 Good morning. I'm going to talk about certification in Italy. Actually, the speech originally was about certification in general, but there is an issue. It looks like TDF certification only works in Italy. And I am going to explain why it works in Italy and why it doesn't work in other countries, because in Italy, certification is bringing in large migrations to the office. And this is one of the main reasons that we, if we can talk about the migration of the defence, is because we have talked to them about the process being handled by certified people. Of course, the defence is a large organisation with a large amount of regulatory issues. There is the army, navy and the aviation. So they are based on rules. And they want all the process to be based on rules. So, what is certification? Certification, this is a general definition, is something that allows someone to be recognised for his professional skills, basically. At TDF, we have started a certification programme. This is what Wikipedia says about certification in computer technology. It's rather clear. I mean, it's easy, but like any other staff, certification doesn't come for free. So if you are certified and the market doesn't know that you are certified, it's like you are not certified. That's rather easy. So what was different in Italy from Italy and the other countries? The difference is that in the other countries there are certified people, for instance in Brazil. There is one certified people in Estonia, another one in the Netherlands, another one in Spain. There are people certified in other countries. But the community in the other countries has not invested in certification. In Italy, we have been speaking, talking and explaining about certification to the audience, to the general audience for now, I think, three, four years. And so people have started to understand the value of certification, the value of adopting protocols for migrations and trainings. Of course, you can say that if the person is good, it doesn't matter to be certified or not certified. And I agree on that. The problem is how the hell the guy on the other side that is betting on the migration and is betting, in some cases, his job on the migration can be safe in leaving the project handled by someone that has no professional recognition. If we make a parallel to Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, all the large guys, Cisco will always tell people the network doesn't work. It was not installed by a Cisco certified network engineer. The answer is simple, and it should become simple also in our environment. Of course, we don't want to mimic the large companies. Our certification is different. It's based on peer-to-peer recognition. So you don't go through a multi-multiple choice examination. Because we are different and we want to be different. But once you are certified, then you have to let the market know that you are certified. Otherwise, people will never think that you are certified. And second, they will continue to think that the open-source environment is less dependable than the proprietary environment. You can trust more a proprietary company because they have an ecosystem of certified people. And I think that you can trust a lot the open-source environment because if we reproduce the same structure, the open-source environment can have an ecosystem of certified people as well. They are certified in a different way. But there's no God that has said that the Cisco certification is better than TDF certification or Microsoft certification. Of course, the certification from an organization is a self-declaration of competence. But this is for everyone. It's not that our self-declaration is better than Cisco or worse than Cisco's self-declaration. So just to give you a very short outline of how it works. You apply for certification. There is a committee of three people that will... First, we will look at your document. We want to see the documents. So someone that has run a migration and has not a document about the migration will not get certified. Because we all know that when you migrate a large organization you start producing documents, reports. You start producing analyses, you start producing... So we don't want a structured document, but we want to see that you have really worked with someone in certifying the organization, in migrating the organization. Maybe slides. I mean, in some cases, you produce slides that say so many Windows XP worse sessions, so many and so many and it will take six months to migrate these. We don't have a single form for showing that you've handled the process. But we want to see that you've handled the process in... I mean, really. Trainings. If you don't have slides for a training, how the hell are you training people? So we want to see your slides about the training. It's very simple. And then there is a one-hour talk with people that have been working for several years in migrations and trainings and are supposed to be the people evaluating them. They will be at least from two different countries because we want diversity also in the people that can take the examination. We understand that there might be a language problem, so in some cases we have one of the people that speaks the same language of the candidate. But let's say if you can show that you speak a little bit of English it's better because if you don't speak English, how do you engage with the community? And the community is an asset for certifications because the community, if properly handled, if properly shared the document, the community is a knowledge base of everything. And of course we want people that are certified to be recognized in a way that they can sell services. So we understand that you can share something and you cannot share something, but in every project we know that there is something that can be shared with others. For instance, best practices have to be shared. Best practices, the use of best practices in a wide project makes the project more credible at a global level. So why don't share best practices? Then it's like in Italy we probably adopt more than others the protocols, but the protocols are published in English. So everyone can look at the protocol, can ask questions about the protocols, can improve the protocol, why not? They are public documents, they can be modified, they can grow. But the problem that we have had so far is that it looks like certification is an Italian matter, which is not true. Of course in the past 10 years or 15 years migration has been handled in a different way, but the project is growing, the market is improving, the skills are growing. So I think that certification has to be used as a demonstration of skills of the community, because if in the year 2000 or 2001, Maurizio and I have not been involved in that, I've been involved marginally in that migration as a migratory hospital in Genova. That was a bet, because it was with Open Office 2.0 I think, 1.1. So it was a great decision. Now they are at 11 years of migration I think. In 2004 they do the math. 11 years. Of course you cannot expect the first migration to be based on a best practice, because you have to elaborate the best practice for the first one. But then after Hospitalia Galliera, several regions, several governments, not to have a protocol that puts together best practice would just confirm that the open source environment is not an industry, but it's a bunch of people, which is different from an industry. I think that the open source environment is an industry, and it's an industry that has to get the process of the proprietary. Of course different ones, because we think in a different way, but certification is not a bad word. Just something that shows that you are competent in one field, full stop. But again, if you don't invest in Italy, we have more certified people than the rest of the world, because now people that are certified see the recognition in the marketplace. And this I think should be true also for other markets, because only if we grow this way, we can face our dear competitor, that is Microsoft. Our competitor is Microsoft. We have to think big. We are not here to say where we can get into, we migrate 20 people. No, we want to migrate millions of people. And to migrate millions of people, you need to speak a language which is similar to the language of the proprietary industry. Just because you talk with people that have been used to talk with proprietary industry companies for 20 or 30 years. We all can tell you, the people that have been involved in migrations, that the first question that you get are not about the migration, are about the difference between us and Microsoft. They will never ask if the product works, because they've already tested the product. They already know that the product is working at least for over 50% of the cases, let's say. But the first question is about, you know, the first question to me, which is, I'm older than the majority of the people in the open source environment. Why theirs? I'm not a technical background, but I can tell you that in some cases, they look at me and say, but are you sure that you are involved in the open source environment? Yes, I am. But you are old. Is there a law that says that all people cannot work in open source? No. You look serious. What does it mean? It's just an idiot question. The others do not look serious, or you still believe that they are all ponytail guys working in basements with a candle instead of electricity? So, we have to overcome this image with just an image that says that open source is unprofessional. It's very professional, taken as individuals, but it's not professional as a group or as an industry. We have to make the effort of becoming an industry. Our project, LibreOffice, has managed to be the first in many areas, that's the first very large totally independent, free software project. If you take away the Linux kernel, because the Linux kernel of course has to be independent because it's the Linux kernel. But if you look at Firefox, they are independent, but they have lived with Google money for how many years? If you look at others, they have corporate sponsors that are framing the project. We all know from the days of OpenOffice that San, although the project was thought to be independent, the last word was by a San employee. LibreOffice, the last word is by a community member, which makes it different. So we have been able to grow as an independent project, which has been a challenge and we have won the challenge. I think that certification and becoming the real incumbent in comparison to Microsoft is an opportunity. So we are happy to certify people, but once you're certified, I want to see your lettered the day after that has to be TDF certified on LibreOffice. I want to see a press release on your market that says this guy is now certified because otherwise we don't get anywhere. Unfortunately, the people in other countries have not done this. They are not recognized. They don't get business. The problem is they don't get business. And the idea behind certification is to get business. We don't do certification because we are romantic people that want to see a badge to our CV. You do certification because you want to get business from an industry that is used to think that certified people are better than non-certified people. Because Microsoft and Cisco and Oracle and IBM and HP and you name them have told them for 30 years that a certified guy is better than a non-certified guy. So that should be clear because otherwise we replicate the problem that at the end we have only certified people in Italy that are working and in other countries there are not. I understand that I am Italian and being Italian and being a communicator I help the system but don't be shy. You can replicate the system in other countries maybe at a lower level but if you don't start you will never reach the objective. Redact for instance certified people and is an open source company. These are data that show that certification is useful and as always I never mention our data this is IDC and I can tell you 40% of IDC turnover is based on Microsoft both research. So this is if any they are biased towards Microsoft not towards us and so on. These are the people certified in Italy there are four more in the pipeline the rest of the world as seven. So but they continue to he has 11 names but I have 11 emails. These are the migration projects that are using certified people count the number of desktops three of them are I would say now small projects they would not be considered as more projects but we have one with 15,000 and another one with 150,000 and I can tell you that these guys want to certify 300 people the defense wants to certify 300 people because for them certification is the world they have certified people internally according to their protocols for everything for instance if you you are certified on cleaning your gun and I would like really to if I have to get someone that has a gun in front of me I would prefer that he is certified because he knows where to shoot the non-certified may have doubts about where to shoot So this is we are still talking of course but the last meeting they said we have looked at the protocol, interesting we want to certify people there and this means that if we get I mean 300 is a huge number we have certified 18 so far so we are very small but we have to keep the this is another challenge we have to keep the challenge you can imagine what it means for the movement in Italy and for the movement at large to have 300 certified people that we can list on our website if you go back to the previous slide about the number of desktops which have been migrated so these numbers are they from the same organization or it could also happen that this 1200 desktops is a mix of you know desktops from different organizations so in the defense yes in the defense yes because we have the army navy and aviation but it's a single organization let's say it's a single hat over three different organizations the other ones are it's a single organization I mean they have departments like any organization but let's say they have a single boss okay even the bank okay and how do you account for individual migrations sorry how do you account for individual migrations for example there are people like you and me you know out there and who start using individual we don't look at this is just professional I mean individual we are happy to help the individual but we help the individual with forums with the community that's for people that is paid to take a decision they decide to migrate so they bet their career on the migration and we have to provide them a parachute for their bosses this is the real problem when I was young the mantra was no one has ever been fired for choosing IBM and then Microsoft which is a very smart company has transformed that no one has ever been fired for choosing Microsoft and I want the same to apply no one has ever been fired for choosing LibreOffice in the future people has to start migration in a confident way Mr. Beruti Bergotto that was the guy at Galliera but of course he bet his career and we couldn't have any parachuting back in 2004 but after 11 years if you are not able to create the frame it means that really we are a bunch of individuals we are not an industry and my belief is that we are an industry and we have to start thinking that we are an industry and not a bunch of individuals otherwise it's always the same they will continue to ask me what do you do which is your role in open source which is a completely idiot question because in open source there can be young people, technical people old people, non-technical people a mix of people like any other industry so if you are interested in that please drop me a line we have to decide how to progress with the next certifications but we will continue to do that because it's important and the results in Italy are showing that this is important so I'm finished I'm around so three other presentations today so the only certification which is handled in a different way is certification for developers because you have to start working in a development community and be recognized for your code show me the code that's rather easy and I think that is right I mean we discuss a lot at first about certification for developers and I totally support the developers decision of certifying only people that can show good code because that is factual while on certifications and trainings is more theoretical code is factual I mean if it works it's good code if it doesn't work but we don't want to certify people that it's writing but code would be a problem for everyone so that is the only one which is handled but you can write me and I will address you to the EC but of course the answer will always be the same working with developers and once they will realize that you are a good developer no problem in being certified before that there's no school that can show that you are a good developer if you don't show your code so they will be for migrations support and training they will be they will be split for the three different yes but still this is the first number that they gave us might be more might be less we are still talking so it's a