GIS Certification
I'm skeptical about gatekeepers and skeptical about the value of GIS certification. It seems so medieval. Hopefully somebody will watch and make sure they don't violate their own code of ethics by lobbying city, county, and state governments to ordain preference for, or requirement of, certification.
I've paid $40 to the Red Cross for education and certification in child CPR, but for that money I received quality training from an experienced nurse. I exchanged money for skills, plus a piece of paper attesting to those skills.
Comments
Re: GIS Certification
Author: Brian Timoney
Yeah, well, with KML being our Wycliffe bible (really, ponder how much a GISer's power came from knowing a shapefile was actually more than one file) and legions of .NET developers poised to perform geoprocessing solely through SQL commands with SQL Server 2008, this imprimatur would seem fated to a sort of mustiness sooner rather than later. That said, I'm always impressed by contemporaries skilled in the art of latin declensions... BrianRe: GIS Certification
Author: Sean
I love the Wycliffe reference. Speaking of Latin: ever seen Damian Conway's (FOSS4G keynote presenter) Perligata?.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Anonymous
IMHO, GIS Professional Certification is simply another step in the progression of the industry. Even though I'm certified, I'm not holding my breath that any state or government will mandate new employees hold a GISP title. Endorsements don't really hold any weight per se, and that's all that NaCO has done here. Personally, the certification matters to me in terms of recognition that I've completed the requisite education, experience, and contributions to the profession. I've been working with GIS for over thirteen years, so I have no qualms about filling out the forms (or taking an exam if warranted) to add GISP after my name.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Matt Perry
Well the Guilds were meant to bring young apprentices up to speed (in secret) wheras certification basically says "go forth and learn and come to us when you're done". Certification just means you've demonstrated your skills to a satisfactory level to some third party. I really don't know how much weight that holds .. I guess it depends on who you're trying to convince.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Anonymous
If you're attempting to seek employment in a geospatial industry, I'd say that "demonstrating your skills to a satisfactory level" is paramount. Potential employers should examine the criteria for becoming a GISP before making any decisions based on an applicant's certification or lack thereof. It's their prerogative to classify how much "weight" the certification holds for them.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Matt Perry
Anonymous, The best way to demonstrate competency is with a complete portfolio of your work and a conversational knowledge of the subject. That's not to say all degrees/certifications are useless (if they are then I've wasted many of my best years!). It's just that passing tests is a lot different than being a competent professional. Potential employers know this and, like you said, will weight importance of certification appropriately.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Guillaume Sueur
Wouldn't there be an interest in a quality of service certification for online cartographic ressources ? I mean when you really use WMS or WFS data for your work , you may need to have garanty of : quality of data, quality of WMS implementation and garanty of hardware quality (will the server still exist when I'll need these data to finish my report, does it have enough bandwith etc). Most of geographic people are interested in web mapping services, but are a little afraid by making their activity depending on some remote data they can't manage directly.Re: GIS Certification
Author: Sean
Guillaume, I see even less value in web service certification. Eventually, once the "GeoWeb" rejoins the Web, we'll see properties emerge that indicate the authority and value of services -- like a geographic PageRank. This is the first of my posts to ever get an Anonymous comment. I'm not sure if that's a meta-comment on certification or not.