NRGS and QGIS Certification

Certification? Yeah. Just calm down and let me explain.

I’m a fan and not a fan of certification. At some point I was a GISP. At some point I was ESRI Desktop Certified. There’s been talk of how to have QGIS Certification for a while. I’ve not been part of the conversation. The other day I found out it was a thing now. Usually I would go “Pfffbbbbt” and ignore it….BUT….here’s what hooked me.

In short (read up here)  – all the talk centered around QGIS certification boiled down to two camps: You had your GISP Approach where your portfolio speaks for it’s self. You have a test (IT Certifications) that certify you on an exam. QGIS isn’t an org that can really do either – so they went with option 3 – the community decides who can and can’t be certified. I submitted my class for review and it passed.

So what does that mean? I have an 8 hour class that you take. At the end I submit your name and 20 Euros back to QGIS and you get an ID that can be checked to see if you took the class. Will you win jobs and make your fortune based off this certification? No. You’re supporting the community by taking it though. You can still buy a book and read all your want and do awesome things with QGIS. You can download it for your platform of choice and use it with no certification. It’s made me think about giving the students a test at the end of the class.  Haven’t decided on that one. So we’ll see what happens. I want to “do this right” in my head for the community. I did decide that the classes I teach at Conferences that are compressed down to 4 hours aren’t going to qualify. You’ll have to sit with me with 8 hours.

To be mentioned in this group –  that’s pretty cool at least for me.

• Bird’s Eye View
• Camptocamp SA
• Cracow University of Technology
• Faunalia
• Geo Academie
• IHE Delft Institute for Water Education
• Kartoza (Pty) Ltd
• Københavns Universitet – Institut for Geovidenskab og Naturforvaltning, Skovskolen
• Lutra Consulting Ltd
• MappingGIS
• NaturalGIS
• North River Geographic Systems, Inc
• North Road Consulting Pty Ltd
• OPENGIS.ch GmbH
• Oslandia
• QTIBIA Engineering

This gives me a way to donate back and not feel like I’m just leeching off the good work of other people. I still have other plans for financial support – but I’m getting to that one.

We will see what happens. I’ve got to start scheduling some classes. Want a class? Looking at breaking out of your commercial loop of software changes and portals and what not? Give QGIS a try.