[ Forwarded by Dan York ]
From: Jared Buckley <jaredb@ti.com>
To: linux-cert@linuxcare.com, linux-cert-announce@linuxcare.com
I. Executive Summary
August and September have been an exciting months for LPI and
events are only going to accelerate as we approach our revised
third quarter release date for T1. Test questions are now open for
submission and we are receiving items from the community, but we
still need all the help we can get. Digital Metrics, formerly a
for-profit Linux certification program, has decided to cease
operation and throw their resources and support behind LPI. Dan
York while attending LinuxWorld in San Jose, had the opportunity to
meet with our Advisory Council and solicit their advice on a number
of topics. LPI will be attending the Atlanta Linux Showcase in
October.
II. News Summary
- Status Update
- How Can I Help?
- Digital Metrics
- Accepting Test Questions
- Sponsor Recognition
- Thanks for the Help
- Trade shows and Events
- Miscellaneous LPI PR Links
III. News
A. Status Update — August may be vacation time across the
northern half of the globe, but things have been as busy as ever
for LPI. Although our release date for T1 has been revised to the
third quarter of this year, we’ve made many great strides in the
past month. The Test Item Processing System (TIPS) is now accepting
items from our volunteers and Digital Metrics’ contribution of
their test questions to our database have significantly advanced
the development of T1. (See the related news items below for more
information on TIPS and DM.)
As I mentioned last time, LPI is in the process of incorporating
as a non-profit organization. It’s taking a little longer than
normal because of the necessity of shuffling legal documents around
the world for signatures and notarization, but the process is well
under way.
We’re on track for release of T1 in the third quarter but can’t
do it without your help…
B. How Can I Help? —
1) Write Test Questions! — It’s time to put your IQ where your
mouth is…this is where the rubber meets the road…this is where
we separate the men from the boys. Pick your own cliché, but
bring your Linux skills over to:
http://www.lpi.org/cgi-bin/tips.py
and help us to create a comprehensive certification test of
junior system administrator skills. Questions submitted will be
rigorously screened and reviewed for technical accuracy and
relevance by the LPI psychometric team. Questions which survive
this process will appear on the actual exams, which are to be
deployed internationally within the next four to six weeks. While
all submitters will be recognized by LPI on its web site, for
security reasons we cannot acknowledge whether specific questions
have been accepted or not.
LPI’s first exam, T1, covers common fundamental aspects of Linux
system administration. A second exam, T2, will be offered for each
of the major Linux distributions. Completion of the T1 exam and one
of the T2 exams is required to achieve LPI’s first level Linux
certificate, LPIC-1, which is targeted at junior Linux
administrators. Future exams are planned covering more advanced
topics, as well as the distinctions between the major Linux
distributions. On the LPI web site, submitters can browse the exam
objectives and select for which ones they’d like to submit
questions. Detailed online instructions are provided. At the
present time, the interface allows submission of only
multiple-choice type items, but the institute is developing methods
of accepting other types of questions.
If you have ever had concerns that people who completed other
certification programs weren’t really qualified, then please join
with us and help make sure our program is of the appropriate
quality.
2) Volunteer your Time and Skills — There are going to be
several opportunities to contribute to LPI technically too.
Evan Leibovich (evan@lpi.org) and Chuck Mead (chuck@lpi.org) are
working on a revamped web site. We need some web-heads to help with
PHP scripting and general site maintenance. Drop Evan or Chuck a
line if you’re interested.
Very soon now, we’re also going to need some help in the design
and implementation of our back-end certificate holder database. If
you’ve got some experience in db design and are feeling charitable,
fire an email off to Evan (evan@lpi.org) for more details.
3) Creating a high-quality certification program such as this
costs a significant amount of money. We recently unveiled our
sponsorship program for both businesses and individuals at:
http://www.lpi.org/sponsorship.html
We’ve already had several major sponsors come on board and we
are actively speaking with others. If either your company or you
individually would be interested in donating, we would certainly be
interested to talk to you. If you think your company might be
interested, but are uncomfortable bringing the matter up, please
feel free to contact us and we’ll be glad to make the approach.
Please direct all sponsorship inquiries to either Dan York
(dan@lpi.org) or Chuck Mead (chuck@lpi.org). Please note that while
we are incorporating as a nonprofit corporation, we are not (yet,
anyway) a “tax-exempt” entity by U.S. IRS tax guidelines. Donations
to LPI are *not* tax-deductible in the U.S. as charitable
contributions. (But there may be other ways to deduct such
contributions – contact an accountant for details – and hey, it’s
for a good cause anyway!)
4) With so many information technology publications out there –
both in print and on the web, it’s next-to-impossible to stay
up-to-date on what’s being said all over the place about Linux
certification. We’d like your help. When you see an article (either
in print or online) about Linux certification, can you please send
us the info (article title, publication, date, URL if on the web).
Either send it directly to “linux-cert-pr” if you are a member of
that list (if not, consider joining!) or email it to Evan
(evan@lpi.org)
You can see the list of what has been posted at:
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert-pr/threads.html
Messages sent to linux-cert-pr appear on the archive within an
hour.
5) To date, much of the writing and speaking about LPI and our
efforts to create a Linux certification program has been by members
of the Steering Committee such as Evan and Dan. But please know
that we are not at all exclusive about that and would encourage
others to help out with writing and/or speaking about LPI and Linux
certification.
Many web sites are looking for people to write articles and we’d
love to see more articles out there about Linux certification and
LPI. If you know of a site looking for articles, please go ahead
and write one. We’ll be glad to provide some information or
assistance if you need it. Also, if you’d like to write articles,
drop us a note and we may be able to steer you to places where they
are looking for writers (usually the online sites are looking for
writers who will write for free).
Print publications are good, too. For instance, Dan had an
article in the June “;login:” published by USENIX and then an
article in the July “Linux Journal.” Scott Murray & Alan Mead
are planning to submit an article on their survey process to a
psychometrics journal. Articles might be appropriate for local or
regional newsletters for training organizations, user groups, etc.
Also, if you’re interested in speaking to local groups, we will
soon be making some presentations available online (in Applixware
format so far, probably HTML, too) that you could use. For
instance, Faber Fedor recently spoke to a local association of
technical educators in his state.
If you are interested in writing or speaking, please feel free
to contact either Evan (evan@lpi.org) or Dan (dan@lpi.org). Feel
free, too, to go ahead and just write… we’ll be glad to look over
articles if you’d like us to.
6) As always, one of the best ways to participate is by hopping
on the mailing lists and making your expertise available to the
groups. LPI is a community based organization and we need the input
and the support of a wide variety of Linux users to meet our goal
of creating a strong, vendor-neutral certification program. Visit
us and find out how to get in the loop!
http://www.lpi.org/involved.html
C. Digital Metrics Gets Behind LPI — As you’ve probably seen on
web site, Digital Metrics, a web based Linux certification effort
has decided to join us in our efforts and donate their knowledge
and resources to LPI. Besides their installed base of certificate
holders, DM brings their wealth of knowledge to our certification
efforts, greatly bolstering the depth and bredth of questions in
our T1 item pool. We are still working out the details of the
effort, but we’re very happy to welcome the entire DM organization
to LPI.
We are addressing the issue of how to transition current DM
certificate holders to LPI’s program. Keep an eye open on the web
site for further details on this subject.
D. LPI is Now Accepting Test Questions — The TIPS system is up
and running, the item reviewers are in place, and the community is
waiting, so why aren’t you contributing from your area of Linux
expertise? We need everyone to check into:
http://www.lpi.org/cgi-bin/tips.py
and start core dumping your Linux experience. The bottom line is
that we can’t create a certification effort that accurately
reflects the Linux skills required by the community without the
community’s help. Add some questions and spread the word to all of
your friends. If the web interface isn’t your cup of tea, drop me a
line (jared@lpi.org) and I can forward a copy of the offline
interface that Richard Rager designed. (Just don’t send me any
questions/bug submissions on it; forward those to Richard at:
kb8rln@penguinmaster.com )
E. Sponsors, Old and New — LinuxWorld finally gave us the
opportunity to officially thank the folks who’ve so graciously
provided us financial support. We presented plaques of appreciation
to the following sponsors at the show:
Corporate Sponsors
——————
Dave Sifry – Linuxcare
Brandon Worrell – IBM
Angie Wethington – Macmillan USA
Simon Yates – Computing McGraw-Hill
Matthew Cunningham – Linux Journal
Nancy Maragioglio – New Riders Publishing
Individual sponsors
——————-
Jon “maddog” Hall
Mark Bolzern
Lenz Grimmer from SuSE, Jim Higgins from Caldera Systems and Ken
Kousky from Wave Technology were given their awards later at their
booths. All three are corporate members. If you or your company
couldn’t make to to LW, don’t worry; we’ll catch you the next time
around!
We also like to take a moment to welcome our most recent
sponsors, Wave Technologies and SGI. Both companies came in at the
Gold sponsorship level. Welcome All!
F. A Word of Thanks — Thanks so much to everyone who
contributed their time and efforts to help us out at LinuxWorld.
Walter J. Feszchak, Angie Wethington, Simon Yates and Nancy
Maragioglio all volunteered time to work at the booth. Thank you
also to Linux Journal for providing us a home at the show!
G. Trade shows and Events —
LinuxWorld August 9 – 12 — Well LPI (in the mortal form of Dan
York) made it to LinuxWorld this past August. Dan managed to get
fit a Birds-of-a-Feather session, a meeting of the Advisory
Council, a press conference to award plaques to our sponsors, AND
plenty of hand-shaking and baby-kissing into a very busy LW
schedule. Although I missed the show myself, I heard it was a
pretty good time. From the discussions I’ve heard, all of the
Steering Committee is planing on being at:
Atlanta Linux Showcase October 12-16 — We will be attending and
have already scheduled a Birds-of-a-Feather session. Stay tuned for
dates and times. As with LinuxWorld, we’ll need volunteers to help
with the booth etc. Send email to jared@lpi.org if you’re
interesting in contributing some time.
H. Here are some quick links to various LPI articles:
Dan York’s 7/11/99 Interview with Linux.com:
http://www.linux.com/interviews/19990811/9/
Dan also gave an audio interview to Dave Whitinger at
LinuxToday. It’s in MP3 and is about 10 minutes long.
https://www.linuxtoday.com/stories/9414.html
IV. List Topics
Here’s a brief overview of the topics being discussed on the
various mailing lists. See something you’re interested in? Check
out the archives at: http://lists.linuxcare.com for
more information.
l-c
o Certification Database and Privacy
l-c-corprel
o Approval of Training Vendors
l-c-pr
o Press Section on Web Site
o LPI Logo Button for Linux.com Requirements
l-c-program
o Recertification Requirements Revisited
o Another Linux certification program – E-Certification
o Version 1.0 of the Glossary/Terms Released
l-c-examdev
o Sample Test Questions
V. Links
LPI Home http://www.lpi.org
LPI (German) Home http://www.de.lpi.org
Mailing Lists Archives http://lists.linuxcare.com/
Dan’s Other Cert Articles:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue33/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue34/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue35/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue37/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue40/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue43/york.html
Other Linux Certification Programs:
(SAIR) http://www.linuxcertification.com/
(LPI!) http://www.digitalmetrics.com/
http://www.redhat.com/corp/products_training.html
http://www.enterprisecertified.com/aboutecc.htm
Additional email archives are now on-line:
linux-cert:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert%40linuxcare.com/
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert/threads.html
http://linux.codemeta.com/archives/linuxcert_archive/
linux-cert-program:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-program%40linuxcare.com/
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert-program/threads.html
linux-cert-corprel:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-corprel%40linuxcare.com/
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert-corprel/threads.html
linux-cert-pr:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-pr%40linuxcare.com/
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert-pr/threads.html
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Corrections, Additions, Comments? Send them to:
Jared Buckley
jared@lpi.org
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