Re: Can we do something now?
On Feb 24, Jim Westveer decided to present us with:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Lalo Martins [mailto:lalo@webcom.com]
> <snip>
> >
> > I'm thinking not only of consulting, but also training. I
> > thought of a name like "Debian Professional Consulting and
> > Education Collective".
>
> Humm...How about "Debian Consulting and Education" DCE.
Reasoning for the name I proposed:
Debian is open. There _is_ free consulting and support (in
debian-user and #debian) and education (in the form of
documentation). So I wanted to emphasyse "professional".
I'm not sure if an acronym is the best thing here.
And finally, I wanted to try with something like "association",
"community", "organization" - I chosen "collective" because it's
used much less frequently.
> > 1: a kind of self-appointed certification authority for
> > Debian-related consulting and education services - both
> <snip>
>
> Do you want to provide testing, grading, pass/fail etc, or just
> information and educational curricula?
I didn't think of training consultants/teachers. Perhaps it's
not a good idea to do it as it's usually done... perhaps
something along the lines of debian-mentors is better.
The details of certification... well, the idea is that the group
certifies an individual or company. There are different
certificates, each for a group of services - thus one for
education, one for technical support, one for installation,
whatever. I didn't think of how the certification is granted;
I'd like to have opinions of the prospective members on that.
> > 2: a central knowledge base, so that Debian consultants and
> > educators can enjoy in their work the same advantages Debian
> > offers as a project (a community, peer review, etc)
> <snip>
> In the form of ??? search with htDig ? or are you
> envisioning something like a knowledge base reasoning engine?
I don't know what is a "reasoning engine".
I was thinking of a repository of documents (text files,
basically reports written by members about either an interesting
problem they dealt with or an interesting discussion in some
list/IRC/wherever). These documents would have a keywords field,
so we put up a search engine based on this and presto. If anyone
has a better idea, I'm listening :-)
> > 3: the development of an "official" Debian learning program, so
> > that certified Debian Collective teachers around the world
> <snip>
> Same comment as #1
The idea here is developing curricula that members would use to
teach non-members (customers). Probably just using the curricula
would be almost enought to certificate this member as Debian
educator... apart from checking some knowledge, of course.
> The consultants, and how to contact them, needs to be made public and
> predominant.
This is the idea. But, what do you think about membership vs.
certification? If they are different, do we list all members or
the certificated ones?
> The Educational framework, and Knowledge base needs to be public and
> predominant.
I agree about the educational curricula, but not the KB. I think
the KB would be to big and detailed for general consumption,
that's why I suggested that portions of it are periodically
"distilled" into a public version of the KB or even into the
Debian FAQ.
> Advertising banner rotation of member banners (and others?) needs to be
> established.
I'm not sure on this. What do others think?
> Then, If there is enough "good" to progress to some type of "Certification"
> program, this could be a revenue stream for those giving the classes,
> not to mention supporting the organization.
>
> There are a LOT of FAQ's and HOW-TO's, there are no training
> curriculum material that I know of. This is a good idea, but
> we need to put together quality material BEFORE we make the
> light-speed-jump to seminars and Certification classes.
Classes? I didn't think of certification in this way. Surely I
don't want to require someone to attend to a $1000+ course to be
a "certified Debian consultant", this would oppose the spirit of
Debian and undermine the international nature of the Collective.
IMO. :-)
[]s,
|alo
+----
--
I am Lalo of deB-org. You will be freed.
Resistance is futile.
http://www.webcom.com/lalo mailto:lalo@webcom.com
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Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org
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