LPI exam day

Well, I was one of the 200 or so people writing LPI exams today in Johannesburg. Between those 200 people, over 300 exams were written. My contribution was originally to be two exams, but the organiser convinced me to try three.

Many things were great about this event.

The primary organiser and initial instigator, Alan McKinnon from AfriBiz worked tirelessly and thanklessly to make it a reality. It's people like this that turn all the talk into action and reality.

Then there was the great community turn-out. The Gauteng-based Linux user groups were about the only official advertising of the event, but the news spread rather wider than those groups rather quickly. 200 people, in Johannesburg, on a week day?!

For me, I wanted to bump the numbers of exam takers and certified "experts" in the country, even if it's unlikely to affect my employability in the long term. And it was a great way to meet people from Gauteng as well as to catch up with those I already knew. I'd like to think of it as networking, even though I probably didn't mingle and shmooze enough. But hey, the MD of Novell SA recognised me from Brainshare, even if he had no idea who I was. I was a bit afraid to ask him to get me a drink, since he was doing quick bar duty at the Novell bar, which was opened to the candidates after the exams were all completed.

Our Africa Source friends from Schoolnet Namibia were there, Joris and his group drove down from Windhoek to be there, to take exams and become proctors, and to take the knowledge, confidence, and skills back to Namibia. I was very pleasantly surprised to see them.

Another great was that it wasn't one of these depressing shows of the white-dominated IT field. I didn't count or do any statistical analysis, but at one point I just realised I wasn't surrounded by white faces. The unfortunate thing is that I don't recall seeing any female candidates, but I think that's a totally different sort of problem.

There's already plans for a similar event in the next few months to co-incide with LinuxWorld South Africa, which is at the same venue and time as Novell's South African Brainshare conference. Given last year's enthusiastic reaction to Linux, I'm sure there'll be a lot of Novell admins trying their hand at Linux certification.

In all, not only enjoyable but also very comforting and exciting for what this entails for the Linux and Open Source uptake in the country.