GATE Training and Certification
There's good news and bad news. The good news is that there's not really any need to pay for basic text analysis tools any more, as you can get state-of-the-art open source software to do all the stuff that the expensive commercial solutions do. The bad news is that coaxing state-of-the-art performance (accuracy, speed) from these tools is still a fine art, and likely to remain so. This combination of factors means that the most optimal configuration of a text processing solution is some combination of open source tooling plus either in-house or 3rd-party text processing specialists. How do you find and/or train up these specialists? In the past this has been a hit-or-miss affair, which is where the GATE training and certification programme comes in.
Training
Building on the success of the 2009 GATE summer school we now run a week long training event 3 times yearly (January, May, September). See here for more information.
Upcoming courses:
- May 2010 in Sheffield
- September 2010 in Montreal
- January 2011: venue TBA
Topics covered include (in 3 parallel tracks):
- Track 1: Introduction to GATE and Text Mining
- Module 1: Introduction to GATE Developer
- Module 2: Information Extraction and ANNIE
- Module 3: Introduction to JAPE
- Module 4: Machine Learning
- Track 2: Programming in GATE
- Module 5: GATE Embedded API
- Module 6: Main GATE APIs
- Module 7: Creating new Resource Types
- Module 8: Advanced GATE Embedded
- Track 3: Advanced GATE
- Module 9: Advanced GATE Applications
- Module 10: Ontologies and Semantic Annotation
- Module 11: Advanced Machine Learning: Research Applications
- Module 12: GATE Teamware
The training events also include a GATE Contributors' Sprint, which gives contributors to the project a chance to do a week of development on the same continent (and even share the same bar now and then).
Certification
We are now pleased to be able to offer a certification programme. Certification allows GATE users to demonstrate their competence to prospective employers, and provides employers with a means of determining the level of GATE competency a prospective employee has. It also offers an opportunity to consolidate your knowledge after taking a training course and demonstrate your learning.
Each of the twelve GATE modules has an associated exam. Your certification level depends on the number of modules you have passed:
3 modules = GATE Certified Text Analyst
6 modules = Advanced GATE Certified Text Analyst
9 modules = GATE Guru
Where can I take the exams?
Exams can be taken on request in conjunction with training events, or on an ad hoc basis in Sheffield, Vienna, Sofia or Connecticut (or elsewhere by arrangement).
