Collaboration is the theme at Educause 2009

I just returned from Educause 2009 in Denver where my "Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai" session was one of the most popular events of the week. I wrote about it here and you can watch the session here (MS Silverlight needed). My Sakai 3 poster session was also very well attended and I've uploaded the slides I used for that session to Slideshare.

What made the biggest impression on me was how much "Collaboration" was in the air. Below are a few examples.

• Brad Wheeler's "Collaboration is Strategy" was another standing-room only session. Brad is an accomplished public speaker and while I've heard almost all of the messages he delivered in the past this was the first time I saw them stiched together in a full presentation. The overall message is that Higher Education is different from industry--Indiana University doesn't compete with Ohio State in the same way that Ford competes with Toyota. One university's gain is not a loss for the other. In fact, it is likely to be a gain for both. In this environment doing things together is the right strategy. You can download the slides from the Educause website or view them online on Slideshare (I took the liberty of uploading them, thank you Creative Commons).

My favorite quote was from Herman Wells, the long-time former president of Indiana University, who said:

"Consistent with this statement of policy, throughout my years of responsibility for administration I have been motivated by a strong belief that the resources of higher education are so insufficient and the opportunities and responsibilities so vast, the only sensible course is to attempt in every way to avoid unnecessary duplication among or with institutions."

• The new Educause slogan "Uncommon Thinking for the Common Good" is about as direct a call for cross-organizational collaboration as I can imagine. 
• Lawrence Lessig's talk about copyright and values was really a call to arms for higher education to work together to change the intellectual property game. Lessig is a great speaker and, of course, Educause recorded his keynote. A tip...Lessig starts at slide 101. Before that is the Catalyst awards ceremony.
• Speaking of the Catalyst awards, this year's winner was "Federated Identity Management Systems," a collection of efforts around the community. Federated Identity Management is both an example of cross-institutional collaboration in action and an important foundation for future collaboration. Cool.

Now I know that Educause has always been focused on the common good. But I can't help to think that the increased emphasis has something to do with the composition of the Educause Board of Directors. Looking at the list I see Ted Dodds, Brad Wheeler, James Hilton and David Lassner, all of whom I know have been involved in community-driven open source software projects like Sakai. They've seen the success this brings and I'm sure they are advocating for more focus on collaborative initiatives.

Whatever the reason, though, I was very pleased to see the conference have collaboration as such a strong theme. I can't wait until next year.