 Hi, this is your host Satil Bharati and today we have with us Robyn Jean, Executive Director of OpenJS Foundation. Robyn, first of all, it's nice to have you on the show. Thanks, Swapnil. It's great to be here. Thanks. Tell us a bit about the OpenJS Foundation. What is the goal of the Foundation? Well, the goal of the OpenJS Foundation is really to be that neutral home for JavaScript and web technologies. And really, what does that mean? And it means that once a piece of technology becomes really big and important in this world, it's nice to have a neutral organization to help take care of it. So where the IP is, where the brand is, where the team that supports it from IP, legal, marketing. So we have a great group of independent folks from several companies who take care of those important technologies. So think Node.js, Appium, Dojo, WebKit, AMP, Electron, lots of great projects. When we look at open source, I mean, I am self-taught. A lot of maintainers of many major projects are self-taught. Some have degrees in medical science, but they are maintaining their projects. So what is the need or importance of training and certification, especially for open source projects, when anybody can learn things on their own? Yeah, well, that's a great question. And it's something that the industry really thought about when they put together the Node.js certification that our OpenJS Foundation helps run. And the JavaScript ecosystem is really large, but with Node.js in particular, it had reached this level of maturity and implementation in large enterprises that they thought now is really a good time for there to be some level of standardization of skills. And actually, if you think about that, a certification exam really does sort of level the playing field on those skills. So you can have a degree from the top computer science university, or you could have gone to boot camp or been in medical science, as you mentioned, but you can take that certification exam and employers and those in the community know that you sort of have that basic level of skills. One more thing is that most companies as part of the ecosystem, they have their own training and certification, but those trainings are more or less like designed for their own products. But I think what is also important is to know the basic technologies, not a product so that you can move from one company to something you become expert of the subject, not of the product. That's right. And the exam was designed actually by a group of technologists from a variety of companies and a variety of open source projects. So if you think about what you're being tested on, it's very pragmatic. It's really they're testing your understanding of key technical scenarios and not puzzles or twisters or anything else, but it's really sort of scenario based. Since you're talking about that, I am also curious if you can go a bit deeper into what approach did the community take in developing these exams? Yeah, so there's two exams. And actually, I think it started as one. And I think the community thought it was just too large. It would have been like a five hour exam. These exams are two hours. So we have the OpenJS, NoJS application developer exam, and we have the OpenJS, NoJS services developer exam. So the app exam is really several, I think it's about 28 smaller questions that sort of take five to 10 minutes a piece that tests your basic skills in building a NoJS app. Now, the services exam is different. It's about these test questions could be 15 to 30 minutes a piece. There are fewer questions that you follow over that two hour period. And it's really about building the server and sort of that backend app experience. So when the again, when the team put it together, it was born out of a NoJS interactive conference in Austin a few years ago, and they got together in GitHub. They put together some key principles and started designing. And then, and then just one more thing after after sort of the community gave the feedback, the folks took it to the Linux Foundation, who are really kind of world class and developing training and certification programs. And together with OpenJS, we all worked with NodeSource and NearForm who are experts in the space. And so they really helped sort of bring that certification experience to life. One more thing is that who can take these exams? Is there any minimum qualification or expectations? You know, it's interesting. You know, I think a junior developer, it may be difficult, but the exams are for anybody in the world. And you can take them from their VPM base, you can take them from almost every country. We also have them in Chinese. But the idea is we also have a training program that goes with it. And so you can learn at your own pace. And so if you have some, you know, really great some JavaScript skills, you probably could take those training programs and do just quite well on the test. A lot of folks buy it, you have a year to take it and you have a free retake if you don't pass the first time, we have a 68% pass rate. So you can learn at your own speed or you can buy the exam or the training in an exam package and take it at, you know, whenever works best for you. Something is happening, especially with this pandemic, that is, first of all, people are working remotely, companies are looking at, you know, remote worker, which also mean that you no longer have to look for talent in the local area or in a specific area. You can hire anybody from anywhere in the world. And if you look at open source, that's the whole idea of open source as well, you know, people from around the globe are contributing. How does this fact that now industry is looking for remote working further help your mission? Well, you know, I was actually at an in-person conference last year before lockdown and I had the opportunity to talk to a number of recruiters. And this was in the Bay Area, of course, where, you know, everybody thinks all the great work happens. But actually, this the remote workplace just really does demonstrate that developers are essential around the world. There's great companies innovating around the world. And these recruiters told me that Node.js is one of the top two types of developers that they're looking for. So I think this just opens up a world of opportunities for folks wherever you may be. One interesting thing is particularly in the field that we are in is that new technologies, new paradigms, new jargons, new buzzwords keep coming up on weekly basis, becoming really hard to keep up with everything. So how do you keep up not only with these technologies, but also ensure that people are, you know, when they're taking big exams, it's about the latest because when they go and work for a company, they are going to work on the technologies that are still in the very early phase of development. That's right. Absolutely. Technology moves fast and we hope these exams move with them. We have a great, again, core team of experts. And we just announced recently that we just upgraded the exam from Node 10 to Node 14, which is the latest long-term version of Node. And the idea is to keep them evergreen from the training and the certification and any translations we do. So whatever you're tested on will be the most current version of Node that your employer would likely want you to use. That also leads to a different question, and which is since new technologies are coming up. So if somebody took an example, let's say today, is there any expiration date? Because in two years, there will be new technologies. So whatever certification they have today may only be available to talk about that. So when you're certified, you get a digital badge and you can put it on your GitHub repo and you're linked in and it's valid for three years. And we'll just see how it goes. We're open to certifying in new technologies. And I know Node is looking, Node is over 10 years old and they're looking for the next 10 years. And our job at the OpenJS Foundation is to help keep Node and all those other technologies sort of safe and modern as the world moves forward. Awesome. Robin, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about not only the foundation, but also the role of training and serving and I look forward to talk to you again. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for having me.