In my recent visit to Spain (15-Dec-2007 – 20-Dec-2007) my primary intention was to work technically with the multi-university Campus project building interoperability between Sakai and Moodle using OKI OSIDs and the Campus Project OKI bus. I am very excited about this project because as far as I know this is the first time an organization has decided *not* to choose between Sakai and Moodle – but instead – they decided to use both Sakai and Moodle.
This is a great challenge and there is a talented and well funded team in place making very good progress. As with any time you venture into uncharted technical waters – time becomes and issue. The teams are working under a lot of time pressure – so I wanted to come and visit as soon as classes were over to see how / if I could help. I scheduled five days in order to visit all of the Sakai universities in Cataelonia – Lleida, Valencia, and LaSalle in Barcelona. Previously I had only visited Lleida.

Saturday December 15
Arrived at noon from London Luton Airport. Met with Lluis Vincent of Las Salle University, his wife, and Edward and Xavier to have lunch and dinner and plan the visit. It was cold, windy, and raining – we had great fun – we went through a cathedral filled with people taking their chidren to a nativity display and went to a christmas market – I learned some Catalan traditions – The tradition about striking a particular tree with a stick and then the tree “emits” presents. I also learned about another interesting tradition described at www.caganer.com.
At about 11, Edward and Xavier left us – and we went to Luz de Gas (www.luzdegas.com) – there was a great band named Talking Rabbit and free drinks because the bartender was from the same town as Lluis.
Sunday December 16
Got up and took a train to Valencia – this is a very beautiful trip with mountains on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other side and much of the trip goes through orange groves and small towns. I did not see much of it because I was mostly sleeping due to the previous late night at the disco.
When I arrived in Valencia – my hotel was downtown and it was awesome – very modern architecture. An awesome bathroom – and free Internet. The Valencia downtown has a river that is no longer a river – because it was diverted and the river is now a park with very modern buildings that house concert halls and museums. I had a few hours before dinner at 9PM so I went to the science museum and the Titanic museum.
I had dinner with Miguel Ferrando (CIO), Arist