[Bf-education] Blender Certification - Pushing Forward

[Jason van Gumster]

Alright folks... so I think we're pushing ever so gingerly forward on
this.  Here's what remains to be done, who's doing them, and when it's
likely to happen:

 - 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

 - Pages on blender.org: Me? other volunteers?
     Four pages need to be set up and maintained on blender.org: the
     submission guidelines (see above), the submission form (see below),
     a thank-you for the submission form, and a list of certified
     trainers. I can manage and maintain this, but I think I need
     additional permissions on the blender.org site to do it.  If
     anyone already has the permissions to do this, that would be
     helpful.

 - Submission form: Me? other volunteers?
     Here's a rough of what I believe needs to be in the form
     (* = required):
       - *Name (Last, First) (maybe add a nickname, like from ba.org
            or freenode?)
       - *Email
       - *Verification Number (sent in an email from the e-shop)
       - *Country (also State/Province/etc.?)
       - Website
       - *Resume/Portfolio (link or upload?)
       - *Link to teaching sample (video, video tutorial, regular
            tutorial)
       - Notes/Comments

     If someone could create this form, that'd be awesome.

 - Write press release/announcement: Me
     Once the guidelines are in place and blender.org/e-shop is ready
     to accept applications, I should have this written.

 - Set up e-shop item: ???
     The biggest thing here is generating that confirmation email with
     the verification number.  Who can set this up?

 - 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?

So yeah... not too long of a list (most of my text is just
descriptive).  Ideally, I think we could probably have this set and
ready to go in a relatively short period of time... like a week or
two.  Then we can start accepting applications.

Incidentally, do you guys think that there should be a submission
deadline for this first run of certifications?  If they are set to
expire around this time next year so we can evaluate and modify the
program, then it probably won't make much sense for us to accept
applications for more than a short period of time.

Whew... enough typing for me for now.  I look forward to hearing what
you guys think.

  -Jason

!DSPAM:81,465bd7c836372629013414!