Meetings and Events

BSD Certification: A Case Study in Open Source Community, Dru Lavigne
2009-08-05 @ 18:45 EDT (22:45 UTC) - Suspenders Bar and Restaurant +

Since their heyday in the 1990s, IT certifications have gained a bad rap. They are often perceived as money making machines for large companies, havens for braindumps, and certificates which aren`t worth the paper they are written on. We are all familiar with how open source is revolutionizing the proprietary software industry. Open source also has the potential to revolutionize the proprietary certification industry, and the BSD community is leading the way.

This talk will introduce the BSD Certification Group and their effort to create and maintain certifications that effectively assess the skills of BSD system administrators. It will provide an update on BSD certification, some of the lessons learned along the way, and principles other open source communities can use to provide their own certifications.

Dru Lavigne is founder and current chair of the BSD Certification Group. She is a sysadmin, technical trainer, author of BSD Hacks and The Best of FreeBSD Basics, maintainer of @bsdevents, board member of the FreeBSD Foundation, and editor of the Open Source Business Resource. She has been actively involved in the BSD community since 1997.

Please note that NYCBUG will be hosting a BSDA exam on August 2 which we encourage you to sign up for ASAP.