BbWorld corporate keynote

Keynote opened with cute parody of "get a Mac" spot featuring John Fontaine as "old Bb" and Phil Chatterton as "Bb NG." :) Michael Chasen opened talking about Twitter and a story about how he was able to get instant feedback while he was presenting at BbWorld Europe. More than 2000 users here at BbWorld today. Changing product branding again... Bb Learn, Bb Transact, and Bb Connect.

Russ Carlson talking about some of the very cool projects he was able to learn about while traveling around to talk to clients. Yet another Bb commitment to improving service and support... it wouldn't be BbWorld without a newly renewed commitment to service and support. :) ASP client base has increased greatly and allowed Bb to heavily invest in and expand their ASP offerings. Back to School initiative is an attempt to proactively provide the resources that schools need as they roll out new implementations. Community Link is an attempt to add social networking functionality to Bb support resources.  Look for colleagues by institution size, version, region, etc.

Another "Get a Mac" - Phil is changing clothes to demonstrate flexibility of user interface. Project NG demo. Jess Finnefrock assisting on the NG tour. Draggable portal modules and user-configurable column layout. Pretty similar otherwise. My Courses shows aggregation of Sakai and Moodle courses, which is cool. Will have to see if this is "out of box" functionality and how it will work. "Course Announcements" portal module has a "create announcement" button, which shows great potential. Anything they do to pull things out of the course-centric model is very good.

Highlighting retention functionality in course environment... alerts when students are at risk or failing to meet certain milestones in the course. Several cosmetic color and layout tweaks in course. Layout seems similar enough to current to not throw users off. Edit course mode is now draggable instead of pop-up numbers to order content.  Mash-up button in course seems to be a home for plug-in integrations... touches on a lot of popular services (and a plug for Kadoo) to show that they're down with current tools. Conforms to state and federal learning standards for course building to give the course-building wizards more structure. Course user interface is skinnable to render course in styles like classic Bb or WebCT and to provide ideal accessibility for impaired users. Hopefully won't be a huge problem to skin for portable devices too?

Blogs and journals built in to product now. IMS standards will allow using Sakai or Moodle tools within Bb course environment, could be very exciting - especially for OSCELOT participants. Small group functionality is expanded and intended to be better for collaboration.

Exam questions are... draggable! *facepalm* Gradebook is Ajaxy, and hopes to be more usable in response to instructor feedback. Better integration of Safe Assign. Lesson Plan builder for K-12... they have shown a few things now that look like they were inspired by the work they've put in to Bb Outcomes. Could be some really good value there. Lessons seem to be able to cascade down from institution level. Hopefully Bb architecture will get smarter about understanding the structure of schools now... departments, etc.

Social learning spaces is a course-independent ad hoc collaboration space for students. Portfolio looks greatly updated... calling it a "best of both worlds" portfolio. Graphical reporting. Mentioned Scholar as an example of trying to bridge between multiple institutions and give students access to much broader resources. Bb Connect looks very slick and polished... easy to use. Chasen demoing live.

System Admin panels are draggable... think they're proud of that or something? :) My Places is a dynamic quick-links navigation for students that show up at the top of the screen. Demoing Bb Sync for Facebook. It sucks grade and course information into Facebook and tries to enable social networking in Facebook for students in Bb courses. iPhone application coming soon for Bb and a mobile phone interface. Bb module for My Yahoo and iGoogle. Looks like it's all built using the same underlying engine they built for Facebook Connect.

More "Get a Mac" goodness talking about interoperability with Moodle and Sakai. Thanks to sponsors and most importantly clients. Final video ad parody featuring Wozniak to highlight multi-platforms.