AJ, What do you think about we create a kind of openSUSE certifications path? While people will getting success through the path to achieve a kind of openSUSE Master Certification, they will also obtaining different levels of access and privileges (merits) inside the whole openSUSE project. Take a look at the http://www.novell.com/training/certinfo/cle/roadmap_10.html and see if this shows up some ideas about openSUSE Certifications! This can help us to achieve two points. First, will help us to better understand our users/contributors activities and difficulties. Second, could help openSUSE users/contritutors to increase in numbers. Most young guys from schools and new university levels are looking for some certifications that can they to be better viewed and positioned to the IT/Business market. Also we can provide a kind of certifications for trainees. rsrs - To be honest, I do not really believe this line, but as we are having a kind of brainstorm - this is the right time and place to shoot some craziest ideas. ;-) . Let's start to fly and Imagine someone needs a Trainee certification for their marketing course in their University, and they need that certification to get their University Conclusion Course Certification as a Marketing Leader. We can provide a kind of Marketing openSUSE Trainee Certification for release each candidates we delivery. Who wishes to apply for openSUSE Marketing Trainee certification must submit papers to be analyzed by the marketing team. As you said, we currently have the following benefits for membership participants: * lizards.opensuse.org blog account * IRC opensuse.org cloak * @opensuse.org mail alias * Right to vote the openSUSE board - and perhaps participate in other votes We can provide this ones + some others MOTIVATIONS that we can start to talk in another threat. Backing to the openSUSE certification path... I believe a kind of different certifications for different purposes can help us to gain more contributors, users, members... * openSUSE Certification for Educational * openSUSE Certification for Developers * openSUSE Certification for Ambassadors * openSUSE Certification for Marketing Professionals * openSUSE Certification for Project leaders in opensource ecosystem * openSUSE Certification for Trainee Programs * openSUSE Certification for ISV's * openSUSE Certification for Government * openSUSE Certification for Educational Technical Centers - associated with LPI - just like Novell previous agreement with LPI http://www.lpi.org/eng/certification/lpi_and_novell_partnership and http://www.novell.com/pt-br/BR/news/press/novell-and-linux-professional-inst... * openSUSE Certification for A11y * openSUSE Certification for kids and retired ones Of course not all of my examples could be possible or at least makes sense, but I believe some can be useful and can help others to push another idea on how to obtain more users, contributors and members to the project. Some countries (I believe most part) are playing some specific BIDs for opensource solutions/providers to acquire some opensource services and deliverables to the government usage. If we have some specific certifications provided by openSUSE project - we could be better viewed by BID's writers. At least here I live, the people hired by the government or state, LOVES to spend the contributors money (our money) doing courses and getting some certifications, because this is the only thing they will not lost or leave to the next ones. If they have the opportunity to run a BID for a kind of network management solution - think nagios - for any purpose, and some company like my competitors runs with debian+nagios services + training + Documentation + transfer skill for 10 $ and I run the same BID providing the same solution as my competitor placed but with openSUSE + openSUSE ANY KIND of CERTIFICATION for the same 10 $. WOW tha't is the plan - nd if the government decision makers choose openSUSE as linux platform, quite sure they will push their MAGIC SOLUTION using openSUSE ECOSYSTEM to the decision makers of educational, financial, infrastructure, health-care, decision makers of the States and Cities. best luck CarlosRibeiro
Andreas Jaeger
04 Julho, 2010 >>> I'd like to do a bit out of the box thinking on this one and see the $member discussion in a broader context as well.
Currently the benefits of membership are: * lizards.opensuse.org blog account * IRC opensuse.org cloak * @opensuse.org mail alias * Right to vote the openSUSE board - and perhaps participate in other votes we do Do we want to open up all of this and open it up so that everybody can sign up and can get these benefits - or a part of it? This might be good from a marketing perspective since more people would call themselves $member and use their openSUSE org mail alias etc. Or do we want to continue giving these benefits based on merit? Somebody said in the discussion that he felt bad whenever we had to reject a person applying for membership. Why does it happen that people apply that are not active? What can be done here? Btw. how do other projects handle this? What names are Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. doing in this regard? Can anybody register and have these rights or to which is it bound? Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org