Sef Kloninger, one of the leading engineers of the Stanford Open edX initiative, has left this organization to join a start-up called Wavefront. “I’ve heard the siren’s song of the startup”, is the only explanation he provided regarding his departure from Stanford University –although he will continue as a member of the EdX Technical Advisory Board.
What does it mean for the edX community?
Mr. Kloninger, a gifted developer and technology visionary, built the Class2Go platform and contributed many features in the edX code (i.e. theming, course email and instructor analytics, etc) along with an engineering team from Stanford. One of his main achievements was to convince key people in Stanford University and MIT and Harvard in Boston to make the edX platform open source software. So, in a way, he is one of the fathers of Open edX.
He reflects on his website: “I’ve spent a lot of my own time helping to make sure the Open edX project a healthy open source project. It’s not enough to just open up the code, to have a thriving community you have to conduct your development out in the open. Beyond helping other institutions get up and running I’ve worked to drive the open-source agenda overall.”
The edX universe is moving fast and new people with different views and agendas are emerging. The first Open edX conference, taking place this November 19 in Boston, will be an opportunity to picture the future.
