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Linux Professional Institute News - 14 July 1999
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I. Executive Summary
II. News Summary
III. News
IV. List Topics
V. Links
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I. Executive Summary
Development of the certification program continues with recent
efforts focused on finishing the objectives for the distribution
specific exams and interviewing candidates for item review. The
Steering Committee has been working on formal incorporation as a
non-profit and obtaining financial support for our efforts.
SuSE and IBM have pledged support which will help accelerate the
item submission process. The are a number of ways to contribute to
the certification process; see the News section for details. A
German language "chapter" of LPI is being formed with both a web site
and a mailing list currently available. Dan York and Evan Leibovitch
are at Comdex Canada.
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II. News Summary
A. Status Update
B. How Can I Help?
C. German Chapter Forming
D. Dan York's _Linux Journal_ Article
E. Distribution Specific Objectives are Up
F. New Archives are On-Line
G. Recent Web Site Problems
H. Open Source Forum Report
I. Dan and Evan at Comdex Canada
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III. News
A. Status Update -- So where are we in the certification process? A
lot has been happening recently, both in the Steering Committee
and on the public lists. l-c-program has been very busy working
out the final objectives for the distribution specific exams,
discussing the issues of jargon, recertification and test
revisions, and building a glossary of commonly used acronyms.
The Steering Committee has also been very busy working on the
formal incorporation of LPI (pending), reviewing the contracts
with VUE (pending incorporation), and actively recruiting
financial supporters for our organization. Scott has interviewed
item reviewers and is ready to start accepting items as soon as
we can finalize some financial details. The good news is that
both IBM and SuSE have pledged to come through with funding
so we should be able to get rolling on item collection soon!
Keep an eye on the lists and the web page.
B. How Can I Help? -- The are a ton of great opportunities to help
in getting our certification program out the door. If you caught
the last news release, you'll notice that there have been a
couple of additions to the task list. In particular, the first
three entries are new and have a high priority right now.
We have been drafting a glossary of concepts, preferred terms,
jargon and acronyms that candidates are supposed to know about
and that may be used in the development of the LPI program
objectives and test items. The current list, which is work in
progress, has been drafted by Alan Mead and is on-line at:
http://conan.ipat.com/~cert/lpilist.html
We need volunteers for these tasks:
1) Help Alan Mead finish the list. Contact him at:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Check the test objectives currently on-line at:
http://www.lpi.org/cgi-bin/poms.py
against the list of preferred terms (once that is finalized),
and signal the cases where the current objectives do not
conform. The text should be updated by the topic
maintainers. Please contact Tom Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
about this.
3) Once the objectives have been made consistent, extract
the test objectives and related material from POMS and
put them in one page for each exam, in a pretty format and
structure. Chuck Mead has made preliminary pages which are
on-line at:
ftp://server.moongroup.com/pub/lpi/
but they need work to make them better readable. Please
contact Tom Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> about this.
4) Very shortly, Scott Murray, our director of exam development,
will be putting out a call for "item writers" to write
questions for our first level exams. Item writers will receive
some instruction in the types of questions we are seeking and
then will write items that will be submitted to an extensive
technical review and evaluation process.
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.
Please contact Scott Murray ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) now if you would
be interested in being an item writer when we begin the
process.
5) 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
(Caldera Systems, Linuxcare and SuSE are the largest) 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
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Chuck Mead ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
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!)
6) Discussion of a courseware approval policy has been ongoing
in the l-c-corprel list. The debate has died down in the
past few days, but we need your input on this subject.
Basically, a number of vendors have asked about an approval
program for their training and education materials. LPI is
trying to determine what, if anything, we should do about
these requests. Check out the archives at:
http://lists.linuxcare.com/linux-cert-corprel/threads.html
and make your opinion known. The Corporate Relations committee
will be working on a proposal to send to the Board.
7) 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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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.
8) 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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Dan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
Feel free, too, to go ahead and just write... we'll be glad
to look over articles if you'd like us to.
9) 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. As Dan mentioned in our previous posts, there was great enthusiasm
building for the creation of a German language "chapter" of LPI.
Thanks to the hard work of Mark Semmler, J�rgen Off, and many
others, there is now a web site up at:
http://www.de.lpi.org
and a mailing list has been established also. Check out the web
page for instructions on signing up for the list if you speak
German.
The first meeting was held at Linux Tag '99 at the University of
Kaiserslautern and had about 34 participants. The next meeting
is scheduled for Sunday, 18 Jul 99 in Berlin.
D. Dan York, formerly editor of this fine newsletter, had an article
published in the July 1999 issue of _Linux Journal_. Dan's
article, "Building a Linux Certification Program" covers the
history of LPI and the rationale behind creating a certification
program for Linux. Additionally, Dan's story also covers the
proposed basics of the LPI effort. It's a great starting point
for people just getting involved in LPI. Dan has also written
other articles for the Linux Gazette; I've included the links at
the bottom of this letter.
E. The objectives for the distribution specific exams are up on the
web site at:
http://www.lpi.org/cgi-bin/poms.py#exams
Please stop by and comment on the objectives for the distributions
you're familiar with. The distribution specific exams are a
very important part of completing the Level 1 certification.
If you've got any specialized knowledge of the various
distributions, make a point to stop by and comment.
F. Additional email archives are now on-line; check them out at:
linux-cert:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert%40linuxcare.com/
linux-cert-program:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-program%40linuxcare.com/
linux-cert-corprel:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-corprel%40linuxcare.com/
linux-cert-pr
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-pr%40linuxcare.com/
The other lists (-examdev and -admin) will have archives there as
well as soon as there is traffic to those lists. Many thanks to
Matthew Rice for his suggestion.
G. As many of you probably noticed, we had problems with our web site
last week. This was due to a problem with our DNS entry for
lpi.org and has been fixed. We apologize for the inconvenience.
H. Ziff Davis held their Open Source Forum in Austin last week to
explore Linux in the enterprise. Besides having a lot of great
speakers, LPI got several good plugs during the presentations.
Thanks to a late cancellation, Evan got to chair a discussion panel
and I got to sit in on the discussion about standardization.
Overall, LPI and the idea of certification were well received.
I. As I mentioned in the executive summary, Dan and Evan will be
attending Comdex Canada. If you are going to be at Comdex Canada
this week in Toronto, Ontario, stop by one of our presentations
and speak with Evan Leibovitch and Dan York. LPI presentations
will be at 4:30pm on both Wednesday and Thursday at the Linux
Pavilion Theatre. More information about speakers can be found
at:
http://www.linux.ca/comdex/speakers.html
Please come and tell us what you think about LPI's progress. You
can also contact Evan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Dan ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
via email.
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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 DNS Problems
o German Chapter of LPI
l-c-corprel
o Accreditation or LPI Approved Courseware
l-c-pr
o PR Ideas for Test Rollouts
l-c-program
o Concensus Point VIII : Jargon
o Draft Dictionary/Glossary
o SAIR Tests are Up
o Distro Differences/Objectives
o Question of Recertification
o Completed Objectives on Web
o Question of Exam Expiration
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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/issue39/york.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue43/york.html
Other Linux Certification Programs:
(SAIR) http://www.linuxcertification.com/
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/
linux-cert-program:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-program%40linuxcare.com/
linux-cert-corprel:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-corprel%40linuxcare.com/
linux-cert-pr
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-cert-pr%40linuxcare.com/
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Corrections, Additions, Comments? Send them to:
Jared Buckley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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