TDF welcomes eight new LibreOffice certified professionals

Peer-to-peer review session at FOSDEM in Brussels

The Document Foundation welcomes the eight new LibreOffice certified professionals who have successfully passed the first peer-to-peer review during FOSDEM in Brussels: Adriano Afonso from Portugal; Osvaldo Gervasi, Gabriele Ponzo, Enio Gemmo, Sonia Montegiove and Alfredo Parisi from Italy; Douglas Vigliazzi and Valdir Barbosa from Brasil. The eight TDF members have been certified for Migrations and Trainings. Their certification will expire on January 31, 2017.

Reviewers for the first peer-to-peer session have been Marina Latini from Italy, who has attended the eight review sessions; Lothar Becker and Thomas Krumbein from Germany, who have attended four sessions on Saturday morning; Cor Nouws from the Netherlands, who has attended two hangout sessions on Monday afternoon; Eliane Domingos, Olivier Hallot and Gustavo Pacheco, who have attended two hangout sessions on Monday afternoon (it was late morning in Brasil).

“Peer-to-peer review sessions are the final step of a rather lengthy certification process, where we discuss with candidates – once we have checked their pre-requisites – about their experience, and we ask to provide the relevant documents to attest their migration or training related activity”, explains Italo Vignoli, chairman of the Certification Committee, who has coordinated the sessions. “For different reasons, we rejected more applications than we have accepted. Some of them are on hold, others were missing the pre-requisites. This ‘funnel’ approach allow to bring in front of the review committee only those people who are likely to qualify for certification, and the peer-to-peer review is the final step to discuss face-to-face with the candidates”.

The eight new certified professionals join the 44 certified developers and the 13 certified migrators/trainers who have been appointed by the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation based on their code contributions, or on their experience and their contribution in setting up or improving the certification program.

Until the end of April 2015 the program is open only to TDF Members. From May 2015, certification will be open also to third parties, provided they meet the pre-requisites and follow a two day training course. LibreOffice Certification Program is extensively described at http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification.