eFront Integration

The developers over at eFront have just released a BigBlueButton integration module for eFront. While we haven't used eFront ourselves yet, this seems like a good opportunity to check it out. The integration looks well done and is certainly well documented. You can find it here.

BigBlueButton at Campus Technology 2010

Denis Zgonjanin and I are going to be demonstrating BigBlueButton the next few days at Campus Technology 2010, an educational technology conferencing now being held in Boston, MA from July 19-21st.

The conference is located in the Seaport World Trade Center. You can find us exhibiting in booth #829 (Blindside Networks).

We're staying close by the Renaissance Hotel Boston, so if you are not attending but close by and wanted to meet up, just e-mail me directly and we can arrange a time/location.

BigBlueButton 0.7 is released

The primary goal of BigBlueButton is to enable remote students to have a high-quality learning experience.

After fourteen weeks of development, untold number of cups of coffee, and a lengthy testing period, the BigBlueButton Development Team is proud to announce the release of BigBlueButton 0.7.

The biggest feature in this release is definitely the integrated whiteboard.

See tutorial videos, and see the BigBlueButton project at Google Code to download and setup your own BigBlueButton server.

Desktop Sharing is now LGPL V3

As of BigBlueButton 0.7, the license for the desktop sharing module will be Limited GNU Public License V3.

Enjoy.

BigBlueButton Foundation

As many of you know, almost all successful open source projects have an independent foundation overseeing its growth. Good examples are the Sakai Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and Mozilla Foundation.

In a similar manner, for the BigBlueButton project, we are planning to setup an independent not-for-profit company (a foundation) to accelerate the growth and adoption of the BigBlueButton.

The plans to create a foundation have been in the works for a few months, but given the recent activity in the market, we wanted to let our community know our intent.

While we can’t use the term “Foundation” here in Canada, BigBlueButton Inc. will be a membership based organization that will elect a board of directors, which, in turn, will elect an Executive Director. BigBlueButton Inc. will hold the license for the source code, the trademark for “BigBlueButton”, and represent the members as it carries out its mission, currently drafted as follows:

1. BigBlueButton Inc. is a vendor-neutral, non-profit company, whose mission is to double the value of remote students’ academic experiences and reduce the cost of institutions responsible for delivering these experiences by 50%.
   
   
2. BigBlueButton Inc. accomplishes its mission by becoming a keystone of a business ecosystem that provides strategic advantages to its members. The goal is to help remote students succeed academically and academic institutions and businesses succeed commercially worldwide.
   

If you are interested in knowing giving feedback or participating in the foundation, don’t hesitate to contact me at ffdixon at bigbluebutton dot org.

D'Arcy checks out BigBlueButton

D'Arcy Norman gives his impressions of trying out BigBlueButton. Once observation he made:

What is missing in BigBlueButton is ... the ability to record meetings/classes for later playback.

Yes, once we release BigBlueButton 0.7 (with integrated whiteboard), we'll be focusing our efforts to implementing record and playback.

Well Played, Blackboard

In his recent article Well Played, Blackboard, George Siemens suggests that BigBlueButton should work closely with other non-blackboard companies to offer the market choices.

We agree.