In December 2019, Cloudinary launched its customer education platform, the Cloudinary Academy, replete with courses taught by the company’s experts on developer-oriented products and digital asset management (DAM) solution. The courses comprise interactive lessons and hands-on assignments, a proven way of familiarizing the audience with the course material and illustrating it with live examples.
The report card for the past 10 months is exciting: we’ve conducted more than 20 live and instructor-led courses worldwide and awarded nearly 500 certificates of completion to students. In the meantime, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we seamlessly pivoted to a virtual model.
Today, I’m excited to announce our new learning pathways, which are certification tracks slated to enhance your knowledge in the media-management arena in an intuitive and well-structured manner. In addition are new courses for both novice and seasoned professionals, which are described toward the end of this post.
The Introductory Courses
The Certified Cloudinary New User pathway features introductory courses for those who are new to our APIs and DAM solution. These courses are presented by me and my team, as well as many subject-matter experts throughout Cloudinary. To earn this certification, you must pass the assessment test at the end of one of our introductory courses, such as:
Introduction for API Users and Developers
This is an hour-long video session that shows you how to upload, manage, and transform digital assets with Cloudinary’s APIs and Node.js SDK. Stephen Doyle, the instructor and one of our star developer support engineers, guides you through the session with enlightening examples and code samples.
Introduction for DAM Users and Content Editors
Tailored for those who desire a no-code solution for media management, this course takes you on a fun and fast-paced tour of Cloudinary’s DAM system. The lessons will familiarize DAM newbies with the basic tasks, such as sharing images and videos with and delivering them to internal and external collaborators.
Introduction to Cloudinary’s Command-Line Interface (CLI)
This two-hour session is intended for developers who prefer to work from the command line instead of with Cloudinary’s SDKs. Rebecca Peltz, on our Customer Education team, will walk you through all the nuances of the CLI.
The API-Oriented Courses
Another learning pathway offers three introductory to mid-level courses that focus on the developer experience. To earn the certification, you must pass the assessment test at the end of each of the courses.
Certified Cloudinary Level 1 Media Developer
To earn this certification, you must pass two or more of the introductory courses for developers (see the previous section), e.g., Introduction for API Users and Developers and Introduction to Cloudinary’s CLI.
Certified Cloudinary Level 2 Media Developer
To earn this certification, you must be a credentialed Level 1 Media Developer with a passing grade in the assessment test for the Fundamentals for Developers course, whose 12 lessons dive deep into the key ways of using Cloudinary, particularly its Node.js and JavaScript SDKs. For example, you’ll learn how to set up upload presets, build widgets for direct uploads, transform images and videos for optimization, apply add-ons for content moderation, and auto-tag media through an AI-based process. With all that expertise, you’ll be well on track to start cool media-heavy projects.
Certified Cloudinary Level 3 Media Developer
To earn this certification, you must be a credentialed Level 1 and Level 2 Media Developer with a passing grade in the assessment test for the Advanced Concepts for Developers course, which was built by Rebecca Peltz and reviewed by more than 30 technical gurus at Cloudinary.
Along with several other instructors, Rebecca has been teaching that course about once a month. A self-paced version is under development and will be available in the coming months along with this Level 3 designation.
A Dive Into Cloudinary’s DAM Solution
Two other pathways address Cloudinary’s DAM system: one on APIs and DAM and the other on DAM only.
Certified Cloudinary Level 1 Digital Asset Manager
To earn this certification, you must have passed the assessment tests of the Introduction for DAM Users and Content Editors course, as well as one of developer-focused introductory courses. This recognition certifies that you can handle basic media-management tasks with our APIs and DAM system.
Certified Cloudinary Level 2 Digital Asset Manager
To earn this certification, you must meet the following requirements:
- The designation for the Level 1 Digital Asset Manager title.
- A passing grade in the assessment test for the Fundamentals for Developers course.
A passing grade in the assessment test for the Digital Asset Management (DAM) Bootcamp, which addresses the common tasks performed by DAM system administrators, e.g., applying structured metadata, sharing asset collections, and managing user permissions and roles.
I teach this class in a virtual live setting along with several DAM experts at Cloudinary. A recorded and self-paced version will be available by the end of 2020, along with this Level 2 title.
Certified Cloudinary DAM Administrator
This is a DAM-only pathway for those not planning to use Cloudinary’s APIs and developer-oriented solutions. To earn this certification, you must pass the assessment tests for the Introduction for DAM Users and Content Editors course and the DAM Bootcamp.
End of Path: Certification of Mastery
The Cloudinary Master Media Developer certification, the ultimate achievement, requires that you pass the tests for all the pillar courses: Fundamentals for Developers, Advanced Concepts for Developers, and the DAM Bootcamp. This certification attests to your ability to properly and proficiently upload, manage, transform, and deliver media files. We fully anticipate the certified masters to assume a mentoring role within their organizations and the Cloudinary community.
The Year 2021 and Beyond
We are developing more courses for the Cloudinary Academy, among them are introductory courses on the following:
- Other SDKs and server-side languages we support, such as Ruby, Java, and .NET
- SDKs for frameworks like Vue, React, and Angular, which are rising in popularity in web development
In addition, we are planning an Introduction to JAMstack with Cloudinary course in collaboration with Cloudinary’s Evangelism Team and members of our growing Media Developer Expert (MDE) program. The course will show you how to extend our Angular, React, and Vue SDKs into full projects when working with static site generators like Gatsby and Nuxt, as well as headless content management systems (CMS) like Netlify and Sanity.
Separately, to serve the growing sector of users who are engaged with art and creative projects rather than web development and DAM, we are actively investigating and brainstorming coursework on how to best use Cloudinary as a designer of digital projects, especially those that leverage the Adobe Creative Cloud and its programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
Lastly, we’ll soon launch training programs with no quizzes or assessments. Two examples:
- Informational classes developed in collaboration with our product team on Cloudinary’s recent launches and new features.
- A program on how our developer community built some of their projects, such as websites and mobile apps, with Cloudinary’s APIs and SDKs.
That’s quite a list. Do sign up for our courses and put the training to use! We’re counting on them being a significant help to you in your next projects.
We owe the birth of the learning pathways to the assistance of many Cloudinary colleagues, designers, administrators, and other professionals. In particular, I’d like to thank Jessica Castillo for her initial design implementations of the Cloudinary Academy, Thought Industries for their amazing learning-management system and product support, and the multitude of users who have entrusted us with their educational goals over the past year.
Any questions about Cloudinary’s learning pathways, please comment below. Also, let me know if you’d like to assume the role of a student, an instructor, or some other capacity. I’d love to hear from you.
