[Ica-osgeo-labs] BOF in Portland: Some Ideas of certification

Smith, Richard Richard.Smith at tamucc.edu
Wed Sep 24 08:59:05 PDT 2014 

All,

Bobb raises an interesting point of creating/substantiating an FOSS vs Commercial and the idea of an overarching (tech agnostic?) certification.  

I don't think there would be much value to ignore the idea of a technical certification when they are so prevalent in our and other communities.  I also am not sure that the OSGeo community would be the right one to certify a more super-set of skills.

To contextualize and expand...

I think there are multiple scales of certification that are possible and possibly being spoke about here.  For a specific software certification, I see this as being targeting towards the technician-level positions (although all levels could benefit) and persons.  At the technician level, an assumed level of technical proficiency with a particular software package would be a major hiring point and, therefore, a software-based technical certificate would be of value to those looking to enter that level of job.  I would see OSGeo, or the technical community being a reasonable sponsor/certifier for this.

The super-set certification would target more of a professional-level position where decisions that require a more developed understanding of underlying processes and decisions would be made, perhaps with a subject matter expertise requirement.  I would put a College/University degree or the GISP (post exam) in this category.

Regards,
-Rick

Richard Smith, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of GISc/GSEN
Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi
Phone: 361-825-2750
Web: http://gisc.tamucc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul)
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:52 AM
To: Dr. Franz-Josef Behr; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] BOF in Portland: Some Ideas of certification

All,

Shouldn't this type of certification naming not be separated as in "Open Source . . . " and instead be thought of more as something that should be integrated into a more general (and existing) certification title.  Maybe it's better to think of this as a super-set of existing Commercial expertise, possibly a new all encompassing certification vs just Open Source.

I fear that setting things up as separate OSS titles risks fracturing/solidifying the community into two separate camps.  I use Commercial and Open Source every work day for example.  As someone who hires spatial specialists regularly, I would prefer to have people that have proficiency with both (preferably Open Source), but not exclusively one or the other.

     Geospatial Software Developer
     Geospatial Software Professional
     Geospatial Standards Expert
     Geospatial Data Expert
     Geospatial Consultant

Some, hopefully more generic, titles:

     GeoSpatial Software Engineer
     GeoSpatial Software Designer

The following seem like technical specialist titles to me.  I'm coming from a municipal background, there is likely some bias in here somewhere I think on my part.

     Certified OS GIS Technologist
     Certified QGIS/... developer
     Certified Web GIS solution architect
     Certified PostGIS Associate ...


Bobb




-----Original Message-----
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Dr. Franz-Josef Behr
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 8:28 AM
To: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Ica-osgeo-labs] BOF in Portland: Some Ideas of certification

Dear colleagues,

during the BoF meeting in Portland we discussed the topic of FOSS4G certification and Arnulf shared some of his thoughts and insights (see also his talk/discussion [2] which I unfortunately missed, the slides at
[3].)

After the BoF meeting I had a further informal discussion with Philip Davis.

One idea:

***
The participating Universities (faculty members) could elaborate a set of prerequisites to award an FOSS4G certification and try to achieve an agreement amongst the academians as well with the OSGeo foundation.
***

The certificates could point out that they are acknowledged by the faculties/Unviersities who joined the Ica-osgeo-lab movement plus OSGeo.

The certificate could be granted by these Universities (for their respective students/for participants in courses9 and by other acknowledged institutions (i.e. MetaSpatial).

I found some keywords for Postgres certification [1], see below. Such keywords could be transfered easily to our aimed fields of certification.

Arnulf lists some types of certification [4]:

     Open Source Geospatial Software Developer
     Open Source Geospatial Software Professional
     Open Geospatial Standards Expert
     Open Geospatial Data Expert
     Open Geospatial Consultant

Further/other types could be:

     Certified OS GIS Technologist
     Certified QGIS/... developer
     Certified Web GIS solution architect
     Certified PostGIS Associate ...

We could start with one of them...!?

Regards

Franz-Josef
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postgres Plus Associate Certification


     PostgreSQL System Architecture
     Installation
     Configuration
     Creating and Managing Databases
     Introduction to PSQL
     pgAdmin III
     Security basics
     SQL
     Backup and Recovery
     Point-in Time Recovery
     Routine Maintenance
     Postgres Data Dictionary
     Moving Data

Postgres Plus Professional Certification

     PostgreSQL System Architecture
     Transactions and Concurrency
     Performance Tuning
     Table Partitioning
     High Availability & Replication
     Connection Pooling
     Monitoring
     Procedural Languages
     Add on Utilities - Contrib


[1] http://www.daseq.de/schulungen/enterprisedb/edb-pgac/
[2] http://vimeo.com/106231984
[3] http://www.metaspatial.net/conferences/metaspatial-institute.html#/3
[4] http://www.metaspatial.net/conferences/metaspatial-institute.html#/8
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