students will attract the same numbers on the Sakai conferences as the more technology-driven sessions at present.

The great thing about attending a Sakai conference is that everybody present is truly focused on working together on solutions on present day problems. The emphasis is on possibilities and learning from each other.

I enjoyed a nice conference and I hope to meet the whole Sakai family next June in Amsterdam."

-- Frank Benneker, University of Amsterdam