Rhode Island Nexus

Steve Foehr is the Director of Application and User Services for the Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology(RINET).

I started my working career in the early 70’s as a middle school science teacher and my interest in computer technology in the late 70’s as the Commodore PET, Radio Shack TRS-80, and Apple II hit the market and I made my first purchase, an Atari 400.  You’ve got to love a membrane keyboard and that 8K of RAM.

 In the years since, I’ve watched network computers become more personal and personal computers join the network and I’ve worked with teachers and students to help them use each new technology to support teaching and learning. It’s a brave new world in education today with standards, assessments, and accountability taking center stage. But some things haven’t changed. Children’s minds are quick, nimble, and open to new ideas and schools find it hard to stay up with the torrid pace of technological change.

Today I work for the Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology (RINET), a non-profit statewide partnership that provides technology solutions to schools. A project that is generating a lot of excitement of late is our implementation of the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment. Sakai is a community source project that integrates a host of collaboration and learning tools into a single environment. Sakai is currently implemented at hundreds of higher education institutions around the world.

RIEPS, Rhode Island’s implementation of Sakai, is the leading K-12 implementation of Sakai in the United States. Its integrated online tools include electronic portfolios, chat, forums, shared workspaces and calendars, blogs, and wikis that provide students and teachers with a rich collaboration environment. RI school districts use RIEPS to support class work, professional development, curriculum development, and provide hybrid courses. A recently awarded National Science Foundation grant to improve science education in RI will be facilitated through RIEPS. Finally, the recent announcement that URI has adopted Sakai for it’s course management system speaks to the value of Sakai and sets the stage for a new K-20 collaboration.

So it is with great pleasure that I announce the second RI Sakai Conference on March 31st and April 1st at the Providence Biltmore. This year’s conference with two full days of sessions shapes up to be even better than last year. Last year’s attendees included K-20 administrators, teachers and technologists from the public and private domains, RI Department of Education employees, members of the International Sakai community, and vendors who provide related services. Attendees hailed from eight different states. Please visit the RI Sakai Conference web site for more information, to register, and to learn about conference sponsorship opportunities.

I look forward to seeing you there.

For those technology entrepreneurs who can't/don't/won't drive into Providence, we're hosting a South County Edition of RI Nexus Open Coffee, an informal get-together where you can talk shop, swap resources and connections, and get caffeinated. Whether you drop in for 15 minutes or are the last two at the tables, you'll get a unique chance to spend quality time with the best and brightest in the City-State startup community.

How this event came about.  I am a Providence Geek and URI Alumni who recently returned home to South County.  Last summer, I moved from North Providence to Wickford, and while I always enjoy the Providence RI Nexus Open Coffee meetings, I don't get there nearly enough.

I suspect there is a "creative contingent" from Wakefield, Jamestown, Kingston, and the surrounding areas that would benefit a great deal from the connections and positive energy of an Open Coffee. In the same way that Providence residents won't drive "out" without packing a suitcase, many of us in South County won't drive "in" often enough.

Enter Bagelz Wickford. Literally. I just stumbled upon this gem recently, and found it the perfect location for an Open Coffee style meetup.  The loft upstairs is a very inviting space, with couches and cafe tables galore and enough warm sunlight to make you think you're outside. (But, please, don't let that stop you Geeks from tearing away from your computer.)  There's also free WiFi, and a killer selection of bagels, cream cheese spreads and coffees.  Yesterday, I had a spinach bagel with "blue cheese and tomato" spread that was to die for. Besides, being a Sassy Lady,  I'm a sucker for woman-owned businesses, and, trust me, Troy has got the magic formula here! So, I tossed the idea out to Jack and Allan, and we decided to give it a try. I hope you will join us on the 12th.  I promise to be a gracious hostess.  I can't guarantee that you won't fall in love with the quaint Wickford, as I have.  (Not that I'm encouraging the proverbial "brain drain" from Providence, but it's a great place to live and work!)  I hope to see you all soon.

RI Nexus Open Coffee - South County Edition
Thursday, March 12, 2009
9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Bagelz Wickford, upstairs loft area
21 W. Main St.
North Kingstown, RI
Map

Jordan Frank is VP of Marketing and Business Development at Traction Software. Jordan gathered his education at Dartmouth College and the MIT Sloan School of Business. Sloan's entrepreneurship program cast him off to operations, product management and program management roles at Adero. From there, his product helped to make the web work faster and then, via sale of his product and unit, he moved to Inktomi. Jordan along with Traction's CTO & Co-Founder, Chris Nuzum, will be presenting at the February Providence Geeks Dinner Wed. the 18th 5:30-9pm. Get details and RSVP here.

While we've been working up a sweat building Traction TeamPage, the first and leading Enterprise 2.0 Social Software platform, in Wayland Square, folks high and low are starting to "tweet" and are tangled up in Facebook, but still aren't sure why or how blog, wiki, discussion, and tagging tools make sense within their own firewall.

I will try to present a few answers at the Geek Dinner next week. While you decide which burrito to order at the dinner, here are a few thoughts to chew on:

• What came first: significant scientific advances or text books and scientific journals?

• Is it possible that something so simple as easy page publishing can unlock a veritable cyclone of innovation?

• What is easier to search: the web or your enterprise's intranet?

With enterprise social software like Traction TeamPage, the cost of distributing and re-using information approaches zero. Furthermore, the means of organization mirrors the structure and power of the web: pages, tags, and links with search. 

Extrapolating further, if moving from writing in terms of pages rather than in terms of documents makes it easier to communicate, link, and organize information, then is it possible that breaking information down into Twitter style micro-messages is an ideal worth pursuing? That's why we extended our platform in the fall to incorporate our new Live Blog technology.

I enjoy friending on Facebook, but consider it to be basic training for the kind of big-league goal-oriented business collaboration that will lift organizations out of the recession and outfit them to face 21st century challenges with 21st century information tools.

If these ideas didn't satisfy your immediate hunger - go download the free 5 user version of Traction TeamPage from our website and start thinking about what delicious burrito you'll get from the Tacqueria at AS220.

Click Here to see PBN's interview with Jordan.

This past summer, the EDC had the pleasure of announcing that fast-growing software company inQuest Technologies had decided to relocate from Southborough, MA to Providence.

Now that the build-out of their excellent new offices is complete, they are generously inviting the community in for a luncheon and tour. Please join Governor Carcieri, Mayor Cicilline and other local dignitaries in welcoming them and celebrating their arrival.

DATE: Wednesday, February 11th
TIME: 11:30am-2pm
LOCATION: 300 West Exchange Street, Providence, RI

RSVP: Antonella Persechino at 800.254.4050 or via email at apersechino@inquesttechnologies.com

And inQuest continues to hire. This a good opportunity to get a sense of the company and meet the team.

Twitter , the super-popular micro-blogging tool is taking off internationally, and Rhode Island is no exception. 

Through very short messages, Twitter enables people to connect in all sorts of new ways. By sharing quick happenings, thoughts, advice, experiences, etc., folks are helping and getting to know one another, both personally and professionally.

Not surprisingly, RI's info-tech and digital media community is in the thick of the "tweeting." As a new Twitter'er, I'm constantly amazed at the quality and the quantity, the empathy and the expertise of Tweets from our community members.
 
In the interest of building more connections, let's recyle Adam Darowski's great idea from over a year ago of "sounding off" with our Twitter usernames in the comments section of this post.

(Non-Twitters, you can get started very easily. Just go to Twitter.com and sign up for free. From there it's pretty self-explanatory.)

Last February there was a new kid in town, an event that brought people new to technology together with the geeks to learn from one another. NewBCamp returns this February with a year's worth of word of mouth publicity behind it. NewBCamp is the little "unconference"  that could.  This time around there is a brand new website at NewBCamp.com, a labor of love built on the django framework by Adam Tucker, Andrew Shearer, and myself.  The site is powered by a wiki-style engine that enables users to create pages, make comments, and add their own presentation to the event schedule.  There is also plenty of content from last year available on the site, featuring links to images and articles contributed by such noteworthies as Christopher S. Penn of PodCamp, Daniel Barbarisi of the Providence Journal, Pamela O'Hara of BatchBlue, and others, as well as the now iconic photo of Matthew Ebel wearing the NewBCamp T-shirt - on his head. 

This year NewBCamp has taken on a new identity as well.  Free Geek Providence, a non-profit organized by Nathan Hutnak to "help the needy get nerdy", has adopted NewBCamp as its own in order to promote the growth of the event to schools beyond the flagship NewBCamp organized by the student technology club SofT ICE at Johnson & Wales University.  With the anticipated growth of Free Geek, the continued support of Providence Geeks, and the generous contributions of time, interest and knowledge of the participants themselves, NewBCamp will again be an opportunity for all of us to make technology that much more accessible to the needy, newbies, and nerds alike.