Inéation

Oups, they did it... Acquia has just announced that they are thinking of launching a training and certification program for Drupal. This was my fear... And I think there is a much better way to do that.

Let me explain you...

But first of all I have to say that it is an excellent idea !
I truly think that the lack of a certification is a big weakness of Drupal. This is one of the factor that can prevent serious companies to work with Drupal, these companies would then lean toward commercial open source products such as eZ Publish (see my article on Ez ecosystem).

But, at the same time I do not want Drupal certification to be owned by commercial companies. I have two majors concerns about this :

1. Scenario 1 : Acquia will become a monopoly on certification. Acquia is in a very good position: as they have the money, the resources and the expertise, they may succeed so well in selling their offering that others would become minor players. If that happens then developers will have no choice than pay the price decided by Acquia to obtain the right to play their game...
2. Scenario 2 : Numerous certification offers will be proposed by numerous firms. Indeed, after reading the first scenario, one could argue that everyone could create its certification process and -by the way- it has already been done. Ok, let's imagine that... Then the problem would be one of quality and effectiveness of the certifications. Indeed, the aim of a certification is to provide clear standards of level of expertise to our end-user. If there is a "certification proliferation", our end-users would not be able to weight the expertise of the firms and we may loose them to the benefit of other commercial open source products...

Again, I have the feeling that there is better way to implement a certification process. A way that is in between the commercial open source model and the full community open source model. In fact, when you think about it, there is no reason that a certification program may be owned by someone. Designing a certification program and exam exercises is a pure intellectual activity, therefore this could be community driven. The idea would be that the Drupal association (or a new one) should be the process owner. Commercial companies will concentrate on designing and implementing high value training programs aimed at successfully completing the exams. The tricky part is how to organize exams in controlled and secure way and there we could think of developing an e-exams application or do something more classical... Ok, enough of it, my goal was to show you that my "other way" was feasible.

Not only this will be a more open approach, but I think that at the end the overall Drupal Community will benefit from it :

• Customers : they will have access to certified Drupal developers and companies. Expertise level would be standardized and comparisons possible. Furthermore, they will be confident in the quality of the certification as it would be given by an independent non-commercial organization.
• Drupal developers : they will have access to a low cost certification program that gives them a real added value, they will still be able to choose a training company if they wanted to.
• Drupal trainers : will have more people wanting to have a certification focus training and the competition will be based on the quality of the training and not the scope of the certification.

And Acquia ? Well, even Acquia will have added image benefits by showing that it takes care of the community !

So, now it is time for action...