Recognizing members of our community that have done something useful for the community itself has been one of the topics on the top of our heads as Directors this year.

We talked extensively about this in various Board Meetings and the unanimous consensus was that OpenNTF needed to do something to recognize the individuals who make a contribution, be that by submitting a project or a snippet, speaking in our webinars and in general doing voluntary work for the benefit of the community. We thought about several alternatives and we ended up with two options, which we submitted to the Annual General Meeting in June 2023.

The first option was to give out something tangible, a shirt, a mug, a USB key…. any kind of thing that you might receive at a conference or user group meeting that has a logo on it. While these are fun, we all already have piles of these items that sit unused and gathering dust.

The second option was to issue digital badges, like HCL does with Ambassadors and people who pass a certification exam. This option requires some work on our side, but has the advantage of being virtual.

The consensus from the AGM was to go with the second option.

As a result, we have developed a set of digital badges to hand out to recognize contributions to the community.

We have started with 4 designs, with a 5th to come shortly:

• Contributor This goes to individuals who contribute a Project to OpenNFT.
• Weibnar Presenter This goes to anyone who presents at an OpenNTF webinar.
• CT Moderator This goes to the people who help with the operation of and moderating content for the Collaboration Today website.
• Director This goes to anyone who volunteers to sit a term on the OpenNTF Board.

This list is not immutable and we may add other categories as we deem necessary or according to suggestions our members may give us. We issue digital badges using Canvas Badges (https://badgr.com) which is the same used by HCL for Ambassadors and exam badges.

Below are the badges we will issue.