On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
It's in the mission statement. "We perceive benefits" is an assertion,
not a proven or researched demonstration, of benefits.
It's interesting that you refer to the mission statement which was the very
first order of business back in January. At that point there was a Group
of people who had perceived a need over several years and finally got
together to do something about it. Since then, we've done much to quantify
and publish that need, with much more work still ahead. I would consider
The Statement of Purpose in the Bylaws to closer reflect our assertions:
http://www.bsdcertification.org/index.php?NAV=BSDCG&view=3#0.0.0.Statement%20of%20Purpose%20|outline
2) The lack of a single major sponsor or book publisher behind the
effort. Vendor certs have the vendor. Neutral certs need either the
resources of an existing group with cash (CompTIA, Usenix) or they need
to get their own sponsors (LPI -- we collected $300K before we started).
Even without their money, a big-name endorsement could do wonders.
We've had this conversation before, but I'll add a bit on publishing since
you've brought it up. Having gone through the publishing mill myself and
having spoken to thousands of readers throughout the world, I'm personally
hesitant to have an "official" publisher. You go outside North America and
Western Europe and an IT book can cost half a month's salary and that's
assuming the person is working (not working is often an impetus for
desiring certification). Add $150 USD on top of that to write the exam and
you have a model that is no longer globally viable and shuts out parts of
the world that could be or are currently benefitting most from Open
Source. There are other publishing models that can be used to make an
inexpensive but high quality work that is affordable by readers, fairly
compensates the authors, and gives a % back to a non-profit project rather
than the current model where a ridiculously high % of an expensive book
goes to the publisher.
3) The indication (repeated by Dru yesterday) that conventional,
"LPI-style" business and delivery models would not be used, yet without
clear indication what will take their place. After all, psychometric
validation doesn't come cheaply regardless of how you get the money to
pay for it. Is anyone here familiar with the term, let alone the need
for, "legal defensibility" in the context of certification?
You do make me laugh sometimes. Watch for the Sponsorship Fact Sheet as
well as the announcement of the first fund raising drive coming later this
week. There will also be an announcement on who we are partnering with for
psychometrics before the end of the year.
4) While there have been many surveys of the community of what should be
in the exams, how many times has the community been asked "how much
would you pay to take an exam? how far would you travel to take it?
Would it help you in your career? Has lack of certification prevented
you from getting a job?"
Quite often, both informally and at conferences. Personally, I can mention
Poland, Canada and NYC in person and this does not count the hundreds of
emails I've received across the globe on this subject. I'm still waiting
for the writeup from the beta of the country-specific survey that was done
in Brazil in October. Once that is published, we'll be launching the real
version of this survey on a per-country basis. The marketing for this one
will be more targetted as we've been gathering per-country contacts.
Dru
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