A webcast called The PHP Job Market is being offered this Wednesday by Zend. It focuses on the Zend Certification (it's one of the "ZCE Month" promotions), and it features guests that provide a few different perspectives. I'll be there to speak about my role on the Zend Advisory Board as an SME (fancy new acronym I learned that stands for subject matter expert). Other guests include a software architect and a director of open source recruiting. The webcast is hosted by PHP's own Marcus Whitney (of Pro PHP Podcast fame).

My involvement in the creation of the Zend Certification is completely independent of Zend, and I think this has been a healthy approach. I can appreciate that commercial entities have to financially justify their efforts, and I'm glad Zend recognizes the value in helping to legitimize PHP in the eyes of big business decision makers. Robert Peake has been bold enough to state:

I believe the existence of the Zend Certified Engineer Program may do more to further PHP in the enterprise than the release of PHP 5.

I initially had my own doubts about the success of a PHP certification, and I bet I wasn't alone - I think many of us in the open source community are quick to scoff such things. If you're still having doubts, I invite you to sign up for the webcast and listen to what the other guests have to say. You might be surprised.