http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/ en mwasowski@wimba.com Copyright 2011 2011-03-10T15:28:38-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/call_for_presentations_deadline_for_bb_collaborate_user_conference_is_tomor/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/call_for_presentations_deadline_for_bb_collaborate_user_conference_is_tomor/#When:14:28:38Z Dearest Blackboard Collaborate Customers (and anyone kicking the tires),This is just a quick reminder that the deadline for the Call For Presentations for our user conference is tomorrow, Friday March 11, 2011.  We’ve already received a number of terrific submissions about everything from adoption tips, best practices, effective instructional design, and ROI of collaboration, but I look forward to receiving many more in the next 37.5 hours!  Submit your presentation proposal here:  http://www.connections-summit.blackboard.com/2011/content.asp?id=1898   Sincerely, Matt 2011-03-10T14:28:38-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/blackboard_collaborate_update/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/blackboard_collaborate_update/#When:15:30:37Z To read the original blog entry by Maurice Heiblum on blackboard.com, click hereHi all,It’s been 3 months since I last blogged and a little over 6 months since the merger – I can’t believe it.  Time has flown by!  In that time we have been busy merging two competitors into Blackboard and executing on the priorities I outlined after the merger:    * Customer experience – Ensuring that our customers continue to have the exceptional client experience that Elluminate and Wimba have always provided.    * United team – Bringing Elluminate, Wimba and Blackboard teams together into a single, cohesive unit so we can carry that high standard of client care forward.    * Product Roadmap – Creating a vision for how our collective solutions come together to help you better engage students to improve outcomes and save time while trimming cost.Let me share a few recent developments:Customer Experience.It is very important to me that our customers continue to have a positive experience with our products and our company.  As we evolve the integration of our business, we do so while helping to ensure that our customer experience is not negatively impacted; rather we hope that the integration enhances customers’ experiences.  Organizationally, we have integrated our support, hosting and services organizations to streamline the delivery of service to our customers.  We continue every day to examine every process that touches our customers, while looking for ways to improve.The results so far are encouraging.  Our customer satisfaction ratings are high, customers are renewing our products at a fast rate, and we have greatly grown the business for both product lines in the months since the mergerIn addition to ensuring a positive customer experience, it is important for us to partner with our customers as we develop solutions to meet their needs.  To that end, we have created a combined Product Advisory Council (PAC).  Both Wimba and Elluminate had very strong and open partnerships with customers to get continual feedback about products and services. We launched our combined PAC in December and have been having meetings with about 80 of our closest customers every two weeks.In addition, we announced our user conference, “Connections Summit 2011”.  Our goal for this event is to build upon the success of the Wimba user conference from years past to provide you with a forum for networking and idea sharing.  I am personally excited to hear how our customers are using Blackboard Collaborate to achieve their institutional goals and I am looking forward to attending many sessions.  The deadline to submit proposals is March 11th so submit today via Connections. For inspiration, check out some archived presentations from 2010 here.New TeamWhen I last blogged, I was still not completely comfortable saying “Maurice from Blackboard Collaborate.” Now, it feels natural.  Our team has really come together as one organization.  The first indication of our unification occurred when members of the team, regardless of whether they came from Blackboard, Elluminate or Wimba, joined together to make fun of my pastel colored shirts! JI am so proud of our team.  They found common ground and have been executing to perfection since the merger. Combining the three entities – Blackboard, Elluminate and Wimba resulted in a team with the most extensive knowledge about educational needs and how we can meet those needs through collaborative technologies.Product RoadmapAt Educause, we announced Project Gemini (http://www.blackboard.com/sites/collaborate/index.html), which will bring together the best of Elluminate and Wimba. Our development teams have been hard at work and so has the Product Advisory Council.  The feedback we have received has been extremely positive and we are on schedule for a mid-year delivery. I’d like to thank our customers for their time and input; together we are transforming education with new ways to collaborate and learn.Looking ahead, I am excited to share the details around Project Gemini and all the other facets of our business.  Other Blackboard Collaborate team members, as well as some customers, will join me on this blog to give you a flavor of how we’ve gone about building Project Gemini.So, lots more to come in the months ahead. Stay tuned and as always reach out to me if you have any feedback at Maurice.heiblum@blackboard.com.Statements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notice and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers 2011-03-09T15:30:37-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/weve_opened_the_call_for_presentations_for_blackboard_collaborate_connectio/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/weve_opened_the_call_for_presentations_for_blackboard_collaborate_connectio/#When:16:12:59Z Hello and Happy New Year!I’ve sure most of you have heard already, but in case you haven’t, yesterday we opened the Call for Presentations for our first annual Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2011!  The submission deadline is March 11, 2011.This will be a terrific way to put your institution in the spotlight by sharing your experience, expertise, and examples at the 2011 Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit, our first-ever combined Wimba and Elluminate user conference. Customers representing all academic disciplines and departments are welcome to submit proposals for concurrent session presentations.  Some potential presentation topics could include:    * Comprehensive use of Blackboard Collaborate for instruction, help, and meetings    * Adoption, implementation, and faculty training    * Newest uses of Elluminate Live!® V10, Wimba Classroom™ V6.1, Wimba Pronto™, and Wimba Voice™    *  Lecture capture via MP4, MP3, high-resolution archives, and more    * Non-instructional uses of Blackboard Collaborate    * Best practices and/or tips and tricks    * Lessons learned    * Effective instructional and/or curriculum designDon’t wait. Proposals are due by March 11 so submit your proposal NOW at http://www.connections-summit.blackboard.com/2011/content.asp?id=1898Online registration opens soon.*And I do have to add that the program committee probably won’t be able to accept every presentation proposals, but I hope you all throw your hats into the ring!Matt 2011-01-21T16:12:59-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/an_offer_from_blackboard_collaborate/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/an_offer_from_blackboard_collaborate/#When:21:38:53Z The acquisition of DimDim this week has set off lots of talk about the importance of Web conferencing and collaboration tools. Salesforce.com will use DimDim’s technology to enhance their Chatter platform. However, DimDim’s current customers will see their access to the service end starting on March 15, 2011. For educational institutions who had built their courses and business workflows around realtime collaboration using DimDim, this might cause some disruption and Blackboard would like to help. For those who’ve been using Elluminate and Wimba for a while, you know that we are dedicated to meeting the needs of educators by providing stable solutions that are supported by a clear roadmap and a dedicated team for development.  For those customers who want to make the transition before their annual contract ends, Blackboard will credit the cost of any unused portion of a pre-paid DimDim contract towards the purchase of Blackboard Collaborate solutions (up to a maximum of $10,000).  Please email  BbCollaborateInsideSales@blackboard.com to get the details around this offer. For monthly subscription customers, Elluminate vOfifce s an affordable and full featured offering. For free DimDim customers, please take a look at Elluminate vRoom.For more on Blackboard Collaborate, check out our page at: www.blackboard.com/collaborate and Elluminate’s recent coverage in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing. 2011-01-08T21:38:53-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/2010_global_education_conference/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/2010_global_education_conference/#When:01:21:04Z 2010 Global Education ConferenceNovember 15-19Totally Free. Completely Online.What if we held a virtual conference on global education? What if we could impact education on a scale never tried before? What if we made it easily accessible and freely available for educators all over the world to attend?  What if we focused on encouraging not just attendance, but participation…These were just a few of the question posed by Steve Hargadon, Elluminate Social Learning Consultant, founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network, and host of the Future of Education interview series, and Lucy Gray, an Apple Distinguished Educator, Google Certified Teacher, and founder of the Global Education Collaborative network.Fast forward to almost a year later, and their vision has become a reality. The ground-breaking 2010 Global Education Conference kicks off on November 15th for 5 days, providing unprecedented opportunities for connecting education activities and initiatives worldwide. A strictly volunteer effort, the conference quickly garnered incredible worldwide support, with almost 95 partner organizations, over 120 global educator advisors, 50+ keynote addresses, and more than 350 sessions about globally connecting students and educators. “We’ve been blown away by the response,” says Steve Hargadon. “It’s been like building an airplane while flying it, and we’ve accomplished so much with so few resources. It immediately became clear that this conference will be the first of many. Global education will be one of the great EDU themes of the next ten years.” “We want to re-inspire teachers, helping them to be more motivated about helping students,” adds Lucy Gray. “Today, there’s really no excuse for teachers not to use technology to connect students across borders to develop a global perspective. It’s the right idea at the right time.”Multiple time zones. Multiple languages. Multiple tracks.The conference will be held online via Elluminate technology. Sessions will be free, broadcast live in multiple time zones and multiple languages, and available in recorded formats afterwards. Presentations are organized in six categories: Teacher, Student, Curriculum, Policy and Leadership, Global Issues, and Learning 2.0. Here are just a few highlights. •    “Connecting Modern Language Classes Around the Globe” with Andrea Reinsmoen, American School of Bombay (India)•    “Mastering the Moment: Reimaging Learning in Times of Economic Crisis” with Keith Krueger, Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) (USA)•    “Utilizing Web-based Learning Environment in University Teaching” with Satu Alaoutinen, Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland)•    “Global and Multicultural Citizenship” with Gary Shaw, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (Australia)•    “Exploring the Informal Future of Higher Education” with Philipp Schmidt, Peer 2 Peer University (South Africa)To see complete listings of all the keynotes and track presentations, visit the conference site today at www.globaleducationconference.com. And be sure to tell others about this first-ever conference. Don’t miss being a part of global education history! 2010-11-12T01:21:04-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/the_road_ahead/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/the_road_ahead/#When:13:21:28Z Dear Elluminate and Wimba Communities,When Wimba and Elluminate joined Blackboard in July, we committed that we’d share our vision for the road ahead at EDUCAUSE. We want to be as transparent as possible about our product strategy, which was informed by input from many customers we’ve listened to in recent months. As our companies come together, they’ve asked us to focus on three principles:•    Support the products we have now and allow us ample time for change management, if and when needed.•    Focus resources on delivering easy-to-deploy, easy-to-use, educationally-focused products that bring needed innovations and enhancements.•    Support openness and integrations with other technology platforms.We’ve taken these mandates to heart, and I believe we’ve honored all of them in our go-forward strategy. Here’s our roadmap for the road ahead:Instant CollaborationWe have two solutions that let you see the presence status of others you want to collaborate with and easily start a collaboration session if they’re available: Wimba Pronto and Elluminate VCS. They will both be supported through the end of 2011. At that point, Wimba Pronto will be our go-forward core product. Pronto provides a native MacOS-supported client, advances in accessibility, CMS integrations, and the ability to deploy in a SaaS model, and we’re excited to continue development of this robust solution. This week, we announced availability of the Universal Integration for Wimba Pronto to many other CMS/LMS/SIS products, reinforcing our commitment to openness across our product sets.Anytime Collaboration and Content CreationAll of our products in this category, including Wimba Voice, Wimba Create, Elluminate Plan!, Elluminate Publish! and LearnCentral, will continue to be sold and serviced as they are today. Scheduled CollaborationWimba Classroom and Elluminate Live! are our two main products for Web conferencing sessions for meetings, events, virtual classrooms and other uses. Both have many users and deep functionality sets but investing in both over the long term would prevent us from focusing resources on innovations our customers want. So we will invest in a single platform, based on the foundational architecture of Elluminate Live!, that incorporates core features from both systems, user interface enhancements planned as part of the Wimba LiveX project, and new innovations not found in either solution today.Dubbed “Project Gemini,” this effort will be managed in a way that limits any disruption to the current work you’re doing and provides ample time and flexible options for any future transitions. We will support, maintain and host the current versions of Wimba Classroom through January 2014 and host Wimba Classroom archives through August 2015. We will also support, maintain and host the current version of Elluminate Live! until 2012. When the new platform is ready, we’ll provide parallel access to releases to help build familiarity and to ease transitions. We’re sharing this news here on the blog and in person at EDUCAUSE this week.  More detail on our plans can be found at our Web site and in a series of Webinars we’ll be hosting next week.I hope you are as excited about our plans as I am. By combining the resources of Elluminate and Wimba, we are able to create efficiencies to better position us for innovation over the long-term. Project Gemini is our first example, which along with Wimba Pronto, will form the key pillars of our new collaboration platform. One that will allow us to innovate faster and farther in the next decade and to better realize the promise of collaboration technology to support teachers and learners. I hope we can count on your support in the journey ahead, and thank you for your continued partnership to date.   Maurice Heiblum, PresidentBlackboard CollaborateStatements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notice and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers. 2010-10-13T13:21:28-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/meet_us_at_educause_2010/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/meet_us_at_educause_2010/#When:17:03:32Z  Elluminate/Wimba Booth #1101Stop by for one or more of our in-booth sessions to earn how to get the most from your Elluminate and Wimba products. Here’s just a sampling of our featured presentation. Click here for complete schedule.Tuesday, October 12th* 4:45 – 5:00pm: Keep it Live! with Drexel University* 6:15 – 6:30pm: Increase Retention Rates and Save Time and Money via Collaboration Technology with University of UtahWednesday, October 13th* 10:05 – 10:25am: Accessibility overview with Valerie Schreiner, Sr. Director, Product Management. Learn how Elluminate/Wimba can help you ensure there’s no user left behind.* 10:15 – 10:30am: Best Practices for Introducing Wimba Pronto to Faculty and Students with Ivy Tech Community College* 4:30 – 4:45pm: Growing Collaboration at a Public College with Broward CollegeThere will be Wimba Classroom and Elluminate Live! demos throughout both days. Plus, you could be a winner! Drawings will be held Wednesday at 1pm for an iPad and Thursday at 12:05pm for a GPS. You must be present to win.Special Events – Wednesday, October 13thJoin Blackboard executives at 3:30 – 4:20pm at the Anaheim Convention Center in room 210B for an overview of company future plans, including a report on Blackboard Collaborate.Who do we appreciate? YOU! Join us at the annual Blackboard Client Appreciation Party at 7:00 – 11:00pm at the House of Blues Anaheim. Attendance is limited. RSVP now.We look forward to seeing you at EDUCAUSE!PS. If you miss us at the conference, join us on October 18th at for a webinar review of the Blackboard Collaborate vision and strategy. You’ll be receiving an email invite next week. 2010-10-08T17:03:32-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/blackboard_collaborate_progress_report/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/blackboard_collaborate_progress_report/#When:11:48:30Z With the promise of keeping you updated about the progress of Blackboard Collaborate, here is a new statement from Maurice Heiblum, President, Blackboard Collaborate:To the Elluminate and Wimba Communities,My name is Maurice Heiblum and I’m the President of Blackboard Collaborate, the new division of Blackboard created by the acquisition of Wimba and Elluminate on July 7. (I’m hoping this isn’t the first that you’ve heard this news, but if it is, please click HERE for more details.)Since that day, we’ve been hard at work on our three most important goals:1.    Customer experience - Ensuring that you continue to have the great client experience that Elluminate and Wimba have always provided, especially during this back to school time.2.    New team - Bringing Elluminate, Wimba and Blackboard teams together into a single, cohesive unit so we can carry that high standard of client care forward.3.    Roadmap - Creating a vision for how our collective solutions come together to help you better engage students, improve outcomes and save time while  trimming cost.As we make progress on these goals, I want to make sure you receive frequent communications from me and our team.  I’ll start today by providing an update on how the teams you interact with most have come together.  I’m happy to say that the headline is very consistent with our vision going into this new stage.  We thought we could build even stronger teams together than apart, with relatively limited change overall, particularly in the areas closest to delivering you a great customer experience.  You’ll ultimately be the judge of whether we were right, but I’m feeling good about our first steps.  Customer Support – The people who supported you before will be the same ones who support you moving forward.  Zemina Hasham will lead a combined Wimba and Elluminate support organization that continues unchanged.Professional Services – Led by Aaron Bond, we stand ready to help you implement our solutions and provide training and certification programs on our products. Sales and Customer Success - The combined Sales and Customer Success teams will also continue to be led by familiar faces – Paul Roberge, Kristian Photopoulos and Thomas Jepsen.   While we have attempted to maintain consistent points of contact, there might be some change in your individual account teams.  We’ll inform you of those in email within the next few days.As excited as we are about the new organization, combining the Wimba and Elluminate teams under the Blackboard umbrella has not been easy.   As is inevitable when joining similar companies, we’re losing some of our team members who have been like family and have helped build our companies.   We are deeply grateful to each of them for their contributions and wish them all the very best.  They will be missed.  Lastly, know that we’re also continuing to make progress on the longer term product strategy we committed to start sharing at Educause in October.  The combined development organization for Blackboard Collaborate is of course bigger and stronger than either of our development organizations were on their own so we’re eager to start sharing our view of the road ahead for their work.  The integrated product strategy and marketing teams, led by Annie Chechitelli, Mike Mabey, Steve Kann, Rajeev Arora and Valerie Schreiner are hard at work on the roadmap and look forward to sharing more detail with you in October.I’ve shared all the names above because of the personal relationships that many of you have built with our Sales, Support, Services, Products and Customer Success teams. We value these close relationships immensely and I hope the continuity in our leadership team above will showcase our commitment to continue our philosophy of always putting our customers first. If you attend the Educause conference, I hope to see you and talk to you there.  If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to email me directly or the team at CollaborateLeadership@blackboard.com.Thanks,Maurice 2010-08-25T11:48:30-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/a_groundswell_for_lecture_capture_via_virtual_classroom_technology/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/a_groundswell_for_lecture_capture_via_virtual_classroom_technology/#When:13:50:54Z As more than 500 of you know, there has been a groundswell in the last 12 months about wanting to use virtual classroom technology for lecture capture.  This was never more evident than yesterday when I had half-a-thousand educators from schools of all shapes, sizes, and locations register to learn about how they can conduct lecture capture via Wimba.  Though it has always been possible to archive live online classes, help sessions, or meetings held in virtual classrooms, the definition of ‘lecture capture’ means a few different things depending on who you ask.  I’ve found three pervasive definitions:1) To capture activity in a face-to-face classroom2) To capture activity in a live online classroom3) To simultaneously capture activity in a face-to-face and live online classroom (with students attending the same class either in-person or live online)For years, many schools have purchased separate software applications to satisfy definitions 1 and 2.  Most schools purchased a hardware-based system that allowed them to capture audio and video of instructors in a physical classroom, while the same schools also purchased a software-based system that allowed them to conduct real-time virtual classes – and subsequently archive them.  But now that pennies are tight as budgets get stretched, it seems that many schools are finding ways to utilize virtual classroom technology to satisfy all their capturing needs.Most schools already have a bevy of microphones, speakerphones, and video cameras.  Now that Wimba Classroom inputs can accommodate countless a/v devices, schools are now figuring out that they can use their existing a/v equipment, hook it into Wimba Classroom, and suddenly be able to not only capture in-room classes, but can even pipe those classes live to online students and record all that activity as well.  Truly killing two birds with one software.Though several schools (most notably California State University Chico) have been capturing face-to-face and live online classes for years, the majority of institutions worldwide are just starting to explore this now.  However, if the high volume of interest in yesterday’s lecture capture presentation is any indication, Chico State’s going to have a lot of company sooner than later. 2010-07-28T13:50:54-05:00 http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/wimba_versus_airplanes/ http://www.wimba.com/community/blog/wimba_versus_airplanes/#When:17:13:57Z “Who is your main competitor?” an attendee asked my boss at the Training 2000 Conference.“The airlines,” replied our CEO.This was an actual exchange at the first trade show I ever attended as an employee of Wimba (well, then HorizonLive).  I thought our CEO’s response was a bit snarky and/or presumptuous and/or way too boastful, and I quickly dismissed his reply.  So here I am, nearly 120 months to-the-day, and I just happened to recall this conversation.  You see, a few minutes ago I wrapped up a Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series presentation that featured Randy Wald of the North Dakota University System and Scott Swanson of North Dakota State University as they not only discussed their myriad uses of Wimba throughout the state, but also the savings they’ve derived.It turns out that the North Dakota folks are saving time and money left-and-right by using Wimba for everything from instruction (from music composition to architecture) and help, to meetings (from Extension Services meetings to disaster preparation sessions) and other non-instructional uses (from candidate job interviews to virtual conferences) – all without asking its dispersed staff to drive to face-to-face meeting sites or to a few hardware-based video conferencing sites.  For any of you who have made the 400-mile drive from Williston, ND to Fargo, ND – especially in the winter – you know it’s no picnic and that flying is definitely the preferred method of transportation.  Therefore, now that so much travel is being Wimba-ized, maybe our CEO in 2000 was right all along when he made that boastful statement.  Maybe we are competing against the travel industry in some form or another.  I just hope I don’t have to start doing competitive research and analysis against the airlines. 2010-07-21T17:13:57-05:00