What are the most relevant certifications a programmer can get?

I'm not sure how relevant obtaining any kind of certification would be for your group, given your aim. Certifications matter more for the IT side of things, if you're (for example) implementing DB2/WebSphere, or Sybase, or Cognos (or something else equally mind-numbing and boring). As the other answers rightly state, the top tier of software engineers either don't have certifications or view them as a waste of time (because they often are). If you're looking to "promote your personal brand", or if "you're out to prove something" publicly, you can try Getting involved in TopCoder, CodeJam, and other programming competitions. Placing well in these helps put you in a different league entirely. This is by far the best way to gain a good reputation (worldwide). It's also the hardest and has the steepest learning curve. Choosing a medium-sized open-source project that can benefit from additional contributors, and start contributing to it consistently. You don't want something that is already huge, or has a steep learning curve (this means that, f.ex, the Linux kernel, Ubuntu, Hadoop, etc. are out). Try a smaller but still reasonably-well-known project instead ( PyGame comes to my mind, but there are plenty of other projects like it ). This ensures that your contributions are not "lost in the sea", but still ensures that people know what you're talking about when you say, "We're consistent contributors to [project]". Building an interesting technically-oriented website of some sort that shows off what you're capable of. You don't have to start a company, but building a site doing something reasonably novel and just a little bit non-trivial can earn you a lot of credibility. Finally, no matter what you end up doing, ensure that all the members get profiles on GitHub (or one of the other well-known online code repositories) and start uploading their pet projects and so on. You can then make a centralized repository for the group that shows off the sexiest work.

I feel your pain. It's tough to find a common goal everyone can work toward as a group, and still have it be relevant. What I'd suggest is that a running website or open source project might be more useful to you than a specific certification, both in terms of what you'll learn in the process and in terms of how much it will help your resume. You'll get a lot more mileage from pointing to a working project on GitHub or to a dynamic site you've built. Depending on the make-up of the group, its size, etc, you might try An open-source team project. Come up with a problem you think the group of you can attack and start at it. Work out where you'll keep your code, whether you'll have coding standards, and what you'll need to research to get the work done. You'll learn a ton about working on a team, finding everyone's strengths, and you'll gain a lot of skills. If the prior suggestion is too daunting, or if your group is too big, try doing something similar in smaller groups. Have people work in groups of 2-4 to develop something. Have a meeting each week where you have snacks or a meal and drinks, and have each team show off their work over the last week. Spend some time helping each other to solve sticky problems, or cross-pollinating ideas. If that's still a bit too onerous, have everyone start learning Django. The Django Book (http://www.djangobook.com/) is free online, and is very good. Work through it at a reasonable pace, like one chapter each week. Share progress and problems on a mailing list, and get together each week. Once you've worked your way through the book then move up to the previous suggestion, and start working on some sites that you can share with one another If you do a project along those lines I guarantee you will learn a lot and gain a lot of useful skills. The results will also be much, much more useful to you professionally than any certification you could get, and a couple years down the road you'll have a very good idea of which people from this group you want to tap for a future endeavor. Good luck!