[Qgis-psc] QGIS Certification

Arnulf Christl arnulf.christl at metaspatial.net
Thu Jul 3 06:28:00 PDT 2014 

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...please note that the information on the website at
http://metaspatial.net/en/institute still reflects the original
process. Tim has pointed out how this could / should be done for QGIS
and I concur. As already said - this is still a moving target.

Have fun,
Arnulf

On 07/03/2014 03:20 PM, Arnulf Christl wrote:
> 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 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> 
> 
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> 

- -- 
http://metaspatial.net
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