JA-SIG uPortal and upcoming JA-SIG conference

[Prentiss Riddle]

(Here's another of my not-quite-100%-library-related posts which I hope
will nevertheless be of interest.  If not, I beg your indulgence.)

Last week the Chronicle of Higher Education published an interesting
article on the JA-SIG university portal project (now dubbed
"uPortal").  It's a free, open-source portal being written by a
consortium of universities.  Here's the article:

	http://www.chronicle.com/free/2000/05/2000050501t.htm

And here's a blurb from the JA-SIG Clearinghouse website:

	http://www.mis2.udel.edu/ja-sig/portal.html

	The JA-SIG Portal is a free, sharable portal for institutions
	of higher-education. An institutional portal is an abridged and
	customized version of the institutional Web presence... a
	'pocket-sized" version of the campus Web. Portal technology
	adds "customization" and "community" to the campus Web
	presence. Customization allows each user to define a unique and
	personal view of the campus Web. ... The JA-SIG Portal is an
	open-standard effort using Java, XML, JSP and J2EE. It is a
	collaborative development project with the effort shared among
	several of the JA-SIG member institutions. The JA-SIG Portal
	will be available as a reference implementation to any
	institution of higher-education at no cost.

It appears that some sort of release will be presented at the upcoming
JA-SIG conference in Monterey on July 10-11.  Conference details:

	http://www.ja-sig.org/events/jul00/

Does anyone know any more about this?  Are there any participants in
the uPortal project on this list?  Any library involvement happening
yet?

Minutes of meetings at the Clearinghouse site suggest that release 1.0
exists and 2.0 is impending.  Is uPortal getting close enough to a
*production* release that non-developers should be getting interested?
(In other words, should I book a flight to Monterey? :-) )

-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle at rice.edu