BCeSIS Deja Vu

I've spent much of the past six years implementing a student information system (SIS) in my school district. It is called BCeSIS, and it is an 'enterprise' system designed for all the 600,000+ students in BC. I've only been implementing for the 4000- students in Quesnel.

BCeSIS is a modification of a SIS called eSIS, written by AAL Solutions in Ontario and used for about 4 million students worldwide. In November AAL was bought by Pearson, which has a SIS called Powerschool used for about 11 million students worldwide. It wasn't hard to read the writing on the wall.

My immediate thought was, 'here we go again' - sort of like jumping in a time machine and going back six years.

My second thought is the one that interested me, and is what indicates to me how lucky I am. While I could have thought 'oh no, six years of my life wasted', I didn't. Instead I thought 'this may be interesting, maybe enough to delay my retirement'.

When work brings that sort of reaction I must be very blessed. And who knows, maybe we'll get it right the second time around.