[consulting] Open Guilds & Drupal Guilds

[Aaron Winborn]

Sorry for the spam for people subscribed to the groups that I just 
posted this to, but I wanted to reach out to other developers & 
consultants who might be interested in this idea. Basically, at the risk 
of dredging up the old debates, Open Guilds & Drupal Guilds will be a 
grassroots certification organization, with the idea that if we take on 
certifying ourselves, we might be able to fight off the top-down 
professionalism that would otherwise seem to be inevitable.

I've just submitted a group for Drupal Guilds & Open Guilds at 
http://groups.drupal.org/guilds which is a concept that I've been 
brewing for about a year now (based on discussions and other ideas that 
have taken a decade or more to gel). I've finally begun writing down 
some of my ideas this summer, and have decided it's time to open the 
concept for further discussion and debate.

I also have a draft of Bylaws which I plan to post as soon as I've 
polished it a bit. It gets into some nitty gritty, such as how to handle 
business and procedures for creating guilds & certifications. But I want 
to open up discussion and get other interested folks involved, so as to 
solidify the concept before opening it to the general public.

Without further ado, here is the elevator pitch for this grassroots 
organization:

The Open Guilds website at http://openguilds.org/ (and its cousin 
http://drupalguilds.org/ for Drupal) is a central location for 
grassroots certifications for practitioners of various Open Source 
software. The idea is that rather than a top-down certification process 
where people pay money to an organization to take a test, people instead 
prove to their peers their ability to craft in their field.

The organization of Open Guilds is set up to foster a peer review 
system. Anyone may create a guild within the organization, and set up 
their own certification procedures at various levels within the guild. 
Each guild will stand on its own merit, and gain the benefit of 
camaraderie from other related guilds.

Each guild within Open Guilds will have its own charter, which will 
specify, among other things, its system of governance and procedure; 
process for gaining membership; and a scope of certification. A charter 
may, for instance, specify that it is to be run by parliamentary 
procedure with an elected council, that it is an open democracy, or that 
it is run entirely by a single Guild Master.

The Open Guilds organization itself is run by a council of Vested 
Members, who are individuals who have paid their dues. The meetings 
themselves are conducted on-line in a visible format, with all matters 
decided by the majority vote of Vested Members.

Other than the right to vote on procedural matters, membership to Open 
Guilds is free to all individuals, who may join as Journey Members. 
Journey Members may join any guild, according to its charter (which may, 
for instance, require an invitation or approval vote by its council, 
specific certification within another guild, or other requirements).

A guild may specify many certifications, each of which may have 
requisite certifications. Although a guild’s charter may specify 
otherwise, in most cases, a certification will require a test or 
demonstration of ability to be evaluated by one or more certified 
members of the guild. The reputation of an individual guild will depend 
on the continuing diligent and truthful evaluation by the guild members.

-- 

Aaron Winborn

Advomatic, LLC
http://advomatic.com/

Drupal Multimedia available now!
http://www.packtpub.com/create-multimedia-website-with-drupal/book

My blog:
http://aaronwinborn.com/