Starting in July, we will have our first Elastix certification course in English to be held in Miami, FL USA on July 13-17 2009. This is only the first of several Elastix certification courses to be offered worldwide. Future locations include London England, Melbourne Australia, and San Jose CA USA.

So far Elastix Certified Engineer (ECE) certification courses have been a success in Latin America and certified engineers already exist in countries like Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Perú and Ecuador. Students who passed the certification exam now have the concepts necessary to install and manage Elastix servers in a professional manner.

Raúl Leiva from Chile, took the course in Quito - Ecuador and commented: "The training covered all the topics necessary and it gave us the tools necessary to install, maintain, and offer operational Elastix installations; it clarified all the doubts that one might have with regard to some of its functions."

Carlos Mosquera from Colombia, took the course in Bogotá - Colombia and says: "I am very pleased with the certification course because you realize when deploying demos for clients that they really like [...] this type of solution where they can [...] manipulate at least the basic things on their own and cut a little of the dependence from the supplier. "

Andres Genovez from Ecuador, took the certification course in Quito – Ecuador and says: "There are good courses, excellent courses and this one! I really like the topics and specially the atmosphere, and above all the courage to create a distribution which, personally, encouraged me to hold talks about Elastix [in my community].”

Fernando Villares, Elastix certification instructor with extensive experience in Asterisk-related training was pleased with the quality of the courses. "Being an instructor for other certifications and courses, [I can say that] teaching this course, taking the certification exam myself, and contributing to the revisions and drafts, I enjoyed the beautiful experience ot teaching this first course. Apparently so did my students, all of whom approved the exam...” said Villares.

Do not miss the opportunity to become an Elastix Certified Engineer and attend one of our courses:

• Lima, Perú – Spanish (May 4-8)
• Miami, USA – Spanish (May 11-15)
• Barcelona, Spain – Spanish (May 18-22)
• Guayaquil, Ecuador – Spanish (June 8-12)
• Bogota, Colombia – Spanish (June 29- July 3)
• Miami, USA – English (July 13-17)
• Buenos Aires, Argentina – Spanish (August 3-7)
• Panamá, Panamá - Spanish (August 24 -28)

Quito, Ecuador. On Sunday April 26, 2009 general elections were held for President and regional governments in Ecuador. For these elections, it was decided to optimize the communication system in all the locations where the voting counting was taking place to help monitor the process. Elastix was chosen as the communication platform because of the technical and economic benefits it offered for this project.

Elastix was able to provide smooth communication between more than eighty (80) locations involved in the vote counting process. Thanks to Elastix it was possible to implement a communication system of this size all over the country in only two (2) weeks!

Thanks to Elastix, it was possible to provide advanced call center functionality to help solve technical and logistical problems related to the electoral process.

The Latin American Free Software Installfest (FLISOL) , is one of the biggest free software promotion event in the world..At this event there is going to be free software installation at no price, conferences and demonstrations. All this would take place simultaneously in all Latinamerica in April 25, with some exceptions (Ecuador would take place the April 18). This year there is going to take place in 20 countries and more than 200 cities.

Many people from the Elastix Community are going to give speeches and workshops in various cities all over the continent. At the moment the following speeches have been confirm:

Ecuador

México

Peru

If you are going to give an speech about Elastix in some other city, please write an email to rbonifaz[at]elastix.org and we would add your speech to this list.

Dicko is relatively new in the Elastix community, although he works with Asterisk since year 2003. His contributions in the Elastix forums are innumerable and now he is one of our top-posters giving great support to our community. Surely a lot of us solved our problems thanks to the help of Dicko and others learn something new because of the knowledge he share. For this reasons we wish to extend the recognition of Community Member of the Month - March 2009.

Congratulations Dicko

Successfully carried out the certification courses Elastix in Quito - Ecuador and Bogota - Colombia. After taking the course of 40 hours and approved the certification exam, now have our first Elastix Certified Engineers who we want to congratulate: Andrés Aponte, Gustavo Arévalo, Harold Calderon, Santiago Chuisaca, Andres Genovez, Raul Leiva, Juan Carlos Manotas, Carlos Alberto Mosquera, Ricardo Andres Ramires, José Luis Salcedo.

This makes it easier for end users of Elastix to be sure that the person who gives them support, actually knows how to administrate Elastix. We invite you to join the community of Elastix Certified Engineers by registering in our next training courses :

• Lima, Peru - May 4-8
• Miami, USA - May 11-15
• Barcelona, Spain - May 11-15
• Rosario, Argentina - May 11-15
• Guayaquil, Ecaudor – June 8-12