Sakai’s New Maturity

Several recent developments signal a promising new level of maturity in the Sakai community and product. The Sakai Foundation (SF) has created two new staff positions that will together enable the SF to better coordinate and communicate our work in Sakai. Long-time Sakai community member Clay Fenlason is the new Sakai Product Manager. Clay is … Read more

OpenID, wherefore art thou?

I’m a strong supporter of OpenID, the personal identity management technology that let’s you take charge of your own online identity, usernames, and passwords instead of farming yourself out willy-nilly to every site on the web. I don’t support OpenID for the technology itself—OpenID is just a collection of tools that are part of the … Read more

Back Fence: @xolotl, @rael & @jshardison

This last April I had the privilege of telling a story on stage at Back Fence PDX, the innovative storytelling event brought to us by @melissalion and Frayn Masters at Portland’s Mission Theater. At Back Fence, regular folks get up on stage and each tells a true, personal, unrehearsed story that lasts no longer than … Read more

The Fall of Vidoop

Chris Messina just posted a long, thoughtful and informative blog on the rise and fall of his erstwhile employer, local Portland identity provider Vidoop. For those of us in the Portland tech community who welcomed Vidoop, saw our friends and colleagues go to work for them, and—in my case at least—starting using their OpenID provider … Read more

Chat Dérive: I Ran in to Someone on the Web

Something odd happened to me today. I ran into a complete stranger on the Internet. I signed into chat, and almost immediately had the conversation below with someone I didn’t know, going by the handle “toweringcoho”. I was at a largish gathering and had bonjour turned on as usual, so assumed it was someone in … Read more

Thought Experiments for Sakai: Keep It Simple Like Twitter & Draw Good Boundaries Like Drupal

I admit I’ve been lurking in a very slackernly manner in all the discussions in the Sakai community about content authoring, 3akai, UX, K2, Sakai NG and other unpronounceables, so I’m sorry if all this is a day late and a dollar short. Feel free to ignore me if you’re part of Sakai and are … Read more