VERIFIED EFFECTIVE PowerShell "certification" program now ready for beta

NOTE: As of 4th February, we're full up for the beta. Check back later this year for the program launch.

I'm ready to begin a formal beta test of the new VERIFIED EFFECTIVEâ„¢ examination program, which we'd previously referred to as "PowerShell Verified."

Participation in the beta will be free, and if you pass it "counts." If you're interested, please download the Program Guide before February 10th, 2013. You must agree to perform you examination on February 11th or 12th. Complete the Program License Agreement found in the Guide, and return it, with photo ID, as indicated. Be sure to indicate either Feb 11th or 12th as your desired exam date. Materials will be sent to you via e-mail, and you will have 24 hours to complete the assignment. A qualified candidate should need no more than 4-5 hours.
We've posted a complete set of information about the program in general and the PowerShell exam in particular.
At this time, I can only accept participants who are USA residents (more on that below). International expansion will happen when the program formally launches later this year. I will only be accepting 2-3 beta participants. If you submit your Program License Agreement but don't hear back the same day, then you weren't selected for participation.
The final examination will be $150, and will be a human-graded assignment not a machine-graded exam. A certificate for passing scores will be delivered electronically, and you may order a physical certificate for a nominal fee.
The first exam will be PowerShell 3.0 Toolmaking. You should be able to pass if you know how to write advanced functions, including dealing with pipeline input, ShouldProcess support, and parameter attributes and validation. You will also need to know how to create custom formatting views and type extensions, and how to create script and manifest modules. You will need to be familiar with Windows PowerShell remoting and remoting configuration, and know how to create custom remoting endpoints (session configurations) having a specified configuration. You also need to know how to write proxy functions. You should know how to connect to SQL Server databases from within PowerShell, and how to issue queries to retrieve and manipulate database data. Note that not all of these topics may be included on every examination, but you should be prepared to perform all of them.
I look forward to hearing from you!