About the Authors

Alan Berg Bsc. MSc. PGCE, is the Sakai Foundations Quality Assurance Director for two major software releases (Sakai 2.7, 2.8). For the last twelve years, Alan has also been the lead developer at the Central Computer Services at the University of Amsterdam. In his famously scarce spare time, he writes computer articles. Alan has a degree, two masters, and a teaching qualification. In previous incarnations, he was a technical writer, an Internet/Linux course writer — Ok!, a product line development officer, and a teacher. He likes to get his hands dirty with the building and gluing of systems. He remains agile by ruining various development environments with his proof of concepts that are better left in the darker shadows never to escape.

Ian Dolphin is the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation, a not-for-profit entity that coordinates the Sakai community's production of software to support learning, teaching, and research collaboration. Ian has worked in education for thirty years, having formerly been International Director of a strategic partnership of agencies supporting higher education in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and prior to that, the Head of eStrategy at the University of Hull in the UK.

David Jan Donner graduated with a Doctorate of Philosophy in 1987 from the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He works as an applications and functional administrator in the Education and Research Services group, where he monitors the requirements for a portfolio system and a communities system, both based on Sakai, the portal for students, and Blackboard. Since 2006, David Jan has been a member of the ondernemingsraad — the staff's corporate council.

Léon Raijmann is the manager of the Education and Research Services Group at the Central Computing Services of UvA. The Education and Re?search Services group consists of 25 people, and is responsible for developing new IT systems to facilitate learning and teaching. Léon trained as a scientist with hands-on experience in e-learning and e-research (he holds a PhD in Biology); he now finds himself between e-learning experts.