Thursday, May 14, 2009

AUC09 Keynote Notes

A somber tone from Christopher Class, Angel CEO. But it was comforting in a way. A bit more car-salesman tone from Michael Chase, Bb CEO. But maybe like a luxury car salesman, not too terribly smarmy. And a very fatherly, trustworthy tone from Ray Henderson, newly appointed President of Bb Learn division (he was an Angel Chief Product Officer moved into higher Bb exec position – sign of good faith).

The main messages
1. Support structure will remain unchanged. Roughly paraphrasing Chasen, “Who you called yesterday for support questions, is who you will call tomorrow.”
2. Bb admires Angel and wants to learn.
3. Extended product support will continue as promised pre-merger.
4. There will be an Angel 8.0 – development on this begins today.
5. Angel LPS (institutional outcome piece) is joining forces or otherwise being replaced by Bb Outcomes (a separate and already available product)
6. 7.4 is the MOST stable, bug free release ever (but there are still 30 some known bugs).
7. Angel clients are welcome to attend Bb World conference in July in DC. Registration is free!
8. We can contact Michael with questions/concerns Michael@blackboard.com 202-463-4860 x 2201.

Other side Notes
• MyMathLab is/was a Bb product – I didn’t know that.
• We need to look at 7.4 directory layout. We might need to plug into this functionality later, so it will be good to look at. Allows for division specific role assignments and functionality.

2 comments:

Michael said...

Actually, MyMathLab is a Pearson Higher Education product.

Jed said...

It is from Pearson, but it's supported by Blackboard. If you look at the bottom of some of the pages on MyMathLab you'll see the Bb logo on it. On the class page it says "powered by Blackboard." I think we should all get t-shirts that say that as well!