BBBB . . . We Wish It and Sakai Well
Last Friday, Blackboard, Inc., produced its initial public offering (IPO) of
company stock. The stock was issued at the expected $14 per share, and Blackboard
now trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol BBBB. As I write these words,
it's trading at about $21 per share, so someone's making some bucks!
It's a major move for a company whose founders and investors have been very
patient while building functionality, a brand, and a client list that they now
say includes more than 1,000 higher education institutions. I remember Blackboard
way back when it was looking for its 100th customer, and I wish the company
well. It and its competitors of all stripes, need to do well to give us the
right tools and let us focus on what we do with the tools.
Way back, long before the dotcom bubble burst, I took advantage of a business
trip to Washington, DC, to stop by the offices of Blackboard and interview CEO
Matthew Pittinsky.
Entering the building, I was very impressed. It was a huge Washington greystone,
very distinguished looking and in a good neighborhood. As I walked down the
hallway of what I think was the third floor, I passed offices of a number of
well-known corporations, including Mitsubishi of America. Then I got to Blackboard
and knocked on the door. No answer.
After knocking again, with no response, I pushed open the door and found myself
in a 15x15 foyer which was furnished with four red beanbag chairs and a Foosball
table. The only other item in the room was some sort of whiteboard with a list
of "customers" handwritten on it and a goal of having course being
taught using Blackboard software at a minimum of 100 institutions by a date
later in that same year.
I walked on through the foyer and found myself in a much larger room with a
few desks in it, on each of which was a monster monitor, and a few glassed in
offices around the central room as though it were an atrium. All around the
room, moving in and out of the perimeter offices rapidly and with intent, were
a dozen or two young men who looked like they had wandered in from a tour bus
of some high school's Republican youth club, on a tour of DC.
After I got someone's attention, I asked for Matthew, and the youngest-looking
(We're talking high school, really.) man of all in the room came walking towards
me. After introducing myself, I joking asked, "Well, I guess there wouldn't
be any room in this company for a grey-haired person like me," and he sort
of mumbled a response that I couldn't quite catch but that I am sure had the
phrase "energy levels" in it somewhere. Then we had a nice interview.
Well, Blackboard moved on from being a free service that lured institutions
in by offering software and support to bleeding edge faculty, and it also hired
a few grey-haired, mature men, but Matthew is still firmly the leader and it
has done well. Now it's public and the ride could get wild.
I hope it maintains its focus on providing functionality that suits students,
faculty, and staff. I also hope it d'esn't immediately get bought out by some
larger entity that will consider higher education and teaching and learning
software a sideline of one of its smaller parts. Having the developer and maintainer
of teaching and learning software heavily connected with the users and customers,
and focused on their particular needs is important. As with many IPOs, I hope
the investors and early leaders of the company don't just take their dollars
and slit. (I don't think they will.)
Maybe even more important in the use of a course management system or learning
management system, of course, is the on-campus human support system and relationship
networks that let users maximize its utility. Blackboard certainly has built
up a large core of users, within and across campuses, and that bodes well for
its future if the company can maintain its focus on the higher education niche.
We'll see.
Meanwhile, I expect the
Sakai Project will help keep Blackboard, eCollege, WebCT, and others in
line. A strongly-supported open source development coalition may be the best
way to ensure that the folks who are doing this for profit stay focused on customers,
and not just the bottom line for shareholders, which can often be the next quarterly
earnings report.
The Sakai Project, initially begun by a small group of big-time research institutions
has shown a real understanding of the higher education world by recently expanding
its collaboration efforts to include progressive Foothill-De Anza Community
College District in its development group, intending to ensure that its tools
work well for community colleges, too.
I urge every institution to support the Sakai Project. And I expect that many
of you, like me, already have purchased some Blackboard stock. So, we have reason
to wish Blackboard well, also, and I do. Let Blackboard and Sakai and the others
develop the tools, with our support and best wishes.
We need to focus on the back-end changes in what we do with the tools, and
how we support the users. Having talented, visionary people in the for-profit
and non-profit world making our tools should let us do that, and that's my wish
- that we get the tools, that the tools work and we don't have to think about
the tools, so we can use them transparently to just do our jobs.