Take Note! Asterisk Bootcamp Debuts July 23-27, 2007

Note: Great News, I hope too see some more formal and specialized training programs. My personal favorite with be "Dealing with CLECs Support 101" :P

Big Nerd Ranch, Inc. is pleased to announce a partnership with Sokol & Associates to bring Asterisk training to the Big Nerd Ranch in the form of the new Asterisk Bootcamp, scheduled for July 23-27, 2007. The class provides a week-long, in-depth examination of Asterisk, the open source phone system, under the tutelage of Jared Smith, senior Sokol & Associates consulant and trainer, and Nate Osborne, resident Big Nerd Ranch Asterisk guru.

Jared Smith is co-author of O'Reilly's "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony," the definitive manual for learning Asterisk and the primary text for the class. The class is designed for Network and IT consultants seeking to service the voice/data convergence market, PBX technicians looking to enhance their skills to include Asterisk solutions and support, and Linux/Unix VARs who need a jump-start into telephony. The class also features the dCap certification exam at the end of the week.

Traditional commercial PBX and VoIP phone systems tend to be prohibitively expensive to implement and upgrade, especially for small to medium-sized businesses, and often contain limited feature sets. Asterisk, on the other hand, boasts a powerful, highly flexible open source alternative with minimal start-up hardware costs.

Asterisk supports scripts in various programming languages with customizable features that would easily cost tens of thousands of dollars in a traditional PBX system. In addition, as with many open source technologies, a little Asterisk expertise can go a long way in replacing expensive proprietary software licenses and allow telephony to be a viable solution for the small to medium-sized business.

"I am confident that by bringing together one of the best Asterisk instructors to the best technology training environment, the Big Nerd Ranch with Sokol & Associates have developed the best Asterisk training class available," commented Big Nerd Ranch founder, Aaron Hillegass. "Asterisk Bootcamp is a hands-on immersion class in an all-inclusive retreat setting that gives students the ideal experience for adding Asterisk to their skillset."

The syllabus includes intensive training in the following key areas:

*Understand the components involved in each call (the channel, channel configuration, dial plan, applications, etc.)
*Add, delete and modify user configurations (channel entry, extension, voice mailbox, etc.)
*Create IAX2 or SIP links to service providers and configure common SIP phone models
*Alter basic parameters for Zaptel devices; both FXS and FXO
*Implement new features like MeetMe rooms, a DID for DISA, access to voicemail, etc.
*Build and record prompts for IVR menus, audio text messages, etc.
*Implement queue systems and build a dial plan with a hierarchy of access to users
*Understand and prevent general security threats
*Configure a system to handle and anticipate potential issues related to emergency calls (911/E-911)

No previous experience with Asterisk is required but, for best results, students should have some telephony experience and familiarity with a Linux environment.

Visit the Asterisk Training Page to learn more about Asterisk BootCamp and Asterisk Instructor Jared Smith.