 Okay, hi everyone. I'm Jimmy MacArthur with the OpenStack Foundation, so I'm here to talk about the new and exciting and upgraded COA exam. We're very excited to have an ecosystem partner join us in helping to put on the the COA. So big thanks to to Marantis for collaborating with us and helping us put the exam together. So this is a new exam but it's obviously still based on OpenStack. The idea for the COA is to offer a career path for OpenStack and open-source professionals. The exam shouldn't have changed too much over time from from the previous version. However, there's some some new twists that I'll go over that and and we're excited to offer the COA. So this is what you're after. The certified OpenStack administrator certificate and this is actually the only certified OpenStack exam and there are a lot of training partners that can help you get it. So I will go over a few other things. Why take the COA? It's recognized industry certification since 2016. We have been working on the some version of the exam and it's skills-based. Obviously you need to understand OpenStack. You need to understand how to work with the CLI. You need to understand how to work with Horizon and the dashboard and it helps set the level of expectation for OpenStack skills of the community. So it's also vendor-neutral. So although we are partnering with Marantis, the exam itself is vendor-neutral and we have lots of training partners out there in the ecosystem that are helping us put helping train people to take the exam and once you take it, it proves that you can administer OpenStack. What we're looking at normally is people that have at least six months experience working and managing with OpenStack and and finally we can provide some assurance that certificate holders have the skills, knowledge and competency that you may be looking for in an employee or a co-worker. What does COA cover? Well I'm so glad I asked. It covers all of these things. So these are the projects that you would want to study up on. Kisto Nova, Glantz, Neutron, Sender, Swift, Horizon. The OpenStack client for more information on this you can go to openstack.org slash COA slash requirements to find out more about what's needed for the exam and also have some helpful links towards the end that you can get some more information about what you need to do to study up. Now what's different in this version? A couple of things. The exam is now using the Rocky release so that's an upgrade from yeah from Pike so a bit of a difference. It's also a closed book exam. In the past the COA we allowed people to use docs.openstack.org as they were taking the exam. That's no longer the case so the reason for that being we want to ensure that people are well prepared for the exam and hopefully any training that you do would help prepare you for that so that you don't need to actually access the docs as you're going. We encourage test takers to read instructions carefully so we're no longer allowing cut and paste from the exam itself back into the answers. And switching between CLI and Horizon so basically you need to be able to use the dashboard or command line for almost anything on the test. So be prepared for that. Again if you've never taken the exam none of these things will really make any difference to you but if you have and you're familiar with it these are some of the things that you would be looking for. Preparation and training. So practice. Hopefully you can go through our docs and try to install OpenStack yourself or perhaps you already worked for a company that's allowing you to start work on OpenStack but the best way you can do it is to try install and manage your own OpenStack instance. And if needed you can use a tool such as DevStack but the idea is that when you're preparing for the COA that you're prepared to use any distribution or that you're prepared to basically run OpenStack on your own or with a friend. And finally take a course with one of our training partners. So it's all these fine folks. And you can go to our website which is opensack.org slash marketplace slash training and look for the COA logo. So any of these companies should have it but you'll see courses scheduled on there and lots of different classes and options online courses and in-person courses. Tips and useful resources. So these are some of the links I was talking about. Where do you sign up? You go to opensack.org slash COA and you could sign up for the exam. The extended version of the COA overview can be found on this YouTube link. What? And finally, Morantis has helpfully put up a blog post with tips for the new COA as well. So if you have any questions or comments I'm happy to answer them after the talk but that is it for me. Thanks.