The Duke's Discoverage

My first contact with the infamous Oodi was in 2006 when I started in the CS dept. of the University of Helsinki. (Web)Oodi is an information system designed originally in 1995 to administer the huge register of students in public universities in Finland, and later also a development Consortium (Oodi-konsortio). It started with at least the universities of Helsinki and Oulu.

Depending on the source of information (I talked with three different Oodi organization members) the Oodi consortium now has 11 or 13 member universities in Finland, including the University of Helsinki and Aalto University (I am a student in both).

What you see is actually only a small part of Oodi

If you’ve ever used Oodi, you know that it sucks. If you are a web developer like I am, you have probably had thoughts that you could dev a much better app in two weeks (Oodi is now 16 years old). But did you know that the interface you see is actually just a small part of the whole shebang?

You see, Oodi started off as a system for the university administration and only later was forced to expand to serve teachers and students. I was told that the eHOPS (electronic study planning) interface was only done, because the university administration required the A4 study plans converted into electronic format, so the student interface is just an afterthought.

Making Oodi better – is it even possible?

Now as I work with game mechanics and getting things done in the realm of sales, I thought why not do something for the everyday greater good of my fellow students in these 11 or 13 universities across Finland. I sent feedback through the Oodi official feedback channel and sure enough got an email from a TKK person who agreed to meet me. We ended up having a telephone call instead of a meeting, but that was actually good, because I had no idea how huge the whole Oodi thing is.

Check it out: http://www.oodi.fi/sivut/oodi-konsortio (Only in Finnish, sorry, but you can use Google translate if you’re a non-Finnish-speaker)

So I almost got hopeless with this bureaucracy: once again a project run by the administrative types who don’t care about end users at all. The system is so burdened with stone age dependencies that it’s impossible to move it anywhere. 

Oodi has moved to the 2000’s – they have an open API and a sandbox environment!

Finally I heard that there is actually an open API and a development sandbox that can be used to develop applications on top of the monster without having to care about database connections or backward compatibility. Basically, if you’ve ever thought about doing everything better in two weeks, now’s your chance to actually walk the walk and do it.

Come to Garage48 next week to find out more!

I contacted a guy called Jorma Korkiakoski, who is in charge of the API project, and he was super helpful and enthusiastic about the thing and promised to drop me an email on Monday about the API and documentation. He said they are using Confluence and also sport a wiki to handle the docs. He also promised to come say hi at next week’s Garage48 (http://garage48.org/events/helsinki-2011) and I promised to make some introductions to people I know in the Aalto Entepreneuship Society / Aalto Venture Garage circles.

So I just wanted to post this and let everyone know, because before today, I had no idea about what’s going on with Oodi.

Help Finnish students graduate faster, not by force

My vision is that us web developer types could do our share in getting people to graduate earlier – not by forcing them out by making them starve, but rather actually HELP them to optimize their courses and find interesting topics to study.

If you’re interested, please drop me a line and let’s talk more!
My email is timo at dealmachine dot net. 

Oh and btw, happy new year!