Simone “Simo” Bertulli: Stressing the system

This article follows up on an earlier article on this site, where I explained the core values ​​and fundamental goals of the LPI community. It’s time to get closer and make the acquaintance of the actual Membership platform!

If you follow the link to the Membership description page, you will find out in detail all the advantages accruing to members and the conditions of Membership. The benefits are quite a few; let me wrap them up for you:

• All members receive exam discounts and access to beta exams for free.
• The juicy option you get is to maintain your certifications without retaking exams. 
• Content, including articles and webinars, covers technical and business topics.
• You can participate in promoting the open source philosophy.
• You get to vote and express your opinion officially to the LPI board.
• A membership badge and card is a nice plus.

Prerequisites and how to sign up

One of the necessary conditions for becoming an LPI Member is at least an LPIC-1 certification (meaning: you have passed the 101 and 102 exams)or one of the Open Technology certifications (DevOps Tools or BSD Specialist).

With your LPI credentials (the LPI ID that you have already, as it’s needed for the exams), you then log on to the dedicated portal: https://people.lpi.org/

A dashboard, nice and clean, is there ready for you, making it easy to get all the information you need.

The membership subscription status panel shows the expiration date, relative to the registration plan you chose.

The PDU section explains what activities you can take as a Member to maintain your certification. Credits toward recertification can be earned through a variety of activities in education, LPI community participation, work experience, and interaction with broader communities.

A menu on the left allows you to navigate among the other functions of the LPI People Portal. In the Profile section, under Certifications, it is possible to check the status of all the certifications you have.

You can download the PDF version of any of your certificates.

In addition to the features on display, the section dedicated to Benefits is undoubtedly one of the most interesting!

Some of the goodies include (and consider that the Benefits feature is in constant  evolution):

• A 25% discount on exam vouchers
• A 60-day trial on Fluent Forever, an application for language learning that I would recommend for both it quality and its usefulness in the ICT world
• A discount of 20% on certification-related courses and books
• For Portuguese-speaking users,- a discount offered by Certificação Linux of up to 50% on courses and books.
• A 25% discount on training at Arcitura, one of the reference portals for “vendor-neutral” IT training. Apparently, more discount opportunities are ahead.

A section with job offers, still in beta phase, brings a very pragmatic and future-oriented approach. The jobs are catalogued by the degree of competence and certification required.

I personally consider the jobs section a significant competitive advantage for members. Although there is a strong demand around the world for figures in the broader IT landscape, having a context as precise and specialized as possible in which to view available work opportunities can lead to significant benefits for professionals.

LPI Membership seems to me to have all the requirements needed for an IT professional. After obtaining membership,  you will enter a framework to affirm and maintain your skills over time while being part of an important community in the open source landscape.

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