We just got back home after a great two weeks in Dar es Salaam. This was the biggest class with about 27 candidates sitting for the Exams 101 and 102. There is a great interest in FOSS from TZ, extending all the way to Zanzibar. I wish I had time to visit the University of Zanzibar.

As we settle down to wait for the results, we can now start looking forward to the first national trainings. Brian has already upped the game by planning for the first community exam lab which is happening in Kampala this coming Saturday, with another one coming in November. They have already conducted the training.

After a lot of discussions with the 3rd ToT participants in Dar, we thought that it would be good if we could conduct our trainings during the same times. We could set particular dates every quarter for conducting the community exam labs. That would then give all of us adequate time to market our trainings, recruit participants, conduct the trainings, and then have the exams. This way we can even share better the online platform and give each other support as the classes would run concurrently. This way, we would be able to combine our candidates and conduct the exams together, saving a lot on logistics, and making the whole process more affordable. In line with this, I have proposed 26th November as the date which we do an exam lab, hopefully all of us. Then we can do the next one in Feb/March 2012.

It would be good to know what others think about this suggestion, and of course to hear other suggestions or perspectives.

Please also refer to Mark´s blog here regarding some of the challenges that people are facing in planning roll outs and how that can be overcome.