McShibbolising
Posted by admin on August 13th, 2007
I spent a very interesting day at the ‘McShib’ event in Edinburgh last Wednesday. ‘McShib’ is a group that has come together to allow people with an interest in the adoption of Shibboleth to have a local (and nothern) focus. The first great thing about this event is that it was brought together because of community demand and through the hard work of Andy Swiffin and the RSC for Scotland North and East, rather than something driven by JISC itself. The second great thing was the enthusiasm at the event and the really practical focus of the presentations on adopting Shibboleth on a very practical basis. The event was initially scoped out for about 15 people and registration closed with over 50 attendees!
One of the key messages from the day was the importance of kicking off the legal part of joining the Federation. To quote Andy Swiffin:
There is no cost involved in doing this and even if you subsequently decide to outsource your identity provision your institution will still need to join. The great benefit in doing this as soon as possible is that when you do want to actively participate all of the paperwork is in place. In addition, if as many institutions as possible join now it sends a very clear message to Service Providers that this is something that the UK academic community is serious about and that its worth their while to put some effort in making their application Shibboleth aware. This in turn benefits us all!
I couldn’t agree more! Thanks to Andy, the RSC and all who took part in a very interesting event!