Points I want to make this morning after thinking about this topic overnight.
The first two points (A and B) are about summit alternatives.
The second two points (C and D) are about the value of certification for those who are questioning it.
The last point (E) is meta commentary about this whole thread. Even if you skip the rest, I'd appreciate you reading that part.
A) We just finished NIWeek with the new "Advanced Users Track"... this would seem to me to fill exactly the role that Mads asked for in the original post... a two-day series of presentations intended to cover advanced topics with no certification barrier to entry. This was added specifically in response to the idea that the topics of the CLA Summit needed to be more formally spread out to the rest of the user base. Mads: Does that track, which we expect (based on its success) to continue next year, satisfy your request?
B) If the above does not satisfy for some reason, I came up with an experiment that could be tried.
The CLA Summit was started as a customer-organized event, and in the Americas, it is still largely customer organized, albeit with heavy NI support. The standard for attendence was set by the original customer organizers. Non-CLA customers could organize their own broader-than-cert-but-still-advanced conference, and I suspect you could get NI support to help the event, much the same way that NI helps user group meetings in various places. If there were a few individuals who attended both the CLA Summit and the Non-CLA-But-Still-Advanced Summit, those individuals would be in a more direct position to evaluate the benefit of the certification requirement. After a couple years, they could give us -- the community of LV users, not NI -- a report of which model was most effective at diseminating information and whether the environment was not negatively effected.
C) In my opinion, any proxy for proving capability seems to me to be a poor substitute for actually proving capability. The contention from many people who attend the CLA Summit is that the certification barrier to entry has significantly raised the level of conversation. Many attendees continue to participate in other user-group venues, so they have a basis for comparison. Although several other certification-like standards have been proposed (kudos on forums, membership in LV Champions, etc), in my opinion, none of these provides the same standard of proof as the actual exam. There are many AEs with high kudos rankings who spend a lot of time answering low-level questions. There are LV Champions who are business owners and do not actually program LabVIEW often.
D) I believe firmly that getting more of the community certified helps the community more than NI. NI makes very little money from certification exams. The value for NI is the same as the value for the community: giving employers more confidence when they hire a G programmer that they're getting someone who can actually do the job. Most LV-based employers that I've spoken with have had problems trying to find G developers who can actually do the job claimed on their resume. When most of the community is not certified, an employer has a harder time differentiating two candidates who both claim G skill, one of whom actually has the skill and the other who only thinks he/she does. When the majority of those who can be certified actually get their certification, it enables employers to use a particular certification level as a requirement. Microsoft certification has become a standard in several IT industries on par with a college degree for exactly this reason. This isn't about driving money into NI's coffers. It is about creating a professional engineering standard for developers which ultimately provides the most benefit for those who really are skilled.
Lots of people claim the ability to write software, and I hear complaints all the time that NI (and many other companies) refuses to consider candidates without a Bachelors degree. I acknowledge that there are people who are massively skilled software engineers who have never had the formal training. The problem with such folks in general programming is two-fold: a) They are the rare diamond in a layer of sand sediment. Distinguishing them from those who only claim the skill is hard. b) They tend to use a self-taught vocabulary and idiosyncratic code instead of standard terms and standard patterns. The "think outside the box" skill is invaluable, but only if you can relate it back to the box. If you don't know where the box is, communication with a team is more error prone. I've worked with such self-taught folks over the years... all of them were tricky to work because they didn't share the foundation the average CS grad has. The LV Architects Exam pushes that same level of standardization. I can personally recognize the value of Intaris from years of interacting with him on the forums, but it is harder for Random Employer XYZ to do the same. The community benefits from having this standard.
Taking the certification exams costs money, but they're not expensive relative to the cost of a LV license or to the billing rate of most software engineers, even if we take into account the time needed to actually take the exam. Still, there's a reasonable complaint that money is a barrier today and should not be. Money is a barrier to getting a college degree, money is a barrier to getting certified. Why isn't the certification exam free? Under the current model, I don't think it can be free because we would be inundated with people needing to have their exams graded who couldn't pass. Money keeps people from frivolously taking the exam when they know they're wasting the grader's time. Money also pays for the grader's time. Any action that requires participation of skilled individuals is going to cost some money. I have strongly encouraged NI to explore a certification process less like an exam and more like a martial arts certification through peer review, a process that I think could be much more effective at evaluating candidates. But that process would still need professionals to participate in the evaluation, and so money would continue to have some role.
E) This whole thread and my series of arguments above are part of a conversation that has happened at the CLA Summits many times over the years. Originally, I considered not joining this thread because I don't think many minds are going to be changed one way or the other. Those who attend the CLA Summit have clearly seen its value and although there are several among the attendees who think opening it up wouldn't be a problem, few people that I've spoken with are willing to mess with a working formula. Those who don't attend but could (because they aren't yet certified but are capable of becoming so) have not been persuaded to get certified by the arguments here-to-fore, so I don't really expect them to suddenly change their minds now. The only way I've seen to convince them of the value is to get them to attend a summit -- chicken and egg problem. I do not know any way to solve this, but I want to assure those who feel shut out of the CLA Summits that the question of this barrier's value is one that is discussed regularly.
