[asterisk-biz] Digium certified asterisk professional or CCIE VOIP

[John Todd]

On Jan 9, 2009, at 5:03 AM, Nir Simionovich wrote:

> [snip]
>  For example, say that you would like to approach a company like
> Verizon or Vonage, stating that you are an Asterisk consultant. The
> immediate response from your target entry point would be: state your
> certifications, experience and references. Now, as long as you are in
> the first 9 months of your business, you won't have many references -
> what you have is experience and possibly certifications. In this case,
> the certifications can help you a little.
>
>   Without being self promotional, let's take a look to my case. I've
> founded the Israeli Asterisk community back in 2004, when basically
> there was nothing to build upon - as I was more or less the only user
> here. I started building the community, one by one, installation by
> installation, and surely enough, almost 5 years later, there are over
> 300 community members, over 3000 installations in Israel and as the
> founder of the community, people no longer really care for my
> certification - they know my experience and mileage. So, when I  
> started
> my own business in 2007, I had already a few things working for me  
> and I
> need to thank Google for that.
> [snip]


Risking tomatoes thrown at me, I'll put my $.02 in here as well.

There are, I believe, three components to successful consulting with  
Asterisk:

  1) Experience.  There is no substitute for experience.

  2) Involvement.  If you don't know what is going on with the  
project, and you don't know who is doing new things, you will  
inevitably fall behind.

  3) Certification.  Getting a dCAP certificate is proof of your  
ability to solve many problems with Asterisk, not just those you've  
seen before.


Experience:
Experience teaches you a set of solutions for particular problems, and  
the process of experience is to move from "not knowing" to "knowing"  
via being presented with a problem that you have to solve via trial- 
and-error.  Often these experiences are very deep, meaning that you  
spend a lot of time learning the intricate behaviors and methods of a  
certain set of solution components.  This is great, in that it also  
has byproducts of teaching you what does NOT work along the way which  
is just as valuable.  There is no substitute for experience.

Involvement
   Being well-versed in Asterisk requires knowing how the project is  
proceeding.  Optimally it would involve your contributions back to the  
project in the form of code, documentation, white papers, testing, bug  
work, or anything else that allows other people to benefit from your  
now-growing experiences.  The most successful people using Asterisk,  
and the ones who get the big jobs handed to them, are the ones who are  
"community leaders" by virtue of their involvement.
   Knowing what is happening in the Asterisk community also implies  
knowledge of what solutions other people are building in the  
surrounding ecosystem.  Who is doing what programs for Windows?  Who  
has a decent log parsing tool?  What is the best device to use for an  
attendant desk?  All of these questions are asked and answered on a  
frequent basis on the mailing lists, IRC channels, and other forums.   
Getting involved gives you relevance, which is REQUIRED to continue in  
a consultancy business if you wish to be successful.

Certification
  Getting a dCAP is 100% a good idea, and I'm not saying that just  
because I work for Digium.  :-)  The certifications get your foot in  
the door in many companies.  Let's look at it this way, as well: as  
the number of Asterisk-capable installation and integration shops  
increases, the number of criteria necessary to compare them against  
each other becomes more important.  Just like having a good grade  
point average gets you to the interview step of University  
applications, so might the dCAP certification get you to the next step  
of an evaluation process that allows your experience and community  
involvement to be considered as the next decision factors.
   The dCAP certification gives you a broad range of miniature  
experiences, and the instructor can tell you what does not work.   
Learn from THEIR experience.  The classes are not expensive, and they  
are not long, but IMO they provide more than their time/money  
investment in the actual learning that you do.  You end up not only  
with the piece of paper, but actual knowledge to go along with it.

Summary:
If you have a first step you want to take that gives you the most  
return in the shortest amount of time, get the certification.  Then  
get involved - write code, author some white papers, put up some  
demonstration dialplans.  Experience is the end result of involvement,  
and certification is the first big step you can take and is a bonus  
for those potential customer companies which deem it higher than some  
other things.  The combination of these three elements is what will  
win you business.


PS: Everyone who thinks they know a lot about Asterisk should talk to  
Jared about a few questions on the dCAP test.  There is a lot you  
probably don't know, and that would take you a while to Google the  
answers to.  I've talked to a few Asterisk experts who have taken the  
dCAP and they've all been somewhat surprised at how difficult some of  
the test questions were, and what they didn't know.  This isn't  
because Asterisk is difficult; it's because Asterisk is a toolkit, and  
some methods of combining tools are not always obvious.

JT


---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/