Open Source | News

Ian Dolphin is New Sakai Foundation Executive Director

• By Mary Grush
• 06/16/10

At the 2010 Sakai Conference held this week in Denver (June 15-17), the Sakai community is officially welcoming Ian Dolphin as the new Sakai Foundation executive director. Dolphin will lead the open source CLE (collaboration and learning environment) community during a period of substantial growth—characterized in a recent release by the foundation as more than a 30 percent growth in adoption in the past 12 months. The new executive director is well known and respected internationally as an innovative leader education technology. Most recently Dolphin was the international director of the e-Framework Partnership, and based in the UK with JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee), he worked to bolster education and research collaborations between public and private agencies in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Lois Brooks, one of the founders of Sakai who served as its interim executive director and led the search for the new executive director, stated: “We are elated that Ian Dolphin will serve as the executive director of the Sakai Foundation. It is a credit to the Sakai community that the success and momentum created through the contributions of so many have allowed us to attract a leader of Mr. Dolphin’s caliber. His long association with higher education, and leadership in open source communities, offer the Sakai Foundation tremendous benefits during this time of dynamic growth for us.”

Included in Dolphin’s remarks were words to capture the essence of the unique Sakai community: “The collegiate nature of the Sakai community, its ability to work collaboratively and to pool resources to create an environment which is robust and capable of providing effective affordances for innovation, are critical strengths which will create a pole of attraction in the higher education community internationally. I look forward leading and serving in this role.”