The Power of Open Source Software: Rancher Academy Issues 1,000th Certificate

The Rancher Academy launched on May 15, 2020. Here we are, 94 days later, and we’ve issued our 1,000th certificate to a graduate of the Certified Rancher Operator: Level 1 course.

Rancher is open source software, so anyone can download it and use it. With that freedom, though, comes a cost: we all learn how to use it according to how we need to use it. Through this lens, the actual potential of Rancher becomes distorted, and the experience of each individual varies widely.

The Rancher Academy solves that. We built it to empower the community by giving people a path through the broad scope of what Rancher can do, showing them how to deploy Rancher and how to use it to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters in any provider. Close to 10,000 people have registered, and many have come to me as they’ve progressed through the course to share that it was exactly what they needed.

“Level 1 complete! Thanks for the good course. I’ve been using Rancher for years, but I was able to learn a lot. I’m looking forward to Level 2!”

The idea and methodology are simple. Humans learn by mimicking, and we retain information through action. With those two tenets in mind, the Academy moves from light, humorous instructional videos to demonstrations and finally to hands-on labs that the learners execute on their own. We introduce more-complex subjects as the course progresses, and each lesson builds on the lessons that came before it. Students have a dedicated Academy channel in the Rancher Users Slack where they can ask questions and get support from me, other Rancher staff and other Academy graduates.

“I wanted to take a moment to convey my deepest gratitude for the course and the content. The Rancher staff in the Slack channel have been phenomenal.”

By learning from the same source material each graduate knows the same information and no longer views Rancher through a lens, but instead sees it clearly through a window.

It’s one thing to teach someone a skill. It’s another thing entirely to change someone’s life, and that’s what open source software does. It levels the playing field and gives everyone the same chance to learn and grow and develop and be successful. It removes economics, gender, and race from the critical path and replaces them with discipline and ingenuity and passion. Each of us has these traits within us, and when we express them, we are unstoppable.

“I am using this training to help me setup a new career path as there is a shortage or delay of work almost everywhere. Thanks to all the staff as their assistance helps me move forward. Because of everyone’s help, I have been able to reinvent, reevaluate and renew myself and develop a new skill set and craft.”

Rancher is committed to open source and to the success of every single person who uses our software. We believe in this community and our power to change the world through sheer will and tenacity. Today we might be talking about Kubernetes and cloud-native software, but the development that we’re doing in ourselves by taking the initiative to learn these tools and put them to use applies to every part of our lives.

We want something to be better, so we go make it better.

A thousand people have made their lives better by completing the Rancher Academy. Nine thousand more are right behind them, and I’m looking forward to the thousands that will come after. Will you be one of them?

Register for the Rancher Academy here.