Re: Can we do something now?
On Feb 24, Aaron Van Couwenberghe decided to present us with:
>
> The group would also need to be not only sure of each member's
> level of understanding, but also of everybody's ability to condust business.
> Technical understanding does not make one a proficient consultant.
But can make a proficient teacher (I for one consider myself a
good teacher but not consultant, and I certainly lack business
skills). This is why "consulting" isn't alone in the
organization's name, and why I proposed different areas for
certification (for example, certifying me as a teacher but not
as consultant).
> Hence, official collective followups must be made after every major
> assignment. This is unnerving but necessary for reputation.
I agree with this part.
> Perhaps, as a way of distributing this workload, every agent who is assigned
> a local project must followup one other member's project (in a one/one
> ratio). Guidelines should be set in advance as far as how this is to be
> conducted; of course it should be minimal, and just be sufficient to compare
> agents' performance relatively.
I'm not very sure of the geographical possibility of this one.
> As a side-note, I *do* believe this organization should have a curriculum
> for training; customers must oftem be taught how to deal with their new
> system, and it should be aimed at this.
Apart from people who do _only_ training, let's not forget this
part, my proposal is to cover these two areas.
[ on training curricula ]
>
> I agree. but different levels need to be set; specialized areas, et al, and
> perhaps minimal tests in important areas should be available as a
> *guideline* for the educator. Instead of a bunch of text, a class outline
> would be sufficient, and associated difficulties with each subsection. This
> way a class can be optimized at-a-glance for windoze users and/or
> technicians with HP-UX experience.
I couldn't agree more.
> > 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?
>
> group admission criteria needs to be much more stringent than established
> education guidelines. IMO. If there's a reason for it to be otherwise, I
> would go along.
But if the organization groups different kinds of professionals
(starting with consultants, teachers and installers for example)
how would that affect membership?
> > 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.
>
> entirely wrong IMO. There is a difference between 'hey look, here's three
> CD's of free software you can try to figure out' and 'I know everything
> about XXX area. I can train XXX of your <plug-in experience level> personnel
> to have a firm grasp of it in XXX days'. The former is hobby, the latter is
> professional and warrants a pricetag in the corporate world.
I think you misunderstand me. I meant to say: our role in
certificating should be testing the knowledge of prospective
members, and not teaching them what they don't know (or skinning
them off $1000+). If _you_, for example, already have all the
necessary knowledge and skills, why would you want to engage in
a time- and money-consuming course just to get a certification
from a startup organization?
> But again, as far as 'classes' go, a detailed curriculum with
> tests/quizzes/etc is not the way to go. a breakdown of sub-subjects for each
> topic needs to be presented to the agent, with a brief description of what
> it is to cover, and what needs to be learned.
I think you're missing a distincion I make, between training
_customers_ (good and necessary IMO, after all that's what I do
for a living now) and training _members_ (not our role IMO).
I agree with your approach as to curricula for training
customers, BTW. In my view of education, a good curriculum only
traces guidelines which help the teacher, instead of hindering.
[]s,
|alo
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