 Hi, I'm Heidi. Hi, I'm Alan, and we're here today to talk to you about the Certified OpenStack Administrator, the COA. So Heidi, I think we better tell people what the COA is. Great idea Alan. So Certified OpenStack Administrator is the first exam, and it's the first certification developed and delivered by the OpenStack Foundation. And what it is, it's a hands-on test that demonstrates, that allows OpenStack workers to demonstrate their skills, operating and troubleshooting an OpenStack Cloud using the command line tools and Horizon. So Heidi, why did we develop it? A couple of reasons. First of all, if you look around here, at the jobs board, there are a lot of jobs posted. So there's a real gap in OpenStack talent, and we wanted to give people who are interested in working in OpenStack a defined career path and a way to show people and demonstrate that they have the skill set to manage and operate an OpenStack Cloud. On the flip side, we also wanted to give hiring managers a way, when they look at candidates, to compare them and to see what types of skills candidates have. So if someone has the COA and someone doesn't, they might want to give that person preference, because they know they have those skill sets that they're looking for. And then finally, with the ecosystem companies, we wanted companies in the ecosystem, like Suce or Rackspace, to be able to show customers and prospects that they have skilled teams and that they have talent on their teams, so they can go to a customer and say, hey listen, the people that you're working with are certified in OpenStack. So Heidi, we launched this in Austin, so it's been six months or so. Who's taking the test? Well, all kinds of people are taking the test. We have 500 folks who've, well actually over 500 now, who've taken the exam. We have 500 who are being scheduled now. And I mentioned Rackspace. Rackspace has over 100 internal Rackspacers, or Rackers they call them, certified on OpenStack now. And their goal is 200 by the end of the year. That's awesome. That's awesome. So I've been in the open source world for a while. And the question often comes up, what's the role of certification in the open source world? It's very much prominent in the proprietary world, but is it any value in the open source world? And the question comes up, am I just not proving that I can pass an exam? Is this exam real? Yeah, well it's the only certification offered by the OpenStack Foundation. If you have skills in the real world, that's a great way to, if you're using OpenStack every day, you'll probably do fine passing the exam. If not, if you're new to OpenStack, you'll probably want to take a training course. You'll probably take a training course and get your skill set up to par. Maybe spend a little bit of time. Okay, so the other criticism is open source is very innovative and very fast moving. So is technology moving too fast for this certification to have any value? I think that's a good question for you. You think it's a good one for me? Okay. I actually, so I hear that question a lot. And I actually think that's the reason to do certification. Because with technology changing so rapidly, people need to know and be able to validate that they have the experience and knowledge necessary to do the job. And as you pointed out, this is a proctored exam. So it's actually proving that you can do the day-to-day work, not just pass a multiple guest test, right? Right. So in this case, I think it's very, very relevant, even more relevant because of the speed of the technology. And I do want to add too that, yes, the technology is changing quickly, but the COA is going to keep pace with the technology change. So it's offered on the Liberty platform now. We'll update the actual release that it's offered on every two releases. So once a year, and then the content on the exam will be updated every two years. So as OpenStack changes, we won't change the exam with every small change, but every two years, as OpenStack changes, we'll change the exam content so that it maps directly to the changes in the OpenStack software. I think that's a very good change rate. It gives time for people. They don't have to panic every year, but it's frequent enough that it'll keep up with the technology change. So I think it's a great pace. So are you ready to take the test? I'm not ready to take the test, and that's actually a really good question. Who is ready to take the test, and are you ready? If you've attended an OpenStack summit and you've seen some OpenStack talks, are you a candidate for the OpenStack certification? The answer is no. The answer is no. This is a pretty rigorous test. Like I said, we recommend that you take some training if you haven't been working with OpenStack, and you practice and work with it a little bit before you take the exam. You do get a free retake, so you can take it once and identify maybe the places where you need to work on your skills and then take it again. So that's good to know, because I'm actually going to try it next week. Oh, really? Good for you. Good luck. Yeah, good luck. Good luck with that. So we'll see. Like you said, it's more for those that are actually doing those tasks day to day. For someone like me, I spend a lot of time at the summits, doing administrative tasks is not my day job, and so it's going to be a little tough. We'll see. And one of the questions I'm asked, as people are asking about it, is, will this change my life, passing the certification? And we think it will. First of all, when you're going into it for a job interview or you're just being considered, compared to other candidates, it's going to help you stand out in that process. We'll give you an icon to put on your LinkedIn for your family and friends to admire so you can get props from the community. The kudos effect, huh? Yeah, for companies that are out there competing with other companies, ecosystem companies, it's a way to stand out in an evaluation process when you're talking to customers. Alan Clark. I'll shake your hand. You take the COA, I'll come shake your hand. And I have a proposition. So let's say, the next summit, the first five people that come shake my hand and say they took the COA, how about we give them a free tattoo? In a prominent place. For all of their friends and family to admire and the community. I think that's great. I'm in. All right, I'm in too. So next time, come see us. We'll offer you the free tattoo. Free tattoo. It's got to be in a prominent place.