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

Charles Schweik cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu
Wed Sep 24 08:38:14 PDT 2014


Hi,

I just wanted to say that this sketching out of a suite of courses and
accreditation is really important, and the GeoForAll community should try
to work toward collective action toward a coordinated set of version 1
materials or possibly some kind of coordinated web-based classes that can
be supported by participating institutions for credit -- building on what
Phil Davis is already doing.

This sketch should be moved to an OSGeo wiki page if anyone has the time to
do that...

We also need to, as a community, to continue to go for grant funding to
support this. This continues to be on my agenda for 2014-15, but I hope
others are trying too...

Cheers,
Charlie Schweik

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Philip James <philip.james at newcastle.ac.uk>
wrote:

> A really interesting idea.  From our perspective with a largely diverse
> Undergraduate intake who access jobs across the spectrum of the geospatial
> and surveying industries it would make sense to also consider a broader,
> perhaps less technical perspective towards certification  I was thinking
> along the lines of the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) for OSGEO
> products - demonstrating to potential employers an awareness and a certain
> level of competence in core open source geo technologies.   There would be
> potential here for institutions to substitute their own preferred OSGEO
> software (eg. QGIS or GVSIG) whilst maintaining the same level of
> accreditation.  For our current professional accreditation of our
> programmes we provide evidence periodically (every 3 or 5 years) to
> demonstrate that our courses are suitable to be accredited by external
> bodies.   Something along these lines with OSGEO would be an ideal scenario.
>
> Phil
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Phil James
> Senior Lecturer in Geographical Information Science
> School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
> Newcastle University
> #geoanorak
> https://github.com/geoanorak
>
> Geospatial Engineering:           http://research.ncl.ac.uk/geospatial/
> ICA-OSGEO Lab @ Newcastle:        http://research.ncl.ac.uk/osgeolab/
> Geospatial Engineering Blog:
> https://research.ncl.ac.uk/geospatial/blog/
> Football tweet map:               http://ceg-sense.ncl.ac.uk/footballtweet
> City Dashboard:
> http://ceg-research.ncl.ac.uk/uo/dashboard
>
>
>
>
>
> -----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: 24 September 2014 14:28
> 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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>



-- 
Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dept of Environmental Conservation and Center for Public Policy and
Administration

Personal website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik
Publications: http://works.bepress.com/charles_schweik/

Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012)
- see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545
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