With the announcement a few weeks back I thought I’d look back on where I can send my team to get certified. For the last few years, AWS Certification has only had their testing via PSI, and in Perth, that meant one venue, with two kiosks. Prior to that, there were more test centres (with Kryterion as the test provider, as per previous blog post in 2017).
But now Pearson VUE are in the mix along side PSI, and the expansion is great.
There are now an additional 6 locations to get certified in Western Australia, including the first one outside of Perth by some 300+ kms:
- North Metropolitan TAFE, 30 Aberdeen St, Northbridge
- DDLS Perth, 553 Hay Street
- ATI-Mirage, Cloisters 863 Hay Street
- Edith Cowan, Joondalup
- North Metro TAFE, 35 Kendrew Crescent, Joondalup
- Market Creations, 7 Chapman Road, Geraldton
Geraldton is several hours drive north from Perth, at around 420kms (260mi), with a population around 40,000. The rest of Western Australia north of that is probably only another 60,000 people in total across Karratha (16k), Carnarvon, Exmouth, Port Headland, Dampier, and Exmouth.
Lets get some perspective on these distances, for my foreign friends:
By Fikri (talk) (Uploads) – Fikri (talk) (Uploads), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=199809
For comparisons, check out this. Suffice to say, its a bloody long way. My wife lived for a while in Carnarvon, half way up the coast; that was around 10 hours driving to get there.
It would be interesting to see Busselton (pop 74k), and Albany, both to the south have some availability hereto help get people services without having to trek for days, or not bother at all.