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Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 20:12:24 -0400
From: Dan York 
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: [Fwd: Linux Professional Institute News - 14 July 1999]

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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:
            

        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  
            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  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 (scott@lpi.org) 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 
            (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!)

        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 (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.

        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 (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.

        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, Jürgen 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 (evan@lpi.org) or Dan (dan@lpi.org) 
        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
    jared@lpi.org
================================================