tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-157719962011-12-11T10:40:26.116-08:00Blog of the BSD Certification Group certification project. See www.bsdcertification.org for details.Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-23384338590204438022011-12-11T10:27:00.000-08:002011-12-11T10:40:26.123-08:00

The latest BSD Certification Group Study DVD is now available.  This version includes DragonFlyBSD 2.10.1, FreeBSD 8.2 with QEMU and AQEMU, NetBSD 5.1, and OpenBSD 5.0.  The handy DVD includes the El Torito boot loader included so you can boot and install any of these BSD operating systems. Purchase of the DVD supports the BSD Certification Group and our mission to provide high quality,

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-30091558468772549612011-06-08T10:43:00.000-07:002011-06-08T10:43:33.511-07:00

Announced in April on the BSD Certification Group website, the BSD Associate (BSDA) exam is now available at Schroeder Measurement Technologies (SMT) test delivery centers. The partnership took several months to complete, and it brings together the strength of the exam creation effort of the BSDCG, and the global delivery capability of SMT.  This makes it much easier to take the exam since there

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-71108009139899572162010-09-04T08:39:00.000-07:002010-09-04T08:39:58.942-07:00

It's out the door!  After over 200 hours of work and 15 drafts, the BSD Professional Certification objectives document is now available.  Released just in time for your end of summer reading pleasure, the document contains the official exam objectives for 11 knowledge domains, and contains 140 separate objectives. Officially called the "BSD Professional Certification  Requirements" the document

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-25693098294712870192010-06-02T14:13:00.000-07:002010-06-02T15:03:42.355-07:00

Thanks to the efforts of Jeremy Reed, one of the members of the BSD Certification Group, there is now a wiki page to help create the exam objectives for the BSD Professional Certification Exam.The exam objectives describe the knowledge domains that will be part of the exam. The list of domains came from the BSDP Job Task Analysis Survey we completed a few months ago (see previous blog posts).The

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-31616495097550842792010-05-29T20:40:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:40:14.603-07:00

BSDCan, the premier BSD conference held annually in Canada hosted a talk on the BSD Professional (BSDP) exam  given by yours truly at this years conference.  The talk discussed how the BSD Certification Group is currently creating the BSDP exam including the written form and a "hands-on lab".  If you couldn't make it to Ottawa this year you can still hear the talk and see the slides.  Many of the

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-24985610056302914112010-03-29T11:30:00.001-07:002010-03-29T11:32:36.179-07:00

Development of the BSD Professional Certification Exam is officially underway. A Job Task Analysis (JTA) survey for the exam was held in October and November of 2009. The results have been collated and the report titled "BSD Professional Certification Job Task Analysis Survey Results" is now available at http://www.bsdcertification.org/downloads/BSDP_JTA_Report.pdf.The 93 page report

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-44905653530146234842009-12-12T11:59:00.000-08:002009-12-12T12:57:25.938-08:00

Just like those movie reels where you see funny mistakes or gags that occur when the actors mess things up in filming the movie, the BSDCG got to see a blooper of our own recently.After receiving his exam results, one of the examinees noticed that the scores listed on the exam results PDF file seemed a bit odd. He contacted us through the website and mentioned that he thought the results were

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-72620385809348223262009-11-12T13:17:00.001-08:002009-11-12T14:31:45.989-08:00

Dru Lavigne, Chair of the BSD Certification Group, gives an informative talk about the creation of the Open Source certification system for BSD operating systems. This talk covers the BSD Associate (BSDA) and BSD Professional (BSDP) certifications and describes how they were developed. It presents the value of psychometrics and the process of creating a psychometrically valid exam includingJob

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-87030411844943603752009-09-05T01:39:00.000-07:002009-09-05T04:38:51.198-07:00

The first step in getting the BSD Professional exam underway is the Job Task Analysis (JTA) Survey. What is a JTA? It's an online survey where you can help define what skills are important for a BSD systems administrator at the "Professional" level.The survey presents a collection of tasks organized into Knowledge Domains. Each task includes two rankings- one for Importance and the other for

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-51650377470349330872009-04-26T11:38:00.000-07:002009-04-26T13:04:38.654-07:00

The BSD Associate Exam is now over a year old! Here are some interesting stats so far:12 Events in all of 2008; 14 events in just the first half of 2009Over 1000 people have registered for a BSDCG ID (needed to register for an exam)The exam has been held in US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Denmark, Ukraine, Netherlands, Argentina, and the UKSo far, 66 people have passed the BSDA exam

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-49185133227615929222008-06-23T05:44:00.000-07:002008-06-23T06:43:57.904-07:00

If you are in your local Barnes and Noble or Borders book store, you might see a copy of a new magazine devoted to all things BSD- BSD Magazine.Published by the same folks who put out Hakin9, an excellent magazine devoted to information security, the new BSD Magazine has several cutting edge articles about BSD. Some articles in the current issue include:Pushing BSD as an open source desktop...

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-90523429025435191822008-03-29T10:36:00.000-07:002008-03-29T12:55:01.429-07:00

The certificates are back from the printer, and they look good! They have a blue border with dark blue and black printing on a heavy, light grey card stock. The seals are embossed gold foil and are applied separately. The seals look very sharp. The actual certificate doesn't have the dark brown border, but it is positioned so you can use a nice frame for your wall or desk. The whole thing

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-83836505784018351062008-02-14T13:26:00.000-08:002008-03-29T10:36:20.773-07:00

The BSD Certification Group launched the first BSD Associate Exam at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) conference held in Los Angeles, Ca. , last weekend. As it was, there was not enough time to promote the first exam, so the number of candidates was limited.The next BSDA Exam will be held at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium, on Saturday, Feb 23, and Sunday, Feb 24. Seating is limited,

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-9380595590651397082008-01-26T19:44:00.000-08:002008-01-26T20:30:01.238-08:00

Last weekend, members of the BSD Certification Group met in New York to finalize some standards for the BSD Associate exam. The exam is now in its final form- all that is needed is to select the actual 100 questions to be used in the first version. Our psychometrician, Dr. Sandra Dolan, is pleased with the progress so far. We will have a psychometricaly sound exam, that will provide a solid

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-50870726922744830632007-10-06T16:59:00.000-07:002007-10-06T17:47:42.223-07:00

We've cleared another hurdle- we're now accepting major credit cards for payment on the website. If you've been wanting to purchase the Summer 2007 Courseware DVD with a credit card instead of PayPal, you can now do so.There are also two more brochures on the Resources Page- one in German, and the other in English. These are attractive tri-fold giveaways, suitable for use at conferences, BSD

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-44771097478967062802007-09-30T18:28:00.001-07:002007-09-30T19:11:36.202-07:00

Although you might think this blog is dead, it's actually just been in hibernation :-) Not so the certification effort itself.A lot has happened since the last post on Feb 2006. If you've been following news on the BSD Certification Group website, you'll know most of these news items. We've:Held a logo design competition (see the new design on the BSDCG home page)Held a fund raising drive

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1139450989801777222006-02-08T17:24:00.000-08:002006-02-08T18:09:49.846-08:00

BSD Certification Group Acting Chair Dru Lavigne will be speaking on BSD Certification at the UKUUG Spring Conference in March 2006. Dru will bring the audience up to date on our activities, and highlight plans for this year. Hope you can join the fun.Currently, we're looking at the best way to publish a study guide. If you've ever written a book, you know how daunting it is to navigate the

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1136417466781756032006-01-04T15:10:00.000-08:002006-01-04T15:31:06.850-08:00

It's a new year- and I'll bet I'm the last one to wish it to you...Wow- it's amazing how fast the weeks fly by. This is the first post since November! In addition to the holiday stuff, I've moved my own apartment and relocated to a different city for a project. So my apologies for not getting back to you all sooner.Time for a quick update...We're actually receiving donations now. Our donation

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1132551786863567282005-11-21T01:00:00.000-08:002005-12-05T18:53:21.380-08:00

The BSD Certification Group Donations Button is now officially open for business! Please join us in supporting BSD Certification. We're hard at work on the certification standard and we need your help to continue making it possible. If you would like to be listed on the donations page, let us know. Or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, we can do that too. Contact donations@

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1131915503417100752005-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:002005-11-13T12:58:23.446-08:00

The BSD Certification Group website will be modified in the coming days to add a donations button through PayPal. We're in the final stages of testing with four major credit cards as well as other PayPal accounts. Hopefully, this will enable everyone to donate to our project. And right now, donations are sorely needed! We're trying to engage a company for psychometric analysis for our exams,

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1130812370549604732005-10-31T18:21:00.000-08:002005-10-31T18:32:50.560-08:00

Well, the Usage Survey is out the door. That's good news! There aren't very many sources of BSD usage information- and we hope this fills that gap. Maybe we can make it an annual thing. We'll see...The survey is pretty comprehensive as far as determining how BSD systems are used and who uses them. But, as you'll read in the report, there are ways we can make it better. For example, just

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1129857608761781652005-10-20T21:28:00.000-07:002005-10-20T18:21:55.083-07:00

The Usage Survey Report is coming along. A bit slower than the last couple of documents, as we've all been busier than usual with $REAL_JOB. Hope to get more done this weekend on the Report.The new website is up now, and everything works. We had some problems with the contact form, but it should be working now.Incorporation is complete! We got our offical papers from the State of NJ. We can

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1128908937327156022005-10-09T21:45:00.000-07:002005-10-09T18:57:26.923-07:00

After some last minute scrambling, we finally got the BSD Certification Requirements Document done. The document lists seven different study domains and has over 100 different topics. Here's the PDF copy. And a humorous note- even after all that checking, the first version we put up had an 'ipconfig(8)' in one of the entries! Thanks to Hugo Silva, one of our translators, for pointing it

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1128313337807921252005-10-03T00:20:00.000-07:002005-10-02T21:24:00.330-07:00

It's been a hectic two weeks. There is a lot going on right now.We've just finished up the BSD Usage Survey. The data needs some massaging before we are ready to publish a survey report. That will be a few days yet. Over 4000 people responded to that survey. Wow! I was impressed when 500 responded. The survey was very popular, and there were many comments. We'll devote space to the

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1126965196739984832005-09-17T09:17:00.000-07:002005-09-17T07:45:27.230-07:00

Dru Lavigne gave a comprehensive talk on BSD Certification at NYCBSDCon. She introduced a couple of members of the group, gave a status on progress to date, and also introduced the BSD Usage Survey. See the news page on our website for information about the Usage Survey. She also discussed some details about the new website, and and how you can help.Wow- what a difference a few days makes! We

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1126664493800680082005-09-13T22:29:00.000-07:002005-09-13T19:23:30.540-07:00

The BSD Usage Survey is out! Help promote BSD by taking and advertising this short (19 questions) survey. This page has information and links to the survey and press releases in four languages. More languages as the translation teams get them ready. We've only just released the survey and already there have been 106 responses! That's amazing! Tantalizing tidbits from the first day: FreeBSD and

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1126298524997654852005-09-09T12:26:00.000-07:002005-09-09T13:42:05.846-07:00

Several more conversations with vendors regarding testing, test preparation, psycometrics, etc. We're in contact with at least a half-dozen organizations. So far, they've all expressed an interest in working with us. Several have offered to help us with a 'writers workshop' where they show us how to write good questions for tests; how to keep track of them in an 'item bank' (database); and how

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1125887198382166522005-09-04T23:00:00.000-07:002005-09-04T20:01:56.753-07:00

Progress on several items:The NDA is in final draft. A lawyer prepared it, but it still needs some tweaks about contact info, jurisdiction, and use of public keys for exchange. Group members are reviewing now- it should be finished in a few more days.Several conversations this week regarding online testing. We're researching partners to help do curriculum development, psycometric analysis, and

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1125628899264584212005-09-01T19:26:00.000-07:002005-09-03T09:43:15.306-07:00

is our Business Plan. We are developing the plan now. One of the harder things to estimate is the BSD market- BSD system usage, worldwide, for any of the four major projects. I've looked for previous market studies and haven't found much at all.There was Henry Norrs SF Chronicle article, the controversial mi2g.com security study, and Sean Michael Kerners article in ineternetnews.com.Not

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1125003975742599752005-08-25T13:24:00.000-07:002005-08-25T14:06:15.783-07:00

The BSD Certification Group released the Certification Roadmap today. This lays out a fairly aggressive plan to get an initial certification ready by April 2006. We'll need your help to get there and I hope you'll consider helping out.Things will be heating up very shortly. The following activities are starting: Certification Requirements Document for the 'Associate' CertificationSee Section

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15771996.post-1124940926201944822005-08-24T20:21:00.000-07:002005-08-24T20:35:26.206-07:00

Welcome! If you are reading this for information on BSD certifications by the BSD Certification Group you are in the right place. In this blog, we'll try to keep everyone up to date on how things are moving along. If you are not already on the public mailing list for BSD certification, please join. We're just getting underway with the certification tasks. Check out the news page on

Jim B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08635481586572597199noreply@blogger.com2