[Qgis-psc] QGIS Certification

Arnulf Christl arnulf.christl at metaspatial.net
Thu Jul 3 06:20:13 PDT 2014 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Folks,
took me some time to figure out that this conversation was continued
on the QGIS PSC list. I am not sure whether it is the appropriate list
and I don't want to cause too much noise here. So if you think there
is a better place tell me where to go with it (hell maybe :-).

We have discussed these topics in depth and breadth for several years
at OSGeo level, with training businesses and different OSGeo projects
but - so far - to no avail. This is why I started this initiative a
year and half ago. It is quite an investment but nobody was or is
prepared to pay me for this. This is why I want to explore a
commercial solution. Is this bad? If you think it won't work there is
no reason for me to continue, so please be honest and not nice.

You are right that ideally the certifying organization would be a
not-for-profit, but apparently this does not manifest. So what to do?
Who on earth would spend their volunteer time to certify other
people's capacities? This is an honest question. I don't see it
happen. But apparently it would be nice to have a certification (that
makes at least a little sense).

My proposal is that the "metaspatial Institute" provides the
certification - for a fee. Initially I wanted to provide certification
for general Open Source counsultants but it seems a bit vague so that
this is on hold for now.

But QGIS is a lot more concrete and therefore the most promising
candidate and I would be happy to exchange further ideas with the
clear goal of providing a first grade certificaiton level by September
for FOSS4G in Portland.

There is an ISO Standard and accreditation body (linked from the
metaspatial website: http://metaspatial.net/en/institute) which I use
as a guideline for doing things properly. One very obvious rule is
that metaspatial will not act as a training service provider itself
but exclusively as the certificaiton body. Anybody will be able to
provide trainigs and there is no obligation to be associated with the
metaspatial Institute. But - hopefully - after some time the brand
will be recognized as a quality lable and help to promote Open Source
software also to organizations which would rather trust a certificate
than an individual. I have currently linked several training providers
from this page and am happy to add anybody who can provide some
convincing evidence that they actually provide good training. (Here
again: Who can judge this? What does this endorsement mean? Well,
eventually maybe we can have a quality process to even accredit
institutions who provide trainings...)

Happy to continue this dialog if there is more interest. Otherwise
sorry to have wasted your time. :-)

Cheers,
Arnulf


On 06/27/2014 07:44 PM, Tim Sutton wrote:
> Hi
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:10 PM, Vincent Picavet 
> <vincent.ml at oslandia.com <mailto:vincent.ml at oslandia.com>> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Le jeudi 26 juin 2014 23:51:17, Tim Sutton a écrit :
> 
> [..snip building a platform for certification exams..]
> 
>> The idea so far has been that Arnulf / Metaspatial will act as
>> the certification body offering a number of different
>> certification
> tracks and
>> ensuring consistency and QA througout all testable topics. They
> would also
>> do the financial side and push a cut from every exam back to the
> relevant
>> projects, maintain the needed infrastructure etc.
>> 
>> I would like to stress that these are just talks and so far we
> have just
>> been trying to come up with a workable system with the aim of
> bringing it
>> back to the PSC / community for comment and then going off to
>> build a prototype that others can pay with.
> 
> I am quite puzzled by this.
> 
> 
> Ok lets fix that!
> 
> 
> 
> For me the certification authority should be a non-profit 
> organization. You cannot be a certification authority, running a
> certification platform AND providing training and consultancy for
> profit.
> 
> 
> I don't know if this is the case or the intention, Arnulf can
> comment on that better. You can find general public information
> about their plans here:
> 
> http://www.metaspatial.net/en/institute
> 
> 
> 
> This looks like a big confusion of roles. Certification should be a
> unification of training assessment. You cannot unify any other
> trainer if you are both trainer and exam provider ? There is a
> bias here.
> 
> There should be a clear separation of roles like : * The
> Certification Authority would be an independant, non-profit 
> organization in charge of creating the exams, and centralize all
> attributed certifications.
> 
> 
> In my understanding of Arnulf's plans, QGIS.org would be the 
> certification body, we would determine what constitutes adequate 
> certification and what material needs to be covered etc.
> Metaspatial (if we use them) would administer the platform
> providing its internet presence and managing ecommerce etc. For me
> this seems like a symbiotic relationship since personally I would
> not like to see the QGIS project further distracted by managing the
> certification infrastructure. I don't know if there is anyone at
> OSGEO planning to provide an equivalent service but I would be fine
> with using them for that too provided we had similar control over
> examination content and access to a share of certification fees.
> 
> 
> It could run a platform, or pay one or various private companies
> to operate the platform.
> 
> 
> 
> Ok that seems like a similar arrangement to using Metaspatial to 
> administer the programme....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The CA could be a branch of OSGeo, but this has been discussed
> already ?
> 
> 
> Not as far as I know.
> 
> 
> 
> * Trainers and training companies would provide classes, and their 
> trainees could pass the official certification after this with the
> CA.
> 
> 
> Right the intention is that any trainer could provide instruction
> in QGIS, but they would need to be a certified trainer in order to 
> invigilate examinations.
> 
> 
> 
> If the CA is a trainer and for-profit, this is closed competition, 
> and there is a strong risk of having the "metaspatial
> certification" and the "betaspatial certification" soon, and you
> have a balkanization of certifications, which leads to the point
> you started from. Seems contrary to any open innovation, equal 
> chances and opensource values ?
> 
> 
> I don't think this is metaspatials intention, any training company
> can do training. My intention is only that we centralise and
> officialise certification to maintain a minimum standard for anyone
> certified by QGIS.org.
> 
> 
> 
> Another model would be a CA certifying trainers, which in turn have
> the ability to deliver certifications. But the top of the
> certification pyramid should definitly be independant, objective,
> not for profit and have open governance.
> 
> 
> I prefer that certifications are centrally administered, otherwise
> there is no quality control. A QGIS.org certified user should write
> a standard exam in order to have his/her qualification comparable
> to any other certified user.
> 
> 
> Note that non-profit does not mean not having any money flowing
> in, on the contrary, it should get money for any certification
> delivered, employ people to manage this, give money back to
> projects, pay another company to operate a platform if needed. In
> an open and independant way.
> 
> 
> 
> Regarding non profit status of the CA, this is not a show stopper
> for me, but sure if we can find or create a nonprofit to perform
> this function it would probably be preferable - perhaps this is
> even something Arnulf has in mind or could be convinced to set up.
> I think there are good reasons to use Arnulf as the center point
> for such initiative as he has broad exposure to the range of OSGEO
> projects and many high level contacts that would be useful in
> getting such a programme accepted on a broad basis.
> 
> 
> Personally am more interested in how the technical implementation
> of such a certification process would work, and the governance of
> the CA you have touched on is something I haven't spent much time
> thinking about. If you are passionate about these things it would
> be great to have you become more involved in our plans so that you
> can pursue your ideas in an actionable way. My biggest concern is
> that we gain momentum and make things happen - we have been working
> on this since the hackfest in Wroclaw and it has thus far been
> difficult to get things past discussion phase and into something
> concrete.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> 
> Vincent
> 
> 
>> In practical terms for the person making the enquiry to you, we
>> at
> this
>> stage have only the training manual (the idea being that we
>> would
> match and
>> extend the training manual and the certification tests to
> correspond to
>> each other), while the certification platform is being planned
>> for hopefully the near future. If others are interested and have
> concrete ideas
>> of how things should work it would be great to form a little
>> team
> and join
>> Arnulf and myself in actually building this. Naturally the
>> testing
> platform
>> would be all open source but for obvious reasons the content
>> would
> not be
>> and we would use funding from the exams to also help in
> development of the
>> examination content.
> 
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> Tim
>> 
>>> Sorry if I have been out of touch...
>>> 
>>> -gary
>>> 
>>> -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Gary Sherman
>>> 
>>> Founder, QGIS Project Consulting: geoapt.com
>>> <http://geoapt.com> Publishing: locatepress.com
>>> <http://locatepress.com>
>>> 
>>> We work virtually anywhere =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
>>> _______________________________________________ Qgis-psc
>>> mailing list Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
>>> <mailto:Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org> 
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- Tim Sutton 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about: * QGIS programming
> services * GeoDjango web development * QGIS Training * FOSS
> Consulting Services Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at
> freenode.net <http://freenode.net> Tim is a member of the QGIS
> Project Steering Committee 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


- --
> 
http://metaspatial.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlO1WIwACgkQXmFKW+BJ1b0MfgCfWGx3MllN9OIUl2UBXnWHmi1A
Zv8An0t13NZsE5F3uU3/SzKBmtyKacRT
=juOd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

More information about the Qgis-psc mailing list