First and foremost, it's important for me to emphasize that paper does not represent my institution. Rather, it reflects my own observations based on some conversation and dialogue within my institution, and reading the various governance documents and postings within SEPP, and my role as the lead institutional representative for SEPP. I offer this statement because I believe it reflects the state of preparedness within my institution to discuss Sakai governance issues. It's worth mentioning that my institution was one of the early SEPP members, conducted pilot courses last Spring using Sakai 1.0, co-leads a DG, and works on independent grant-funded activities related to Sakai. In many ways, I believe my institution is one of the active SEPP members, so it's especially important to discuss the issue of timing.
There's no question that the end of the semester, the Memorial Day holidays and a somewhat compressed window of opportunity for feedback within my institution affected the lack of response regarding governance. More importantly, I simply don't believe my institution is ready to discuss Sakai governance in a permanent sense. Others have mentioned that perhaps we should consider the governance discussions to be preliminary, and any governance statements or documents to be works in progress. I would agree with this perspective. Quite frankly, I'm not comfortable voting on any issues with the authority of my institution. Before SEPP considers the future governance of Sakai, we need to acknowledge the elephant sitting in the living room¿the Mellon funding is driving our timeline. I realize this is a reality that cannot be avoided, but I believe it's important to consider this explicitly. My institution may conduct additional pilot courses in the Fall using 2.0. Without some experience using 2.0, I doubt seriously that my institution will be able to discuss reasonably the level of commitment we might offer, or the type of complementary support we would hope for from SSF. Is it perhaps worth discussing options for buying some more time before finalizing our governance plans?
Even at this early stage, I can offer one very specific need from my institution¿a "core" Sakai bundle that comes as a quickstart version. There has been much discussion on this topic, and I won't belabor the point. Without labeling people as developers or administrators, suits or techies, it's a basic reality of human behavior that we have different preferences. Some people really like infinite choices and possibilities¿I consider myself one of them. However, others simply become overwhelmed or confused and seek a smaller set of options to consider. I would submit that as one rises the administrative ranks (for better or worse, something that is happening to me), it becomes more common to "fall back" on the "give me less, viable options" mindset. Barry Schwartz has written an interesting book on this topic, "The Paradox of Choice."
Without a tractable, fixed, tangible Sakai software bundle (fully understanding that Sakai is much more than this), I fear that too many people (regardless of their job responsibility) will simply be overwhelmed to consider Sakai in any manner. There are the obvious issues of QA, gap analysis, vendor support, etc. as well that support the idea of a core bundle that does, in fact, compete with the BlackCTs of the world.