Alan Berg's blog

The conference is over, the chairs have been cleaned away and I have had a few days to recover from the jet lag and 24 hour delay in airplane transfer at Chicago.

Looking back, I was glad that I had made it to Denver, not that I saw much outside the Hotel. The usual for the Sakai community, creative energy was sparking in the background. The opensyllabus tool looked strong; the project coordination meeting on Sunday had a frank and honest debate both for the Sakai 2 and Sakai 3 products. I enjoyed the presentations from the teaching awards and the lists go’s on.

The Sakai 2.7 release is being improved patch by patch, personal action by personal action. The pyramids were built out of individual rocks moved by great effort and will power. It means a lot to me that I can get into contact with developers who responsively deal with issues. Without that positive energy, my role would be impossible. The community should be looking for more strong armed stone pushers for the final mile.

Southern Europe is suffering a very cold spell indeed. If I walk outside now in Amsterdam then the temperature is -4 with a wind chill factor that makes for effective temperatures below -10. The weather is great for the children as car driver’s ride slowly by only to get snow balled (Alan say's as he hides a snowball behind his back).

The cold weather motivates me to sit for longer and warmer behind the computer. However, luckily I am taking time to eat home made apple tart and drink warm drinks of various levels of non alcoholic content, hic.

Be warned, here is the first of the “what am I going to be doing for Sakai in the next Month blogs”. Apart from Christmas and the usual threat of actually relaxing and enjoying myself, I expect the Sakai 2.7 QA season to take off. The implication is a large amount of effort from some hard working testers and supporters of testers.  I will do what I can to support and will try to reserve time to test or build tests myself.  It is important not just to shout loudly from the sidelines, but to get your knee’s dirty while playing the game.

This is my first blog entry as a member of the Sakai Foundation staff. Working only 10 working days in this role, finding my way as interim QA Director has been fun. Fellow hard worker and release manager Anthony Whyte has been very supportive in explaining context and bringing my knowledge of context up to speed. We are also working together on a couple of QA automation prototypes and reaching out into the community for help. Luckily there is a lot of knowledge within the community.