[Bf-education] Blender Certification - Pushing Forward

[Jason van Gumster]

Hi Ton,

> >  - Submission guidelines: Pim & Me
> >      Rough guidelines have been written by Pim.  I'm in the process
> > of editing/cleaning them up.  This should be done within the next
> > day or two.  In a nutshell, the basic flow for applying for a
> >      certification should go like so:
> >        1) go to e-shop and pay fee
> >        2) receive confirmation email with a verification number and
> > a link to the submission form on blender.org
> >        3) fill out form
> >        4) await verdict from Certification Team
> >        5) celebrate or cry pitifully
> 
> You might get less problems if you don't ask for payment in advance.
> Once people have paid money, they really expect perfect service and  
> feedback, and ways to get re-evaluated, or file complaints. Without  
> money in advance, you can simply do the point 4) based on "no  
> correspondence on decisions possible". :)

We had this discussion on #blendereducation... is this fee a
certification fee or an application fee?  If it's an application fee,
then it makes more sense to ask for the money up front.  It might make
for fewer applications, but it may serve as a good filter for people
who aren't absolutely serious about being Blender trainers.

But then perhaps we should be more welcoming on this first batch of
certificates?  If that's the case, then the flow would be something
like:

  1) Go to submission form on blender.org & fill it out
  2) Receive confirmation email: click link to verify identity
  3a) Receive application approval from Certification Team and pay $50
   -OR-
  3b) Hear nothing and cry pitifully... but save $50 :)

I'm not sure... frankly, I'm still leaning toward the other way of
handling it, but I can see how this way could work.  I'd love to hear
other folks' thoughts on this.

> >  - Set up e-shop item: ???
> >      The biggest thing here is generating that confirmation email
> > with the verification number.  Who can set this up?
> 
> That I'll handle. Will go fine.

Excellent!

> >  - Set up an email address: ???
> >      The idea here would be to have an address (IMAP, preferably)
> > that applications could be sent to from the submission form.  This
> >      address would be accessible from the Certification Team for
> >      reviewing applications.  In the future, a little bit better
> >      process/infrastructure could be set up, but for now a simple
> > email address should work well.  I can set this up on my own, but
> >      perhaps it would be best if this were a blender.org email
> > address?
> 
> That I can set up too. It will be a mailing list actually, one
> that's not free to subscribe to. :)

Sounds good.  This relates to a question I had when roughing out the
submission form: for portfolio/resume/sample tutorial components of the
application, should these things be attachments sent to the list via
email, or should we make sure that applicants have these things hosted
on their own somewhere on the internet?  The former is more convenient,
but might prove to be a bandwidth issue.

This is good stuff.  I can't wait to hear more. :)

  -Jason