 Thanks Mark and thanks for being the emcee. I'm following you so I must be the MD It's Obviously a huge pleasure to be here. I You said I felt comfortable in that in the hackfest. I I really do I really wish I was developing all the time But the the way moodles grown over the over the years means I'm spending a lot of time doing everything but but it's so interesting where it's taking me and I did want to start with Well, first of all, I want to actually thank some of the team that's made this happen So Gavin's thank the sponsors already and I won't go through that again, but thanks to them But thanks to Gavin especially who if anyone knows I guess most of you do know Gavin and you know, he's like a he's a powerhouse of handling complex situations and So a lot of bringing this together has been Gavin. So I just want special thanks to Gavin. So thank you man It's really Really really good to have you on the team and thanks also to the other HQ people Especially Michael Dorat who's been and the program who Michaels over there and everyone involved in the program helping with that and Mary and Helen and David Madrake and Juan and everyone else who I may have forgotten who's been helping out Very much Moodle is a very multi-faceted thing with lots of people making it all happen before I Get into the road ahead I Just wanted to give you a bit of a little story About myself this Obviously is a road and most of you drive cars who drive car who drives cars here pretty much all drive cars This is a view. We're all familiar with driving on the road This is something that we all will maybe do in a car this technology we're all using Creeps into our lives and you know, you know, we're not supposed to use the mobile phone in the car But it's kind of very hard to just Check a message or something so When you're sitting in a car, you're pretty You're pretty much a driver, right? You're in the car. You're driving the car. You're thinking about traffic You're thinking about police. You're thinking about your destination and how you're gonna be late and you're not thinking about I Guess all the other things that are outside So we're driving along in our cars And occasionally touching a mobile phone. The reason I'm talking about this is because over the past couple of years I Had a couple of run-ins so the cops Where I live have seen me touching my phone for a few seconds and so Unfortunately, I lost my license right for a few months because the points added up So I found myself without a car and having to get to work, which is about 25 kilometers away from where I live so I went I was looking at solutions I was looking at public transport and There is a train but the train stopped from my house of six kilometers away So I was looking at a six kilometer walk or something So I started to think okay. I could get a little bicycle maybe a little fold-up bicycle Something I could just take with me to the train and I was shopping for bicycles and this guy said I've got these electric bikes So that's really heavy. I'm gonna if you're getting that on the train, you know It's gonna be really difficult and he said well, why don't you just go the whole way? and I went Okay, I started to think about going the whole way to work on the bicycle and So I got this bike. It's It's got a battery on it the way these bikes work if you're not familiar with them they They have electrical assistance up to a certain speed and they kind of cut out So then you're on your own and you have to pedal at this speed, but they can go Pretty fast and that really gives you a boost to travel long distances. I bought a nice Moodle helmet and I started to riding to work now when I started writing to work I just wore my work clothes. So, you know wearing long pants and really just like I would be at work with a helmet and I'm going down a road like this. So this is now my road ahead. I'm on this bike path and The bike path how many people here are cyclists? How many people cycle? That's really cool to see So we got this like half the people here cycle So now I've cycled before obviously I had a bike mountain bike and I cycle occasionally with the kids and just for fun But I'd never sort of undertook it as a journey as a commute before so I'm now on this bike with my bright orange helmet Barrelling down this road and I'm loving it. I'm really loving it and so I start looking into sort of apps and things that are around and How many people here something called Strava About I could see about 20 people or so now there are many many many apps for Cycling for all exercise things and I looked at a few and I just actually stumbled on this one It just seemed to be something that was pretty well made and it does GPS tracking of your journey and so on and I Discovered when I got into it that it's like the de facto app that a lot of professional cyclists use a lot of cyclists use And it has some interesting features in it like after you've done a journey You can see all the other people who were on the same journey the people you passed the people you were following And so it becomes this community of people who start connecting up and because I'm going pretty fast down this road A lot of cyclists like to get in I'm behind me into my slipstream So I've got these guys behind me and then when they finish their journey They say I had an exciting bike chase with this e-bike on the way to work and I go well I'm glad I could help your speeds, you know and so we start chatting and you know There's this community in there And it gets quite interesting and I start getting a little addicted to Seeing if I can beat my scores So I'm on this road this bike path along the train and the beauty of this of being a cyclist is you don't have You're not worrying about traffic. You're not worrying about police You're not worrying about Anything really but you're just enjoying this road and you get this mild low-grade adrenaline rush With the speed and dodging trees and other traffic and racing other bikes and so on and So then you start you start feeling as you push the envelope you start feeling Wind wind is the enemy of the cyclist. You have resistance constant resistance You're feeling the weather you're feeling the temperature and you're just feeling this wind So you start thinking oh, you know, I shouldn't I want to go fast Can't wear my work clothes. So, you know, I'm wearing My just track pants and shorts and things, but they're all flapping in the wind. So Must be a reason why cyclists wear Tight jerseys. I get myself a jersey and I'm going well, I can feel the difference. There's this amazing difference of Less resistance So I go those shorts. I don't know, you know cyclists you look at cyclists And as a as a driver you see cyclists and they look like some alien beings the way they dress, right? You go really Lycra, you know, you've heard the term mammal a middle-aged man in Lycra And you and you look at them and you go yeah, that's not for me but then I got to the point where I thought well, just give it a try and then pretty soon I'm buying iPhone holders and new bottle and things to hold my luggage and So on so like now I'm like looking like this right So and I'm barreling around shaving seconds off my journey every morning, right? But I'm really feeling the health benefits. I'm starting to feel a lot more healthier. You know, I feel a lot brighter I feel better at work. Everything's sort of really improving. So you get this cycle of addiction So I kind of noticed that at some point I became a cyclist and I Assumed that role I found actually as a cyclist that when I wasn't on a bike I missed it when I got a lift To work sometimes in a car. I was oh, this is such a drag. I could be out there on my bike If I even on the weekends, I just started to go for rides for fun Just because you know two days without my bike was too much So I really became a cyclist and it's interesting how we all have these roles. We all have so many little roles Then you become something for a while I'm sure many of you probably could identify with a lot of these things here, you know, you're all your voters So you get into when you vote you move into becoming a voter at some point We actually start paying attention as an adult to what the politics of what's going on and you have to make a decision So you've got this you start becoming a voting start having discussions with people about politics you start thinking about it What are your politics? Mathematician or a home renovator or a parent or a pet owner all these things And so I've been thinking and reflecting a lot about this process of being something at what point do you become a role do you Start calling yourself that role. It's very interesting on Twitter profiles a lot of people will list four or five or six roles That they that they are that they feel they that they have become But we all have you know many more than that and This is not a new concept and it's fairly obvious concept, but I think it's very interesting to think about learning not in terms of memorizing some content or in terms of Even simply competencies but this notion of being a doctor or being an engineer or being anything that you feel it This goes back to play play toe play toe talked about being and becoming and in philosophy. It's a it's a very stable subject But I think it's something as educators that we are we need to think in those terms of our students and ourselves of How do we help them be something whatever it is? What do your learners want to be and How can we help them internalize all the facts and the knowledge and the the different little things that make that up? You internalize it. So, you know when you are an engineer, you're not constantly thinking of you know Your stats 101 course and so on from university. You've internalized that you just apply it when necessary How do you how do you help your students become? That thing So I think it's about thinking about things in it from an experiential point of view this experiences of how you Help somebody be something is to give them those experiences Then choose the tools It's the if you're starting with Moodle or any other tool out there It's the wrong thing to be doing for sure Yes, you need to understand what tools can do, but you don't you can't start there You know if you really want to have an effective course, I think You find and you use the appropriate tools whatever they may be From you know on the internet or off the internet and you bring those together and you build feedback loops everywhere So that students are giving you feedback on how they're finding it You're getting that feedback They're getting your feedback on on how they're going And that's at basics that's just a very core thing now from that Tools on the internet, you know, I just did a very quick search for some images and dragged a bunch onto this slide But as you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of different things Thousands of different things out there Educational technology or just communication and information technology that you can use in education In that environment as your your tool set that's available to you How is Moodle relevant going into the future how what makes Moodle different I think there are some key things about Moodle that make it an important part of the landscape The fact that it's open source I know a lot of people don't care about it But a lot of you do I know and a lot of people do the fact that it's open source means it's kind of owned by all of us all of us have this ability to change this software if we want to and That leads to so many Different things a lot of you have become Moodle developers But Just the fact that it's open leads to things like ownership if you take Moodle you own That environment it can become part of your institution or be owned by the teacher You have control of it. You have the control to Make it to bend it to your will you can make the students have all the rights of an administrator if you want to and everything in between Integrations because it's open source a lot of people are integrating it with other things and we have a lot more work to do in that area But which I'll talk about It's it's endless you look that previous slide with all those things You know Moodle can integrate with all those things and a lot of people are working on those Privacy is Important and important to me privacy is one of those things which you don't miss till it's gone and It's Something we should always have Private options we should all you know you may not care if your data or students data is available to a You know a Google or a Facebook But at some point you might and it's too late to change your mind later You do need to consider privacy and open source is Last night I was talking with Someone from there who works with the Air Force you here in Britain and And you know and like many many military organizations they use a lot of open source because it's secure and private Ironically and Moodle has a because of the education community has a depth and a breath that no other Thing around has if you're building a product an ed tech product that is a single thing that you buy on the Internet It's never going to have the richness of an open source product with all its plugins and all the extensions and things that people Here and elsewhere are doing so anyway What are we been doing lately? I I? Get this chance to kind of say what I like up here But I'm I'm we have been doing so much lately. We've really been kicking it up a notch over the past year There is so much to talk about in fact that we're splitting this into two So I'm talking about a few things Gavin will be talking about a lot of things at the end Of the conference and we're kind of bracing the conference here But I'm going to tell you about a few of the things and what the world we're up to Moodle cloud It's been really exciting for us about seven months ago. We we launched our Moodle cloud system It's good in so many ways. It's good for Moodle HQ to actually be doing hosting to actually be running Moodle Seriously, so we have over seven months. We've got to about 15,000 active Moodle sites We're learning a lot about large-scale hosting cloud hosting where we're learning a lot about Moodle itself A lot of changes have already been made in Moodle From us doing this and they'll continue to improve There's about 40 million actions per month. So like logable events. So there's a lot of activity Just us having access to that activity means we can do research We can study and learn about how Moodle's being used or not being used and that kind of information helps us improve Moodle as well at the same time we're also providing Free hosting solution that people can use now as you know, it's quite limited But it's been very useful and I'm hearing stories of people Just getting a Moodle cloud site for all kinds of purposes and that's it's really great to make that available Towards the end of last year we added this feature where you could remove the ads because people a lot of people saying they didn't Like the ads and that's fair enough We're trying to make it pay for itself. So we had to put some ads on there But we've got now an option where you can turn the ads off and it's about $5.50 Australian a Well $5 Australian a month Which is probably nearly zero pounds No, it's actually it's like one or two pounds two pounds so Quite a few people have taken that up and that's that's good So yeah, we don't really want to be I hate ads as much as you do But that's just part of the model to make it pay for itself What I could what I want to tell you now is we're starting to expand what Moodle cloud can do So we are adding new packages now Which are still low-end packages and Moodle cloud is always meant to stay at the low end With a package called Moodle for school And you may think well Moodle is always used in schools What we're doing with Moodle for school is taking the opportunity to Customize it and craft it into something that would be more useful than a school to a school than just Core Moodle, which is actually distributed and meant to be used by universities and companies and everyone So we've got these tiny small and medium Packages they still have limits. There's no customization on them. There's still very commodity packages But out of the box when you first get into your Moodle side, it's got this new theme that we've developed It looks something like this It has a lot of customizability through the interface so you can add all kinds of panels and things on the front there's very nice beautiful course listings and A lot of the way it looks inside It's really quite nice So that can be all those colors can be changed a lot of CSS can be added if you want to but also There's just a lot of buttons and things to push to change it. So it's pretty customizable On top of the core Moodle, so it's a full version of Moodle. There are These plugins added to start with so we've added a couple of things to the editor. There's a word count To count words that you're typing. There's a chemistry editor for doing chemistry molecular formula There is a group choice module. So that students can choose a group So you might want to have them all pick a group to do a science project or something so they can choose their own group and be with their friends There's a level up module, which is a kind of gamification module where you gain XP experience points By doing things and you can see yourself ranked against other kids. So a bit of a motivational tool external motivational tool quiz venture which looks Like this it's it turns quizzes into a sort of space invaders game if you haven't seen it as maybe one of the HQ developers The attendance module for taking attendance and the checklist Module so hands up if you wrote one of these modules Think Davos should be here there is so These are the modules that are just taken from the plugins database. We are Because we're using them obviously we're reviewing them and we're maintaining and will if we find bugs We'll post them back up to the developers and help the developers maintain them This is just a little start. So we we tend to kind of listen to what? people who Anyone who takes these up who uses the mood for schools They'll give us feedback if they think something else really should be in that package. We'll we'll look at it and hopefully it'll evolve over time so That's the mood for schools now. That's not available at this moment. It'll be there in a few weeks Sometime in April that'll be available. I'm there I'll just say though before we leave that we're not We're still not doing any certain support, right? We're not supporting people. We're just you can get your site there If you want support you need to talk to our moodle partners and we actually make that easy in the system We actually hook you up with moodle partners to talk with They can do training. They can do all the services that they do The next thing I want to talk about we were working on as a moodle users association and last year at this conference I talked about it as an idea that we just had was coming up Actually, it was about 18 months ago We're starting to cook up this idea It's now up and running. I'm really pleased to say we Took it took a while last year and a lot of bureaucracy and red tape with the Chamber of Commerce Department of Commerce in Western Australia to Get it launched a lot of paperwork as you can imagine Associations there the whole law seems to be set up for like soccer clubs and Tea party clubs and things like that. So getting them to understand what a moodle user association is took a long time But we got there and we got it up and running and it's now launched and it's a completely separate organization to moodle HQ. It's its own organization with its own committee that runs it its own rules and It's just beautiful from my point of view to kind of Have we've created this bird and just Released it and now we want to where we're just sort of interacting with it like everybody else the There's levels of membership. It's currently up to about 120 members There's four gold five silver seven bronze hundred and four individuals, but this is really with almost no Marketing how many people here had not heard of the moodle associates this association before today One two, okay. I'm see about 30 people. So these are people who come to a moodle mood So obviously we're not getting the word out very well. So that's why I'm talking about it now I'm not going to talk much more about it Steve who's here somewhere Who's on the committee is going to be presenting about and there's sessions later on about it to go into details What I did want to show you though is a new little explainer video that we've just Put together actually and it was only finished yesterday. So I'll play it for you and it'll give you an idea of what the moodle associations about Moodle is the world's open-source learning platform Used by schools universities and organizations across the globe moodle makes online learning easy People who are using moodle have many creative ideas for making the look functionality and usability of moodle even better The moodle users association is the most effective way that people from all over the world can get their ideas into moodle In the association members launch their ideas and help each other to build those ideas Together they contribute major new features to be built in moodle core People pay a membership fee to join. There are four membership levels The higher the membership fee the more votes you have to choose the best ideas for moodle Moodle users association members put forward their ideas Then they work together with other members to polish them until the idea is a full proposal Ready to submit to moodle Members vote for their favorite proposals and the ones with the highest votes are delivered to moodle for development Each successful proposal that the moodle users association members vote on is developed by moodle HQ developers Into a new feature Tested and released into moodle core Anyone in the world has it and can use it a Feature by the people for the people thanks to the efforts of the members of the moodle users association moodle users association Coming together to design the next moodle quick test is that sound all right? Yeah, that's What was her accent? Do you want to guess? We said you can't sound Australian. You can't sound British. She can't sound American. So she's kind of gone for something in the middle I think it sounds international So yeah, so that's that's the explainer video that will be on the on the page front page and around the place And Steve will have a session later on about that. The I think there's a meeting also as well Moodle itself So we Last version of the last version we released major version was moodle 3 Now usually when you hit a big milestone like that numerically it means very big changes and I hope you notice that it just didn't Wasn't scary like moodle 2. It was a very smooth upgrade There was still quite a lot of interesting things in there and There's my kids some of you may have met a couple of years ago when they came to Edinburgh They say hi by the way So I'm not going to talk much about moodle 3 because there's a lot of stuff with the release notes and things that came out about that But I just wanted to you're probably interested to hear what might be in moodle 3.1 there are so many things coming into moodle 3.1 that You could regard it as the as a bit much bigger release than the 3.0 And there's some major things landing that the community's been asking for and that I've wanted and you've wanted for a Decade right some big-ish things Unfortunately, I can't demo a lot of this stuff to you a lot of its in development the user interfaces are not not finished and There's a lot happening, but there is a place where you can go and look at it. I'll show you later So this competency-based education the support for competencies You know moodle, I don't really usually call it a learning management system or a virtual learning environment for that matter I usually just call it a learning platform, but VLEs and LMSs they usually have some way to track learning funnily enough and In moodle, we have not had that very good that concept until now it hasn't seemed to be a major difficulty We've got by but a lot of people have added or they have other ways to add that functionality So it's time to get something into core for tracking that this person knows this thing or doesn't So there's it's a huge project. It's been in development for about a year And that's coming very soon. It's been obviously guys at HQ, but also working with the University of Montreal and Quite a group of people probably some of you here who've given feedback on it But it's really coming together very well. So it means that in moodle now we have these core concepts of learning Alongside users courses enrollments things like that There are default interfaces for first store for that information But it's built so that developers if they don't like how that's managed can add their own plug-ins and build on top of it But still still use the same information. So we're all compatible The second thing is one-page assignment grading. So actually seeing the thing that you're grading and Doing rubric source assigning grades to it on the same page There's in there's improvements with LTI quite significant ones. It's now really easy to add LTI tools both at a System level by the administrator so that teachers can use those learning tools that are Apps if you like elsewhere on the internet or the teachers themselves can add them directly and we've made that a lot easier But the more exciting thing is we've now got LTI publishing inside moodle by default as well now this has existed as a dish add-on plug-in by Juan Lever who's sitting down the front here who works with us on a leading the mobile team But getting that into core means we can Make it an integral part of how moodle works and it means you can do things like have a course in one site publish it as an activity in another site or In another system doesn't have to be a moodle site and it allows us to really mix and match these activities and courses between systems Global search moodle has now had a global search in core all this time and it now does you can now search and Get a tech search with bullion and all the all the nice stuff right across all your courses There's in-place editing So it's very annoying in moodle how often you have to go into a form to change something and then go back So what we've been starting to do is make it so that if you see a heading you click on it you type the new heading and it's done you don't leave the page and That's been already added to cross a lot of headings and section titles and things like that and it'll slowly permeate all over moodle So that you're not haven't got that as reloads This being grade performance fixes So when you change large grade books, there's been some very some bad bugs With those very large universities and institutions that have slowed the grade book down It's been a lot of hard work to improve those things User disguises I think is going to land for 3.1 this finally this bug this issue in the tracker is number 1075 I think we're now up to something like 55,000 in the tracker So this one comes from the dim dark past probably like 2004 or something and It has a lot of votes on it But it enables you to have an anonymity in forums. You can post under a pseudonym or Under a role name back to roles You may want to post, you know Maybe you're having a bit of a simulation in your forum and one student is going to be the manager and one student is going to be a Doctor and other students going to be whatever and they interact under their pseudonyms as an educational exercise So that's being built as a mechanism that can apply to all modules I think it's probably just going to be in the forum initially But it will eventually spread to all modules. So any activity can be using anonymity There's a lot of use cases for anonymity. There are some courses which are very sensitive. They're discussing You know, maybe it's abuse or something like that and people do not want to reveal to each other who they are so they can operate anonymously nicer Confirmations this is it looks like a small thing, but it's quite significant again with the forms a lot of when you're Say when you're posting on a forum You have your form you type in your post and you hit save and it goes to a screen which says Your post has been saved and Then you continue to the next step that That confirmation screen is now gone So now what happens is when you post it's straight back onto the discussion page And that confirmation message is now like a little green thing at the top an overlay So it just takes another step out. It just makes the whole journey of traveling around mood or a lot shorter You can download all it will fold us as a zip There's a new search function on a server folder repository So if you have a folder on the server that contains a lot of files and that's one of your repositories You can now search it For things which makes it a lot more useful pinned discussions I Was personally against this feature for a long time, but it happened anyway, so it just goes it goes to show A lot of people wanted it So you can a particular discussion in a forum you can now pin and it's always at the top There's improvements to the feedback module it's been tidied up There's some new stuff to do with course meta links so when you're managing meta courses in Moodle there was actually Something that disappeared from in Moodle 2.0, which now is back Which helps you manage meta so those of you using meta courses. They're gonna be a lot more easy to manage now There is a recycle bin This is actually the first Moodle user association project the first round of the Moodle user association voted on a number of things they wanted to see and This was the one that was chosen We've now taken it so this is a is the author of this here by any chance because I think I think she's in UK maybe not I Should have done my research, but So someone in the community wrote this module and what it enables you what what it gives you is that when you delete an activity in A course or in fact when you delete whole courses It takes a backup of them and stores of them transparently in the background in a recycle bin and They stay there for about seven days and at any time you can go back into there and just go undelete and it comes back It's all very transparent. There's no No difficulty just feels like a trash can or a rubbish bin or a recycle bin That's not a very international word So yeah, our part was to take that module Do a few cleanups to it to make it suitable for core and it's now a core feature So that's the first thing from the MUA. There'll be many many more to come. I hope There's lots of other things in 3.1. I'll give you a very quick look at what competencies looks like This is actually very early interfaces for managing competency frameworks and competencies we've just commissioned a usability review and we have a massive report and The guys are going through that now and so that we're improving this interface further before the release But It is designed to support competence. You may have a competency framework that you that is set by a government authority or Industry body you can now in import those and you can connect them up with courses and Students are basically proving themselves against those things it's We've been looking at use cases ranging all the way from primary schools high schools universities Corporate situations, so we're trying to make it apply to all of those So it's sort of independent The other thing I could show you a bit of an early screenshot of is the grading interface so On one side you've got the documents being graded in the assignment There is a new back-end to the assignment which will convert a Wide range of document formats including like office documents Even text documents into a PDF Into this system so that you can then scribble all over them and put comments and this works on Tablets as well So you could grade them on that side and on the other side you've got your actual rubrics or Setting that the total grade of things this interface is also getting a lot of overhaul still So this is not final at all, but you get a taste for what's coming up if you want to play with them You go to prototype dot moodle dot net There's some installs there of these individual features as well as information on how to give feedback so you can give us comments on the tracker or on the forums and You know we'll be working really hard on these over the next Month few weeks to to polish them up and get them ready for the release just as a brief thing of our priorities from Moodle HQ's point let's say my point of view our priorities in general are to work on the bigger things So Going forward after 3.1. There is a plans for a new default theme with no blocks And using bootstrap for so very much an overhaul of Moodle's default interface to make it look really really nice out of the box This involves a lot of navigational elements and things with this we've been working on this for quite some years But I think it's all coming together, and I'll be really really really ready Over the next over the rest of this year We're working on activity module overhauls So just tackling whole activity modules because a lot of them need a bit of an update and polish the database module glossary module the wiki and giving them a Good overhaul. We're looking at easier integrations with other systems so making Moodle integrate well with Google apps with Office 365 with all those Even Apple classroom these other systems out there for managing users and so on on devices but also the many other There's many integrations with other open source products and services to make Moodle just work very well with them There's a whole range of those and they're all in various stages of Development of thought Lastly and not least at all. It's very strong mobile support You probably know mobile use has surpassed desktop use of the Internet in the future Most of our internet is on mobile devices if it isn't for us already So Moodle has to work. So that's a big focus for us is making the Moodle mobile app very capable and making Moodle itself work very well in any mobile situation However, those are just our priorities and what our Overall road map our road ahead if you like is Driven by three things now. We have three road maps So the Moodle users association is going to be feeding us Specifications they're going to say this is what we want you to make and we're going to do it The Moodle partners and all the clients of their of them which number of many thousands They also are setting a road map and they'll be giving us Things that they think a priorities to work on and then in the middle. We've got Moodle HQ itself, which is filling in all the gaps. We're looking at some of the bigger Issues we're looking at the very small issues and fixing bugs that no one else would do and We're just filling all the gaps holding it all together and together. We're all driving the road map forward Quick shout out to all the partners the UK and IE partners who I think are all here so Say hi to them if you if you see them and I think all together We're all cycling down this road together And I know that's a very terrible Photoshop job But Yeah, I think we're actually picking up speed The the developments in the last year have been probably more than the previous two years And I think the things coming up this year are going to be even even more so I'm really Excited by all the things that are happening There's a lot of things I haven't told you about Gavin's going to talk about them as well later on But I think together we're moving forward. So I'm really really happy to be here. I'd love to talk with you all Let's see if we can do it individually each one of us over two days Maybe I should set up a booth. I don't know. Yeah. Oh, and I'm around. Is there any other any questions? Any thoughts from anyone dying to type? He really want to try out this foam ball thing. There's a chance No Explained yeah, oh here. That's him Tim It's actually I just want to criticize your last slide where you showed the three strands feeding into Moodle Yeah, because I think you you missed an important part there, which is actually Moodle HQ goes on working really hard to make it easy for Moodle users all around the world To contribute the things they want Yes And so the kind of integration team taking and and all the other HQ developers who peer review fixes Yep, and give feedback. So contributions come in from all around the world Yes, there's discussion to make sure they fit well into what's there But I think you said, you know, they're some of the big things Moodle HQ is tackling that's because a lot of the little things get done by Individual developers out there fixing the things that matter to them, which is how open source works, but absolutely They haven't lost that it's the critical part. Absolutely. I wasn't maybe clear enough about that But what our part is all the stuff we have been doing up till now Everything in the track are everything on Moodle org and all of those things The reason for the other two thing the other two parts of this roadmap are that If someone in the forum says or in a tracker issue says wouldn't it be great if Moodle had this and a lot of people go Yeah, that would be great But it's going to take one developer, you know, it's like two years of development to do Or a team of developers several months to do. It's well, who's paying for that, right? So it's it's That's always been my issue not issue my Problem to solve is how do we get these things actually? Paid for and so these other two Parts are the ones supporting a lot of that the partners obviously providing a lot through their royalties the Moodle users association now from Memberships and Yeah, so all together it makes everything very sustainable, but I Will stress it again if it wasn't already clear enough that Moodle is an open-source project first and foremost and centrally and The whole point of everything else is to provide the world with an open-source product that is fully capable And that's really that's our that's our mission Yeah, okay, but a bit of pressure to catch that isn't yeah I So yeah, I'm really glad to hear that that the developer community is still really important But I was wondering for the Moodle users Association so how transparent is that can we see what's going on there or what's being decided? so it is Necessarily slightly private Because Otherwise there would be little need to be a member perhaps so however a lot of the discussions About things going on in there are actually out on the tracker or in the Moodle forums or in the usual places So what the Moodle user association is often doing is saying hey this thing that has just been floating around Unfinished for a while. Let's get it done And so they're just you know so a lot of what they're doing is actually just taking on those projects that were out there They're in the track already. I Think that will be the major mode of operation It's not meant to be a secret place where they decide on things. It will be very open Next to you bass maybe before you throw it Hi I'd like to know whether you've considered crowdsourcing a Kind of a make-it-happen list Where the whole community could? Contribute Small amounts. I mean the the Moodle users association is a more organized idea around that but maybe You know literally something that would be really really popular among the user community everybody could just contribute a little bit and If I can just add one more question The thing that I think would be One of the most kind of groundbreaking things is for Moodle to Become a place where it is so easy to create online content You know intuitively and so if you can copy and paste a picture in as You can do in Google Slides and it just creates the image all all those kinds of things that make it easy for people to create content Using bringing in whatever they want to and and making instead of Links to you know PDFs etc. etc. I think that would get the Creativity really pumping. Thank you Thank you It's great having a microphone to repeat the questions this on your first point about the crowd sourcing Yes, the Moodle user association actually is Effectively crowd sourcing but with organization We have tried unstructured crowd sourcing before it doesn't work. We ask for donations We get very very little We've Said who will fund these projects nobody comes forward. It's it's very it hasn't worked in the past So that that's why the Moodle user association really because if that had worked we wouldn't have needed the Moodle user association Yeah, it's like two pounds Yeah, I Was gonna make the same point. I think it's approximately 50 pounds UK And if you can't isn't for an individual and if you can't cough up 50 pounds towards the future of Moodle You should be mildly embarrassed There's one criticism. I've got my very first comment was about the Moodle association is I want merchandising I want badges. I want to be at an event like this I want people to see and go whoo him or his organization has paid up and he's a bit more special than the rest of you So that's just my suggestion Don't tell me tell the Moodle users association because it's nothing to do with us anymore So Hedeto is here Steve is here Is anybody else here a member of the Moodle users association come some hands one two three four five six seven There's ten people here Yeah, it's true. Probably need some t-shirts and I'll just throw that in your court I said Hedeto is actually already wearing a badge. He's an expert in this area. So Yes the The points of the Moodle users association is that as a member you have some skin in the game so to speak, you know You have incentive to participate Rather than and it connects that with actually getting things done and you know things will happen Unlike on Kickstarter, you don't for example Yes, hello Maybe you can clarify what is going on with Totara I am confused about what I read about it and I don't see really the position of the headquarters I see partners who are totara partner and Moodle partner. So I'm curious to hear your observations well, so to Tara is 90% Moodle It's just Moodle with some extra work on top They've said and now that they are not interested in staying in synchronization with Moodle So they've effectively forked As of last year Our developers still talk with their some of their developers about common issues inside the Moodle tracker but Apart from that, there's not a lot of relationship As a product it does suit a certain need in certain working environments And so a lot of our Moodle partners are also to Tara partners so that they can Use that as a solution and that's that's totally fine from my point of view. It's still a Moodle Still Moodle still a derivation of Moodle There's some interesting things going to happen in the future later this year that I won't talk about yet But that we're going to be doing in that area, but at this point That's about it. Yeah, so we're not I'm not talking with the Tara leadership very often Yeah, last question and then is it coffee time? Excellent over here That's a big throw Michael like a real quarterback. I let Michael do that one. Yeah, that's a three-pointer for me I was never good at basketball Thank you. Just just back to the Moodle users Association. Have you any plans for corporate? Membership, I've no idea how I get that passed up a human people, but don't talk to me talk to I actually I don't think the organizations They don't say what type of organizations the memberships so No, I mean Yeah, so I mean like a university joining as a as a organization so organizational So there are organizational level There is only one restriction on membership only and that's that if you do Moodle services That you can't be a member that actually means Moodle partners cannot become members It means anyone doing Moodle services can't be a member and that's to reduce any potential confusion with the Moodle partner scheme Commercial Moodle services Well any Moodle services actually because it's a fine line So, yeah But anyway talk to the association if there's any problems there Well come along this afternoon and I'll tell you all about it. What time is it Steve? It's 17.45. I've just tweeted it Oh, I'm glad suites too. So, you know might need to be to different room officer Well look on that note Thank you very very much And I'm looking forward to chatting with you and have a nice couple of days. I want to see lots of these presentations I'm very keen