I am blogging from the pre-conference GeorgiaVIEW meeting @ Rock Eagle yesterday afternoon and this morning. I enjoy connecting with people around the state of Georgia who use our Vista system. Most of them do not make it to BbWorld. Some hot topics:

• Alternatives to Blackboard Vista
• Training
  • Content repository
• Returning Reports and Tracking to instructors.
  • Some reports still failing. One approach may be to remove tracking data from Vista database and make it available elsewhere.
• Upgrade to Vista 4. People want a timeline, access to a training instance ASAP, please not do an in-place upgrade.
  • Limited shelf life on internals of Vista 3 / 4.0 – 4.1.2
  • More of customers have moved or are moving to Vista 4 / CE 6 than a year ago.
  • Can take advantage of new tools available in Vista 4.
  • Data retention – policy, reponsibilities (faculty, campus, OIIT)
  • Phased approach – parallel environments, at some point Vista 3 goes away and no longer available.
  • End of Fall 2008 or Spring 2009.
• People are both quite happy we are going to Vista 4 and disconcerted at the prospect of having to move to Vista 4 in even over a year from now (at the worst by April 2009).
  • Export / import of non-SIS created users.
  • Training

Lovely (yeah a real person and she is) says Lovely Freelove would be one of the best names ever.