Round table discussion

Overview

This is a round-table session, gathering those who are interested in collaborating on a Drupal Certification program.
As Drupal grows, the need for Drupal training grows as well, and so - more companies offer Drupal training and courses.
Training people to Drupal, has many benefits:

• It helps customers make a better use of their websites or Drupal-based web applications
• It increases the offer of Drupal savvys in the jobs market, whether as webmasters, developers or designers
• It creates another channel for people to get to know Drupal, and as such... (see next bullet)
• It helps the community grow

It is important therefore, that all those who are involved in this area, collaborate, in order to achieve a coherent, collaborative Drupal training curriculum. There is an ongoing effort to achieve that on g.d.o, but it doesn't prove to be the right platform. In this round table we will try to find the best way for us to collaborate and share over this matter.

Agenda

Some key issues that will be discussed (not necessarily in this order):

• What is a Drupal certification at all? Can there be ONE certification?
• Who is allowed to certify anyone to Drupal?
• What are the implications of not collaborating over a certification program?
• Does the Drupal association have to take the control over certifications?
• What impact will Acquia's certification program have on other Drupal training programs? (see this discussion on g.d.o.)
• How should the collaborative platform look like? How should it behave?

See this g.d.o. wiki page for more background (feel free to participate): Associations, ideas, and possible questions, that comes to your mind, when talking about...

Goals

At the end of the session we should have a clearer picture about the Drupal's certification program, and about the ways to achieve collaboration from all those who are involved in the area.

Resources

Here (Szeged 2008 related sessions)

• The Alexandria Project (seems to have dropped)

Groups.Drupal.Org

• Curriculum and Training group
• A brainstorming wiki page in preparation on this session
• Drupal training syllabus
• What impact Acquia new Training and Certification project will have on Drupal community ? (comments are interesting)

Acquia.com

• Yellow Jersey
• A skeptic plans a certification program
• A Certification Success Story

This will just be an informal gathering of the women who make it to Drupalcon: the Drupalchix (also known as the "7% club" ;)).

We did this in Barcelona and Boston, and it was awesome. :D

Topics might include things like:
* What are our various backgrounds/experiences prior to coming to Drupal?
* What is it that we’re currently working on?
* What have our experiences in the community been like?
* What can we do to encourage more women in open source/Drupal specifically?