News from Moodlerooms. Day 12

The following passage was written by Moodlerooms' Co-founder and Chief Architect, Tom Murdock.
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News from Moodlerooms. Day 12

I want to take a minute to reflect on a very busy few days and to express some appreciation.

On the evening of Wednesday, March 21st, I shared the news of our company's merger with Blackboard with Moodle's founder and leader, Martin Dougiamas. Caught entirely by surprise, Martin listened as we outlined what we saw as a great opportunity to increase Moodle adoption across the globe with a strategic partner. We had productive conversations about how this combined entity might best work with Moodle for the benefit of the community. While there is still a lot to figure out, we really appreciate his willingness to consider our story -- unexpected and strange as it must have seemed. Rest assured, we honor the independence of the Moodle project and we are entirely grateful for the permission to remain a Moodle Partner, a responsibility that requires a great deal of good citizenry with the community and partner network.

On the morning of Monday, March 26th at 11am, the Moodlerooms staff was informed about our merger with Blackboard. Until the announcement, the management team had not been able to share any information with our employees about the merger. This secrecy was difficult for us, as we are a very collaborative company and we are used to making decisions together. I'm incredibly appreciative of the professionalism of our teams, who -- with so much new information to process -- immediately began thinking about our clients and the things we could do to communicate and understand the news. Within three hours, our staff was creating and digesting FAQs, as well as connecting with clients. We were spreading the word that while we are the same people with the same jobs with the same contracts with the same name in the same locations with the same tasks with the same products in the same value bracket, we had also become (alongside our colleagues at NetSpot), a new division of Blackboard, dedicated to supporting open source Moodle products and services, and providing more choice, opportunity and expertise within the market.

By 4pm on the same day, we had launched a series of formal client notifications and press releases. Our staff, alongside some new colleagues from Blackboard, had the chance to describe the new opportunities to the clients, as well as to reassure them about the continuity of our current program. The press, who seemed giddy with the shock of the story, began crafting headlines and narratives about what these changes meant to a complicated market. Although we expected some skepticism from clients and reporters, we appreciate all of our colleagues who were intrigued by the new direction and were interested in understanding more about it.

At 1pm on Wednesday, March 28th, our CEO, Lou Pugliese, and Blackboard's CTO and President of Academic Platforms, Ray Henderson, participated in a client webinar on the ramifications of the merger, and what our clients could expect in coming months. Although the news is still very fresh for all our constituents, the nuts and bolts of the transaction have been shared and considered by many: although Moodlerooms has merged with a strategic partner, it retains its own staff, its own products, services and mojo. We see huge opportunities for our clients with increased product choice, as well as the potential for richer integrations between these products.

But beyond the days that are flying by since this adventure began, and beyond the nuts and bolts about what life looks like today and tomorrow for our clients and staff, we suspect that the world might still wonder why we thought merging with Blackboard was a really good move for Moodlerooms? The answer is surprisingly simple: as we have been evolving as a company, so have they.

When we founded Moodlerooms in 2005, open source offered a wonderful foil to the LMS market leaders. While they were embroiled with the proprietary, we were generating and sharing community code. While others negotiated contracts with CIOs, our product enjoyed the immense grassroots enthusiasm of teachers and students. Our drum beat reminded schools to consider open standards, even if they didn't use open source; we encouraged schools to use the power of their wallets to demand great services at the right prices.

And as time marched on, and our company matured into an organization of more than 80 staff, fulfilling complex migrations, implementations and training for big institutions, we noticed that Blackboard was evolving, too. By adopting IMS standards, they literally beat Moodlerooms to the market with some content openness. During the past three years, their service teams have received better and better satisfaction marks. At the moment, their clients report a higher satisfaction than Angel clients reported at their height. And, finally, because Blackboard has been focusing on selling the toolset around the LMS, Blackboard Learn itself has become more cost effective. Data freedom, services and affordability were the three things we told prospects to demand from their vendors. Schools did demand. And Blackboard has been working to meet the requests.

So, if Moodlerooms has helped to re-shape the way that schools do business with companies, then why are we stopping now? For me, the only answer to this is that we are not stopping at all. We have more work to do to evolve Blackboard and mature our own business, and we are appreciative that Blackboard has invested in our team's ability to influence those changes. We are being asked to be as innovative, disruptive, and open in our business tomorrow as we were yesterday. Except today, what used to be our fiercest competitor won't be fighting against us, they will be working alongside us.

It is Day 12 of a grand new dance between proprietary and open source learning systems. I'd like to thank our clients, our staff, the Moodle community, as well as our new partners at Blackboard for being open to the unexpected moves that we believe will best support the communities that we serve.

All the best,

- Tom