Ouch.
What's the name of the individual who just ripped up J. Horner in the Tuesday 3PM SDK session at Summit? (In reference to Symposium being a realistic expectation)...
Whomever it was just gave this site a nice plug.. expect an influx of activity.
= Tom
second that
i'm here right now too and liked the plug worked into your question. it was cool meeting some people on here ane good job jon!
Sounds juicy
What's this all about, being that I wasn't in attendance?
Details?
Yeah, tell us more. Up here in Alaska we're living vicariously through your experiences!
-John
Jist of it
The jist of it is that someone (I forget what college they were from) had asked two high ranking Luminis correspondence about their commitment to the promises they make on a yearly basis.
Specifically, he had asked about the Luminis Symposium... which is supposed to be a glorified version of the Luminis / CP Actionweb and or support site. This individual made the suggestion that if SCT cannot come through with their promises (apparently they had promised this Symposium in previous years) then to please provide a realistic timeline on when it would be available... and in the mean time go visit www.lumdev.net .
He also went on to touch on some very valid and frustrating points that I believe everyone shares about the funcationality and usability of Luminis.
- Tom
Uh oh
"...about the funcationality and usability of Luminis."
Hmmm... We're running Campus Pipeline and haven't yet made the switch to Luminis but are planning to. For those that haven't switched yet, could you please elaborate on the comment above?
Being new to Luminis
...is good and bad I guess.
The fact that I'm new to this system means that I'm no where near as close
to it as those who come from the CP system. I've personally only seen a
couple CP sites, and they don't 'look' all that different from Luminis.
From what I've heard though, Luminis is a huge improvement over CP.
That being said, there's so much room for improvement in Luminis that it
sometimes seems that it may be a good idea to take a step back, look at what
Luminis has been sold as to its clients... and then assess whether or not this
whole 'Luminis ship' is headed in the right direction... or is it
sinking? Again, this is only MY opinion. But my opinion is based
on:
1. my own experiences (which are limited at that)
2. what I've read about on the SCT list serves and such
3. the inconsistencies between the SCT sales teams, support teams and technical
teams.
I've talked to many sides of the SCT family, and although they seem
dysfunctional at times I do appreciate that every individual I do talk to
generally wants to help the client succeed. I just get the since that no
one is really in control of the ship. Again, I am a layperson when it
comes to this technology... but I'm just voicing my opinion.
To end on a positive note (I know I'm beginning to rant), I believe that if
and when all the pieces to the Luminis puzzle come together... and work
properly or at least close to what is promised... that this product will be an
invaluable asset to our organization. But there's a lot of work to be
done.
- Tom
I Love Luminis
Luminis is like that great friend you have who occassionally does things that make you mad, but in the end they are still a great friend and you'd feel much worse if you didn't have them at all.
We ran CP 3.1 before moving to Luminis and I'd never go back. Many of the same problems still apply, but Luminis is build on uPortal which is so much more powerful of an infrastructure. Not to mention we now have this great community to share mods and frustrations ;)
Seconds and Thirds
Hey Tom,
I was there at that session and thought that was a pretty sweet moment myself. Who was that guy? He gave props to the site an earlier session too.
It was nice to meet Jon at Summit and the few others I was able to meet. This is such a great resource - I am hoping membership and discussion blow up this year so we have an even rowdier, yet cohesive group at Summit in Orlando.
Hawaii loved having you all here! Hope you enjoyed yourselves!
Aloha,
Jamie
Hawaii Pacific U.
The Individual
Yeah, that was Zach Tirrell. He's from Plymouth State. From what he mentioned, he was pretty much chatting up the site in all his seminars. Hi Zach!
Yeah... That was me...
I just wanted to confirm that it was in fact me who stood up in that session and asked some questions of Josh Horner. Before I continue though, I want you to all realize that I greatly respect and appreciate what Josh (and Tom Chamberlain) bring to the product. These two always seem to be presenting the things I am most interested about at Summit.
Now on to what I was getting at in that session... First, I think Symposium is a great idea, or rather thought it was. In fact, a year ago I left Summit more excited about this idea than most other things. (other things included LDI and SDKs) However, in the year since, SCT did not deliver on this and in the meantime this site was created. I now appreciate this site more than I think I ever could an SCT run Symposium. My reason for this is that there is no moderation of ideas and solutions here. No one in this community would ever recomend that someone hire services to make a change, rather we all pull together in search of solutions. Additionally, complaints about the product or features here come without the fear that SCT is going to be *mad* at us for some reason. This is a community site and we can exist freely. I would in fact encourage SCT to acknowledge this site as having filled the need and canceling Symposium all together. If SCT pointed clients at this site we'd all benefit more.
The other topic I spoke about in this session was statistics tracking. In another post of mine here I have talked about the uPortal StatsRecorderFactory. I posted to support about how this does not seem to work at all in Luminis. Support sent this along to development, and it went to Mark Boyd. They found the problem and are looking for cycles to resolve it. Jan Nielsen in the "Luminis Technical Initiatives" section of Summit told me privately that they hoped to have this fixed in a patch within the next few weeks (Read 2-3 months) which is great. Anyway, when this becomes available I think it will solve a lot of stats needs and I hoped others would become aware and also desire this to become available/usable.
Anyway, I am always the loud mouth about these types of things, just who I am... Wonder if they'll let me present again next year? ;)
Quick comment from SunGard SCT ...
Pardon the vendor remarks here but I wanted to comment briefly on this topic. Zach’s questions during the presentation were very appropriate and were certainly not considered negative or “ripping” in any sense. We understand the frustration due to the delay of Symposium/Developer Network and always value and try to make use of such feedback whether good or bad. So, as always, thanks to all for the feedback.
I have received confirmation that the company will release the first ‘cut’ of Symposium later this year. This first iteration will present a unified front for all support components (i.e, Action Line(s)) and other communication mediums such as company and product listseserves. Other facets of Symposium, known as the Developer Network and probably a bit more useful to this group, will then be launched in spurts and include supported code repositories, software development kit areas, channel development and source code sharing, developer commentary, etc. We are working hard to make the Symposium/Developer Network as constructive as possible with support from all levels within the organization -- which is essentially where the delayed delivery dates come in.
LDN is a great site specifically because it is not run by any particular vendor. I have personally referred quite a few clients to it since its inception. Kudos Jon & Team. Zach, you’re already ‘in the books’ for next year! Thanks.
Vendor Remarks Appreciated
Don't feel as though you need to be pardoned for "vendor remarks" I'm only speaking for myself but I'd guess this community would love to see input and comments start popping up from SunGardSCT insiders. For the most part we poke and prod at Luminis make great philosophical leaps toward figuring out how things work and how we can tweak them to work even better. You guys are the ones who actually know how things work. As a whole we only get direct access to you guys at Summit or if we buy services. The occassional gem of wisdow contributed here from you would be of great value since it reaches us all simultaneously with staying power and in context. The value of that is hardly even measurable. Hey, maybe things could eventually even go the other way, I'd love to see popular mods from here find there way into future product releases or patches. It would save us time reapplying, and you'd get new features added without having to develop or think them up.In short, I'd love to see SungardSCT folks contribute and comment here just like all of us do.
On a different note, I've noticed in the "Who's new" section a lot of 'SunGardSCT_*' accounts coming through. I think this convention makes it real easy for us to identify you. Very cool. Was there some internal memo you guys got recommending this, or did this just happen by chance?
Luminis Far Behind
From our experience, the distance between the Luminis product, and what is delivered, is so vast that it has called me to seriously question our use of it. It has only 1 advantage: synchronization with Banner data. And that's klugey at best, with no clear point person at Sungard OR Luminis who is fully-versed in this very crucial piece. As for the interface, it's so 2001 that it makes me sick. The e-mail and calendar clients are sorely inadequate, and the group communications tools can't compete with things like Basecamp, Skype, and the like.
I think they should scrap the whole thing, and get the data integration with a Web 2.0/AJAX interface, something like www.netvibes.com. Then you can use Google Calendar and consume any RSS/XML content you want without having to be a "content administrator." Students are used to environments like Facebook, Flickr, and the like. To them this is just lame.
Netvibes has the potential to be a real portal -- it just needs enterprise data behind it to push out content.
The Luminis IV delay is a classic example of the developers operating in a vacuum from the users. Without Luminis IV, we don't have RSS 2.0 (I know -- someone developed a Java workaround, but PLEASE!!), we are stuck with the SunOne product that's old and doesn't have a native mobile interface. These things are what make the environment useful, and Luminis developers just don't care.
I think this was marketed as a Banner-friendly application way prematurely. It's taking this long, and all of our institution's money, for them to actually get that right. And meanwhile, their paying customers, have an outdated interface with outdated applications.
This ain't a mainframe world, with 3-year development cycles. But, you can't go by Luminis developers! If I were on the board of Sungard, I'd fire the whole team and build this thing from the ground up using 2006 open source interface technologies that interact with xml and allow aggregation of best-of-breed solutions. So, it's a good thing I'm not on the board of Sungard :)
Ahh this frustration
Ahh yes I understand your frustration here. The new trends in development seem to be so very far ahead of us...