The Linux Foundation Offers Free Certification Exam
Almost everybody with AN opinion agrees that the worldwide IT manpower ought to be a lot of various generally, and a lot of comprehensive of girls above all. It’s AN ethically commendable sentiment, however, additionally a sound sensible proposition: IT hiring has been suffering from a widening supply-and-demand gap for many years, and therefore the overpoweringly male skew of this talent pool indicates that girls have nearly serially unnoted.
To the extent that progress has been created in recent years, abundant of its return at the extent of raising awareness and building reach. The Linux Foundation is not adopting AN extremist new strategy with 2 new free work in racial awareness courses. On the opposite hand, promoting diversity by dynamic the method men assume is a minimum of a small amount of a daring new direction.
Most, if not all, of the IT industry’s existing diversity initiatives and programs area unit targeted at directly partaking with girls, encouraging them to develop IT skills and recruiting them into IT jobs. The Linux Foundation, with its comprehensive Open Supply Community Orientation (announced this week) and comprehensive Speaker Orientation courses, is aiming to the male-dominated base of existing IT professionals.
Both categories area unit cosponsored by The Linux Foundation and therefore the National Center for girls and data Technology (NCWIT), with the specific goal of providing “essential information and sensible skills to form a comprehensive culture within the open supply network.” place in a different way the message would possibly sound like this: Listen up, men. Here’s what you’ll be able to do to vary existing IT culture and build it a lot of hospitable to girls.
The new courses don’t seem to be, of course, completely aimed toward promoting acceptance and accommodation of girls. There is a unit of various social teams, whether or not segmental by race, sexual orientation, individuality, that area unit underrepresented in IT, and folks in those cohorts, as many ladies do, typically feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in commonplace IT environments.
Both the fresh declared course and its processor area unit designed to stipulate this state of diversity in IT, contrive the importance of diversity to innovation. and facilitate students to learn to each acknowledge and determine bias and promote inclusivity and variety. although the slant is especially within the direction of open supply, that is that the Linux Foundation’s home turf, there’s probably material in each course that applies generally across the IT spectrum.
Catherine Ashcraft, the NCWIT director of analysis, aforementioned in a very release asserting the comprehensive Open Supply Community orientation that a lot of folks steer beyond participation in IT communities as a result of they feel excluded. “The practices we recommend within the course area unit supposed to deal with these multiple biases and build the open supply community a lot of comprehensive places wherever presently underrepresented teams area unit ready to thrive and build meaningful contributions to future technological innovations.” each courses area unit offered freed from charge and may be taken on-line.
