The last couple of years I have tended to write blog posts at the change of the year. One to summarize the year that is ending and one to list the things I am looking forward to in the coming year. This time it is different. It feels different.
Changes
Much has happened this year. As I was considering how to encapsulate it, I read over the posts on changing from 2011 to 2012. I must admit, I had to smile. Much has happened, still much remains to be done.
What has happened? Well, in August I submitted my resignation to the company where I was working. My "old company" had been bought by a much larger competitor and I found myself in a struggle to keep myself focused on what my goals and values were. I was a little surprised because I had worked for large companies in the past - most of my working life in fact, had been with large companies.
The surprising thing to the person I was a few years ago, was that I resigned without a "company" to go to. I went independent. I struck out on my own with a letter of marque sailing against any and every - oh, no, umm - that is being a privateer - not a working independent test professional. Meh, whatever.
But, that is what I did. The roots for this lie in this post I wrote late in 2011. Looking back, it was the natural progression of where I was going from and where I was going to.
Now, I did have a contract lined up - which has since been extended. This made the opportunity a little easier than jumping in cold-turkey - or deciding to go independent after being let go. I concede this was an advantage.
Of course, now I am working even harder - not simply at "the day job" but in my writing, my learning and my attempts to understand things better. The push from being sacked, as described in the blog post mentioned above, seems to have led me to the point where I hoisted my own flag, and have so far, avoided being hoist with my own petard.
People
I have been very fortunate in my meetings and comings and goings this past year. Given the opportunity to speak in Portland at PNSQC and then in Potsdam at Agile Testing Days, I met a massive number of people I had only read of, or read their words. It was inspiring, encouraging and humbling all at once. In both instances, I found it easy to not be the smartest person in the room. I had a pile of people there I could relate to and learn from.
To each of you, I am deeply indebted. Its a long list - let's see. There's Matt Heusser, who is still a bundle of energy and ideas. Michael Larsen, who is really amazingly smart. Bernie Berger, Markus Gartner, Janet Gregory, Gojko Adzic, Huib Schoots, Sigge Birgisson, Paul Gerrard, Simon Morley, Jurgen Appelo, James Lindsay, Michael Dedolph, Linda Rising, Ben Simo, and.... the list really does kind of go on.
The people I continue to find to be wonderful teachers and gentle instructors (sometimes not so gentle as well) sometimes through conversation, emails, IM/Skype chats, blog posts and articles. They include, in no particular order, Elizabeth Hendrickson, Fiona Charles, James Bach, Paul Holand, Michael Bolton, Cem Kaner, Jon Bach, Catherine Powell, Griffin Jones. There are others, but these folks came to mind as I was writing this.
Community
Wow. This year has been amazing. The local group, the GR Testers, are meeting every month, with a variety of people showing up - not "the same folks every time" but people wandering in to check it out. I find this exciting.
AST - Association for Software Testing
What an amazing group of people this is, and is continuing to develop into. The Education Special Interest Group (EdSIG) is continuing to be an area of interest. Alas, my intention of participating in "more courses" has been impacted by life stuff. I've been able to assist with a couple of Foundations sessions for the BBST course, and offered ideas on some discussions but that is about all.
This past August I was honored to be elected to the Board of Directors of AST. My participation continues to be as much as I can give on a regular basis - including monitoring/moderating the Forums on the AST website (a really under utilized resource, perhaps we can change this in the coming year) and the LinkedIn AST group's discussion forum (mostly whacking spam).
A new and exciting development is the Test Leadership Special Interest Group - LeadershipSIG. This new group is looking into all sorts of interesting questions around Test Management and Test Leadership and - well - stuff - including the interesting question of the difficulty of finding and recruiting Context Driven Test leaders, managers and directors.
CAST is scheduled for August in Madison, Wisconsin. This is going to be good.
Other Conference / Community Stuff
Conferences coming up include STPCon - in San Diego in April. Also in April is GLSEC - Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference - that one is in Grand Rapids. QAI's QUEST conference is also scheduled for the Spring.
There are several conferences I've considered submitting proposals to - and I suspect it is time to do more than consider.
Writing - Oh my. I have several projects I've been working through. I am really excited about some of the potential opportunities. I'm pretty geeked about this.
Overall, I am excited about what 2013 may hold. It strikes me that things that have been set up over the last several years are coming into place. What is in store? I do not know. I believe it is going to be good.
After all. I am writing this the evening of December 23. According to some folks, the world was supposed to end a couple of days ago. What those folks don't understand is that everything changes. All the time. Marking sequences and patterns and tracking them is part of what every society does. They don't end. Simply turn the page.
Let us rise up together.
Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts
Monday, December 24, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Old Northwest to the Pacific Northwest: At PNSQC, Part 1
I live in Michigan.
Michigan is one of the states made up of what was once called the Northwest Territory. Well, yeah, this was back in the late 1780s an early 1790s, but no matter. If you are an American and ever took an American History class, you may possibly remember something about the Northwest Ordinance.
Brief History Lesson
What I remembered from my history courses was how it divided up the territory into grid-like sections and mapped out some basic boundaries and things of that ilk. It did things like establish baselines where survey measurements were to be taken from and mandated that there would be schools available and whatnot. Its kind of a blur, but that's OK.
I came across some thing in Gordon Wood's massive book Empire of Liberty which covers US history from 1789 to 1815. It is part of the Oxford History of the United States and comes in with a mere 738 pages, not counting the index and bibliographic essay. Wood put forth that the Northwest Ordinance was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress before the adoption of the Constitution. It defined a process for how territories could eventually join the Union as full-fledged States.
It is kind of a daunting idea when one thinks of it.
How do you make a plan for bettering society when you know that most of the people who will benefit will be living their lives long after you are dead and gone and most likely forgotten?
For example - who accepted the legislation for the Northwest Ordinance that was passed into law? The President, of course. But George Washington was not yet President. So, the President of Congress was the one who signed the law and he was, ummm, ah, hmmm. Yeah. That guy.
These were among my thoughts and I boarded a plane and flew West to Portland a couple of weeks ago for the 30th Annual Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference - PNSQC.
The Beginning
I had been contacted about being an invited speaker for the conference and joining my colleague and sometime partner-in-crime Matt Heusser in presenting a full-day workshop as part of the conference. This was kind of a big deal for me. While a regional conference, I looked over the list of previous invited speakers and workshop hosts and thought "Whoa. Those are some huge shoes to fill. What can I bring that will be on a similar level of what those folks have done?"
I admit, I had a brief moment of questioning myself. Well, not so brief. It kind of kept coming back. I had a couple of ideas on topics to present - other than the workshop that is. I drew on some thoughts of what I could address to the theme of Engineering Quality, and considered where the ideas led me. So I submitted two proposals and essentially said "Pick one."
This resulted in some delightful emails and discussions. It seems one of my submissions had a similar title to the proposed keynote being given by Dale Emery. It may have been fun, but alas, I reconsidered the topic and we agreed on the second one - on User Experience as a model for test development.
My Approach
People who have heard me present at the local meetup or conferences or company lunch and learn type things know that I tend to avoid the "All your problems will be solved if you do." Partly this is because I never believe people when they tell the stuff like that.
They can give examples of how they did and were successful, but I tend to think "Great. That is one or two times. How many times have you done this? Total?"
The result is I tend to prefer presenting around times that were a total train-wreck (do software long enough and you have a lot of those examples), what I learned from that and how I would (and sometimes did) do things differently the next go-round for that software. I also try and talk about how I've applied those lessons more broadly beyond that, looking for truths I can carry with me, possibly as models for heuristics.
Then I try and encourage discussion - get people in the room involved. Why do I do that? Because sometimes they have great insights from their own experience. Sometimes they have comment or thoughts or observations that leave me gobsmacked.
What I Learned
I sometimes have my doubts with that approach, particularly when I'm presenting at a conference or meeting or whatever, I have never presented at before. I have memories of sessions that were themselves train-wrecks. The anticipated "discussion" never happened - or was a total of two or three comments.
People did not want to discuss. They wanted a lecture. They wanted a power-point slide deck with answers, not with things that made them think things. They wanted the spoken words to match the words on the slide deck and they wanted them to reaffirm their beliefs.
(Yo. If that is the case, do you really want to go to a session where the word "discussion" appears at least twice in the abstract?)
I was assured that people would be willing to discuss pretty much anything during the conference sessions. So, I took a deep breath and planned the session around that.
Ya know, when you get a bunch of people together who are smart and passionate about what they do, sometimes all you need to do to get them going is say something and then ask "What do you think?" Then look out - they will most likely tell you.
The sessions I attended, where conversation/questions-and-answers were part of the plan were quite enjoyable. There was a fair amount of good discussion that continued into the hallway. Other sessions were more conventional - presentations, lecture, a few questions and answers. Generally, these were informative and well presented.
Overall - I had a marvelous experience. I learned a lot and met some astounding people. I'll describe that more in another post.
Michigan is one of the states made up of what was once called the Northwest Territory. Well, yeah, this was back in the late 1780s an early 1790s, but no matter. If you are an American and ever took an American History class, you may possibly remember something about the Northwest Ordinance.
Brief History Lesson
What I remembered from my history courses was how it divided up the territory into grid-like sections and mapped out some basic boundaries and things of that ilk. It did things like establish baselines where survey measurements were to be taken from and mandated that there would be schools available and whatnot. Its kind of a blur, but that's OK.
I came across some thing in Gordon Wood's massive book Empire of Liberty which covers US history from 1789 to 1815. It is part of the Oxford History of the United States and comes in with a mere 738 pages, not counting the index and bibliographic essay. Wood put forth that the Northwest Ordinance was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress before the adoption of the Constitution. It defined a process for how territories could eventually join the Union as full-fledged States.
It is kind of a daunting idea when one thinks of it.
How do you make a plan for bettering society when you know that most of the people who will benefit will be living their lives long after you are dead and gone and most likely forgotten?
For example - who accepted the legislation for the Northwest Ordinance that was passed into law? The President, of course. But George Washington was not yet President. So, the President of Congress was the one who signed the law and he was, ummm, ah, hmmm. Yeah. That guy.
These were among my thoughts and I boarded a plane and flew West to Portland a couple of weeks ago for the 30th Annual Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference - PNSQC.
The Beginning
I had been contacted about being an invited speaker for the conference and joining my colleague and sometime partner-in-crime Matt Heusser in presenting a full-day workshop as part of the conference. This was kind of a big deal for me. While a regional conference, I looked over the list of previous invited speakers and workshop hosts and thought "Whoa. Those are some huge shoes to fill. What can I bring that will be on a similar level of what those folks have done?"
I admit, I had a brief moment of questioning myself. Well, not so brief. It kind of kept coming back. I had a couple of ideas on topics to present - other than the workshop that is. I drew on some thoughts of what I could address to the theme of Engineering Quality, and considered where the ideas led me. So I submitted two proposals and essentially said "Pick one."
This resulted in some delightful emails and discussions. It seems one of my submissions had a similar title to the proposed keynote being given by Dale Emery. It may have been fun, but alas, I reconsidered the topic and we agreed on the second one - on User Experience as a model for test development.
My Approach
People who have heard me present at the local meetup or conferences or company lunch and learn type things know that I tend to avoid the "All your problems will be solved if you do
They can give examples of how they did
The result is I tend to prefer presenting around times that were a total train-wreck (do software long enough and you have a lot of those examples), what I learned from that and how I would (and sometimes did) do things differently the next go-round for that software. I also try and talk about how I've applied those lessons more broadly beyond that, looking for truths I can carry with me, possibly as models for heuristics.
Then I try and encourage discussion - get people in the room involved. Why do I do that? Because sometimes they have great insights from their own experience. Sometimes they have comment or thoughts or observations that leave me gobsmacked.
What I Learned
I sometimes have my doubts with that approach, particularly when I'm presenting at a conference or meeting or whatever, I have never presented at before. I have memories of sessions that were themselves train-wrecks. The anticipated "discussion" never happened - or was a total of two or three comments.
People did not want to discuss. They wanted a lecture. They wanted a power-point slide deck with answers, not with things that made them think things. They wanted the spoken words to match the words on the slide deck and they wanted them to reaffirm their beliefs.
(Yo. If that is the case, do you really want to go to a session where the word "discussion" appears at least twice in the abstract?)
I was assured that people would be willing to discuss pretty much anything during the conference sessions. So, I took a deep breath and planned the session around that.
Ya know, when you get a bunch of people together who are smart and passionate about what they do, sometimes all you need to do to get them going is say something and then ask "What do you think?" Then look out - they will most likely tell you.
The sessions I attended, where conversation/questions-and-answers were part of the plan were quite enjoyable. There was a fair amount of good discussion that continued into the hallway. Other sessions were more conventional - presentations, lecture, a few questions and answers. Generally, these were informative and well presented.
Overall - I had a marvelous experience. I learned a lot and met some astounding people. I'll describe that more in another post.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Janus Part 1: Looking Back 2011
One of the benefits of taking four years of Latin is that you pick up all kinds of interesting things that many other folks may miss. Then again, an awful lot of people don't worry too much that "i.e." is an abbreviation of "id est" or, "that is". Just like "etc." is an abbreviation of "et cetera" - even though they may even SAY et cetera, I wonder how many know what it means? I'm mean enough to not say here, and say "look it up" - unless you remember your Latin as well.
Janus, for whom the month of January is named, looked both forward and back. That is a bit of what I want to do with this post and the next. The post I wrote last night was a precursor to these couple of posts, partly because the things described yesterday laid the foundation for this past year and the year to come.
What I wrote January 1, 2011:
It was not a bold move to make such a prediction - I simply knew there was a likelihood that I'd be looking for work. When one company assimilates, well, acquires, another company, "long term employment" prospects for the staff of the acquired company are not terribly high.
As it was, I was not let go. I was retained. One colleague resigned after accepting a new position. His last day, we had a farewell luncheon for him. By the end of the next day, myself and another tester were all that remained of our team. One other person, a developer, had been transferred from the development staff to testing. although others on the team
We are continuing, and moving forward.
I expect this to continue and grow in the coming year. That would be way cool.
The GR Testers, the local testing group, is up and running strong. The group has met monthly since that January post. I've made it to most of the meetings. The ones I missed, I was out of town, usually at a conference. Cool.
Conferences. I presented at STPCon (Spring) in Nashville. I gave a joint presentation with my (then) boss, Kristin Dukic, as well as a presentation and lightning talk on my own. I then was flattered, and honored, to attend and participate in CAST. With Matt Heusser, I helped organize the Emerging Topics track, where a self-organized group selected topics submitted via a wiki - then ran for 20 minutes, every 25 minutes. It was astounding.
After CAST, I had the opportunity to present at STPCon Fall in Dallas. Matt Heusser and I did a day-long workshop (excerpts are on the Software Test Professionals site, under Podcasts) - then a joint track session on "Complete Testing". THAT was a lot of fun. I also presented a track session on my own as well as a lightning talk. Matt just gave a keynote.
Then since I was not busy enough, I presented at TesTrek in Toronto in November.
Whew.
Other Stuff
Scads of people have encouraged me this year. Among them, Matt Heusser, who put me in contact with the folks at TechTarget, and made the case that he could not do Emerging Topics at CAST on his own - which is how I got in. Cool, heh? THEN - Matt had so much fun with that, he asked if I'd be interested in doing a joint workshop in Dallas. Oh yeah. The interesting thing is that he's really a nice guy - as the folks who know him will attest.
Also - Fiona Charles is supportive and encouraging. She is really an amazing person who is willing to offer suggestions and ideas on how to improve articles, presentations, whatever. She also is way cool. She was one of the very first people that I consider a "Name" in testing, to ask for comments on a paper - the list me in the acknowledgements. Humbling.
Catherine Powell whom I met in person at STPCon in Nashville always has encouragement and good suggestions. Michael Larson is a great guy. He's got a great outlook on life and testing. His blog is inspiring. Doug Hoffman was the Head Instructor for the BBST Foundations course. What a smart guy. Nice as the day is long. We had several very nice chats both at CAST or at STPCon Fall. If you get a chance to see him present - DO. Cem Kaner - yes DOCTOR Kaner - the drive behind the BBST Courses. An ongoing inspiration.
There are more - Michael Bolton, Lynn McKee, Griffin Jones, Nancy Kelln, and many more. These are the people I look to for inspiration and mental reinvigoration.
And of course, my lady-wife, Connie.
I do not know what the future will bring. I will discuss what I hope for the future in the next post.
Janus, for whom the month of January is named, looked both forward and back. That is a bit of what I want to do with this post and the next. The post I wrote last night was a precursor to these couple of posts, partly because the things described yesterday laid the foundation for this past year and the year to come.
What I wrote January 1, 2011:
The Road Ahead...A bunch of folks commented privately, "Dude, pretty gutsy to say you'll be looking for work when you're still employed." What I could not say then, was that in December, the entire staff of the company I worked for was told, in essence, that the company leadership was negotiating the sale of the company. We did not know to which other company, nor what the terms would be. Many of us speculated that the only reason we were told at that point, was because they needed us to sign releases of our stock options in case the sale closed before the end of the year.
The interesting thing is I've been thinking about the future. Well, not THE future, but what lay ahead for me professionally and how that may impact the family. It would seem there are several items that are possibilities for the coming year. One path would be to look for new work opportunities, either as a contract/consultant or as a full time, permanent employee. Yeah, as if "permanent" means much.
It was not a bold move to make such a prediction - I simply knew there was a likelihood that I'd be looking for work. When one company assimilates, well, acquires, another company, "long term employment" prospects for the staff of the acquired company are not terribly high.
As it was, I was not let go. I was retained. One colleague resigned after accepting a new position. His last day, we had a farewell luncheon for him. By the end of the next day, myself and another tester were all that remained of our team. One other person, a developer, had been transferred from the development staff to testing. although others on the team
We are continuing, and moving forward.
CommunityThis continues. I've been writing. Alot. STP Magazine and TechTarget's SearchSoftwareQuality both have run articles I've written. my more in my blog, and more engaged in forums than ever before.
Another option is to become more involved in the testing community. Actually, I started working on that as well in 2010. What I mean is that reading blogs other folks write is a good way to learn what they're thinking is. Reading and participating in on-line forums is another way to both learn and become involved. Well, doing that as much as I can right now.
Of course, more actively engaging in both of these types of activities is on my list of things to do this coming year. Ya know, the funny thing is, the more I talk with folks about things I learn and have learned, the more I learn myself.
I expect this to continue and grow in the coming year. That would be way cool.
Local Testing Groups
Another thing, the local testing group, GR Testers, has been going in fits and starts for a while. Meetings have been sparse of late. The most recent one, December, was kind of fun. There were a bunch of us sitting around a table, lots of wings, good beer and folks talking about testing. Good way to spend an evening. There's another meeting coming up Monday, 3 January. It makes it the first time in quite a while that there were back to back monthly meetings. Normally, they are officially held every other month. It seems that as more people are showing an interest, the meeting frequency will pick up.
I wonder how many other local testing groups are out there that have a meeting schedule based on "whenever" instead of "We meet at this time, and here are the next couple of topics we're focusing on at these meetings..." I believe that the more people know about local groups, the more they are invited to participate and the more information that is available about them, the more active and the stonger the community there is.
I think that pretty well sums up what I'm looking to do with the local group. I believe that getting more people involved and talking about testing is vital to improving not only our individual tradecraft, but the abilities of the local community. Sharing well reasoned ideas can do nothing but good, presuming all are allowed to learn and ask questions
The GR Testers, the local testing group, is up and running strong. The group has met monthly since that January post. I've made it to most of the meetings. The ones I missed, I was out of town, usually at a conference. Cool.
Personal DevelopmentThis happened beyond my wildest dreams. I took and passed the BBST Foundations course. Then, even though the schedule did not permit me to take the Bug Advocacy course - that is on the list for next year for me. I also took the Instructor's Course from AST. We'll see how the schedule works out this coming year.
Now, I realize that any of the above activities can lead to improving any individual participating. What I mean here is something a bit more. I had been signed up for the BBST Foundations course offered by the Association for Software Testing for a session in in the fall of 2010. Things happened and that session was cancelled. I could not take the session offered as an alternative.
The GOOD news, for me, is I am signed up to take the Foundations course this spring. YEAH! I am really looking forward to this. Everyone I know who took the course raves about it. Big-time excited.
I've continued reading blogs and articles and books and talking with people and... everything else. My goal is to continue learning and to continue to share what I learn.
For conferences, I'll be attending and presenting at STPCon in March in Nashville. I bought myself a birthday present and renewed my AST membership in October. If I can work it out, I'll be attending CAST in August in Seatle.
Conferences. I presented at STPCon (Spring) in Nashville. I gave a joint presentation with my (then) boss, Kristin Dukic, as well as a presentation and lightning talk on my own. I then was flattered, and honored, to attend and participate in CAST. With Matt Heusser, I helped organize the Emerging Topics track, where a self-organized group selected topics submitted via a wiki - then ran for 20 minutes, every 25 minutes. It was astounding.
After CAST, I had the opportunity to present at STPCon Fall in Dallas. Matt Heusser and I did a day-long workshop (excerpts are on the Software Test Professionals site, under Podcasts) - then a joint track session on "Complete Testing". THAT was a lot of fun. I also presented a track session on my own as well as a lightning talk. Matt just gave a keynote.
Then since I was not busy enough, I presented at TesTrek in Toronto in November.
Whew.
Other Stuff
Scads of people have encouraged me this year. Among them, Matt Heusser, who put me in contact with the folks at TechTarget, and made the case that he could not do Emerging Topics at CAST on his own - which is how I got in. Cool, heh? THEN - Matt had so much fun with that, he asked if I'd be interested in doing a joint workshop in Dallas. Oh yeah. The interesting thing is that he's really a nice guy - as the folks who know him will attest.
Also - Fiona Charles is supportive and encouraging. She is really an amazing person who is willing to offer suggestions and ideas on how to improve articles, presentations, whatever. She also is way cool. She was one of the very first people that I consider a "Name" in testing, to ask for comments on a paper - the list me in the acknowledgements. Humbling.
Catherine Powell whom I met in person at STPCon in Nashville always has encouragement and good suggestions. Michael Larson is a great guy. He's got a great outlook on life and testing. His blog is inspiring. Doug Hoffman was the Head Instructor for the BBST Foundations course. What a smart guy. Nice as the day is long. We had several very nice chats both at CAST or at STPCon Fall. If you get a chance to see him present - DO. Cem Kaner - yes DOCTOR Kaner - the drive behind the BBST Courses. An ongoing inspiration.
There are more - Michael Bolton, Lynn McKee, Griffin Jones, Nancy Kelln, and many more. These are the people I look to for inspiration and mental reinvigoration.
And of course, my lady-wife, Connie.
I do not know what the future will bring. I will discuss what I hope for the future in the next post.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Conference Attendence 201 - Learning While Confering, Continued
I've written on this idea before. Here in fact. Many other people have written passionately about it as well. As I am fresh from presenting at STPCon Fall 2011 in Dallas and am getting my notes and reviewing my presentation for TesTrek 2011 (http://www.qaitestrek.org/2011/) in a couple weeks in Toronto, I wanted to take a moment and beat this drum one more time.
When you are at a conference, CONFER with people. Talk with them, ask question. Answer questions. Express opinions. Be open to learning. If you disagree with someone, let them know politely - and why. Maybe you are closer than you might realize and simply are stating the same thing different ways.
One really important point.
When the "official" sessions wind down and the "official" "networking opportunities" wrap up - look around for people just hanging from the conference. Then ask if you can join them. Ask what they do, where they do it, what they like about it. You may well learn really valuable ideas you can take back to the boss.
If you see a group of people from the conference sitting in the hotel bar/lounge/whatever, a quick scan will give you some idea of the conversation(s) going on. If it is vaguely related to software and/or testing, ASK IF YOU CAN JOIN THEM!
I know from my own experience, that if I have ANY energy left and no absolutely pressing duties elsewhere, I like to talk with other test professionals and learn. Yeah. I learn a lot just from talking with people. This last conference, I had some fantastic conversations with Doug Hoffman, Fiona Charles, Tony Bruce, Scott Barber, Dawn Haynes, Lanette Creamer, Catherine Powell, Robert Walsh, Dani Almog... the list goes on - Those are the folks that popped into my mind immediately. Testing Heavyweights all - and I gained insight, if not actionable information, from each conversation.
So, I invite any TesTrek Symposium attendee. If you see me sitting in a chair in the hallway sipping the web, or in the conference center lounge, please feel free to join me. Really. I like meeting people and sharing ideas, experiences and viewpoints.
I'm there to learn, too. Please help me learn.
When you are at a conference, CONFER with people. Talk with them, ask question. Answer questions. Express opinions. Be open to learning. If you disagree with someone, let them know politely - and why. Maybe you are closer than you might realize and simply are stating the same thing different ways.
One really important point.
When the "official" sessions wind down and the "official" "networking opportunities" wrap up - look around for people just hanging from the conference. Then ask if you can join them. Ask what they do, where they do it, what they like about it. You may well learn really valuable ideas you can take back to the boss.
If you see a group of people from the conference sitting in the hotel bar/lounge/whatever, a quick scan will give you some idea of the conversation(s) going on. If it is vaguely related to software and/or testing, ASK IF YOU CAN JOIN THEM!
I know from my own experience, that if I have ANY energy left and no absolutely pressing duties elsewhere, I like to talk with other test professionals and learn. Yeah. I learn a lot just from talking with people. This last conference, I had some fantastic conversations with Doug Hoffman, Fiona Charles, Tony Bruce, Scott Barber, Dawn Haynes, Lanette Creamer, Catherine Powell, Robert Walsh, Dani Almog... the list goes on - Those are the folks that popped into my mind immediately. Testing Heavyweights all - and I gained insight, if not actionable information, from each conversation.
So, I invite any TesTrek Symposium attendee. If you see me sitting in a chair in the hallway sipping the web, or in the conference center lounge, please feel free to join me. Really. I like meeting people and sharing ideas, experiences and viewpoints.
I'm there to learn, too. Please help me learn.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Cross-Pollination or How Talking With Smart People Helps You Learn
I was looking at some of my blog posts over the last 6 or 8 months or so. That made me wonder so I went back looking at some of my older blog posts. That made me wonder some more, so I went out looking for blogs from other people I respect. These people are involved in other groups or go to conferences or, well, just hang out with other testers and tester types.
I discovered something about myself, and I believe others, that led to this blog post.
Here's what I learned: The more you expose yourself to good thinkers and intelligent conversation and engage with them, the more you learn and the more you can learn.
I can't prove this with any firm science. What I can do is look at how things have changed since I went out looking for different sources. I can also see how other people, significant, famous testers, interact and learn from each other.
I've been fortunate in having the opportunity to go to various conferences the last few years. This has given me the chance to meet people whose writings I have read and enjoyed and I have learned from. I also have had the opportunity to meet people whose writings I have read and I disagreed with. Now, some folks might shake their head and say "They're wrong." For me, this was an opportunity to understand something I did not understand before. Possibly, I could learn from that understanding and find something to appreciate and find common ground for future meetings.
What has astounded me, is just how much I have learned and grown from all these meetings. Ideas I have had for some time and have been trying to formulate have found the form and structure I needed to organize them. The result has been, among other things, this blog, articles, an inteview, conference presentations.
Do you need to travel all over North America or the world to find the same level of thought provoking conversation? Hardly.
I bet there are people in your company or your community you can talk with and have the same experience. I bet there are others in your city or town who are interested in discussing similar things. Great ideas can come from many sources - not just the famous conference speakers and articles. They can come from the person in the cube next to you or from someone doing similar work at a different company in your town.
Want to see if I'm right? Try an experiment.
Talk with people at your company about meeting after hours to talk about software and testing. Then, have those people drop an email to people they know at other companies. Invite testers, designers, programmers/developers - anyone who works on software. Then talk.
You don't need a big group, a few people is a good start. Don't worry about being formal - just try talking with other people with an interest. Don't worry about being right - instead focus on sharing ideas.
Thats all.
Try sharing ideas and see what you can learn. Maybe other people will learn something from you.
I discovered something about myself, and I believe others, that led to this blog post.
Here's what I learned: The more you expose yourself to good thinkers and intelligent conversation and engage with them, the more you learn and the more you can learn.
I can't prove this with any firm science. What I can do is look at how things have changed since I went out looking for different sources. I can also see how other people, significant, famous testers, interact and learn from each other.
I've been fortunate in having the opportunity to go to various conferences the last few years. This has given me the chance to meet people whose writings I have read and enjoyed and I have learned from. I also have had the opportunity to meet people whose writings I have read and I disagreed with. Now, some folks might shake their head and say "They're wrong." For me, this was an opportunity to understand something I did not understand before. Possibly, I could learn from that understanding and find something to appreciate and find common ground for future meetings.
What has astounded me, is just how much I have learned and grown from all these meetings. Ideas I have had for some time and have been trying to formulate have found the form and structure I needed to organize them. The result has been, among other things, this blog, articles, an inteview, conference presentations.
Do you need to travel all over North America or the world to find the same level of thought provoking conversation? Hardly.
I bet there are people in your company or your community you can talk with and have the same experience. I bet there are others in your city or town who are interested in discussing similar things. Great ideas can come from many sources - not just the famous conference speakers and articles. They can come from the person in the cube next to you or from someone doing similar work at a different company in your town.
Want to see if I'm right? Try an experiment.
Talk with people at your company about meeting after hours to talk about software and testing. Then, have those people drop an email to people they know at other companies. Invite testers, designers, programmers/developers - anyone who works on software. Then talk.
You don't need a big group, a few people is a good start. Don't worry about being formal - just try talking with other people with an interest. Don't worry about being right - instead focus on sharing ideas.
Thats all.
Try sharing ideas and see what you can learn. Maybe other people will learn something from you.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Fun and Games at STPCon 2011 - Part 3.
Thursday at STPCon in Nashville was an interesting day for me. It was certainly the shortest as far as conference stuff went, which was probably a good thing. When I woke up, with the body still on "Eastern Time" and not "Central Time" I knew it was going to be a physically rough day. The head cold I was fighting was not letting up and the voice was threatening to simply go away.
So, I sucked down a couple cups of coffee, some juice, some cold-tablets to try and lessen the "ick" feeling and carried on.
First order of business was the "Speed Geeking Breakfast Bytes" - The topic I had submitted was "Stepping Up to Leadership: Lessons Learned from Harry Potter." Yes, I found a way to work Harry Potter into a testing conference. This was a "test" run of a longer presentation I was working on around technical leadership, or becoming a leader without having either "Lead" or "Manager" in your title. I'd had an outline and a set of talking points in place and took the opportunity to squeeze this into an 8 minute presentation (complete with Power Point slide deck!)
The idea of the "breakfast bytes" was to give the same 8 minute talk to three different groups. I made it though it - made reference to the other tables and their presentations and almost had a voice by the end. I think folks like the ideas and saw later there were tweets on some of them - Cool! Thanks Tweeps!
I fortified myself with yet more coffee and a couple more glasses of juice then caught Selena Delesie's presentation "Showing the Value of Testing." I really enjoyed the core of the presentation and the lively discussion during and after. Much tweeting from this session!
As the conference ended at Noon, and I was not leaving until the next morning. I decided that the wisest course of action was a nap. I never take naps. So, the boss and lady-wife (who had come down with us and had managed to see sights around Nashville and go to the social events with us) went shopping for the elusive boots and I stretched out.
A couple hours later, feeling much refreshed, I checked email, dealt with a couple of lingering day-job items then went to see what kind of trouble I could find.
Lo and behold! Here was James Bach with dice with Michael Czeisperger and Gabe Wharton. Being the un-shy person I have become, I joined in. It was interesting watching how James handled the interactions and compared the "results analysis" with other folk I have seen do the same "introductory game." It was enlightening in many ways.
Additionally, as the idea of observing and not participating is one I do not particularly care for, I soon had a set of dice as well. So, James deftly handled this newcomer with an interesting variation. I knew something was up when his notebook came out and was written in quickly. It turns out that my initial behavior gave him an idea for a new set of rules. When that was resolved, we compared my definition of the new game with his written note. Close enough to say they matched - a slight change in phrasing was the only difference with no change in meaning.
On a related note, I brought the same game to the first team meeting after the conference. Volunteers only, mind you. Three folks dove in and gleefully experienced the frustration and learning and critical thinking that it takes to solve these types of puzzles. In the end, they each reached the same conclusions by unique methods. That is a topic for another blog post, however.
Gabe was flying out shortly, however, James and Michael were not leaving until the next day. The boss, the lady-wife and I had plans to have dinner with Michael, as James was also unattached for the evening, we invited him as well.
The five of us had one of the most enjoyable nights I can remember with a bunch of testers. The conversation ran from education to schooling to un-schooling to testing to philosophy to learning to heuristics to beliefs back to testing (briefly) to the qualities of various red wines (we were in a steak house for dinner) to boots and the benefits of the various materials boots can be made from to the difference between hats and caps and jackets and coats and how cultural norms and more's can be touched by those definitions and impact what is considered "proper" behavior.
Needless to say, the evening flew by.
So, I sucked down a couple cups of coffee, some juice, some cold-tablets to try and lessen the "ick" feeling and carried on.
First order of business was the "Speed Geeking Breakfast Bytes" - The topic I had submitted was "Stepping Up to Leadership: Lessons Learned from Harry Potter." Yes, I found a way to work Harry Potter into a testing conference. This was a "test" run of a longer presentation I was working on around technical leadership, or becoming a leader without having either "Lead" or "Manager" in your title. I'd had an outline and a set of talking points in place and took the opportunity to squeeze this into an 8 minute presentation (complete with Power Point slide deck!)
The idea of the "breakfast bytes" was to give the same 8 minute talk to three different groups. I made it though it - made reference to the other tables and their presentations and almost had a voice by the end. I think folks like the ideas and saw later there were tweets on some of them - Cool! Thanks Tweeps!
I fortified myself with yet more coffee and a couple more glasses of juice then caught Selena Delesie's presentation "Showing the Value of Testing." I really enjoyed the core of the presentation and the lively discussion during and after. Much tweeting from this session!
As the conference ended at Noon, and I was not leaving until the next morning. I decided that the wisest course of action was a nap. I never take naps. So, the boss and lady-wife (who had come down with us and had managed to see sights around Nashville and go to the social events with us) went shopping for the elusive boots and I stretched out.
A couple hours later, feeling much refreshed, I checked email, dealt with a couple of lingering day-job items then went to see what kind of trouble I could find.
Lo and behold! Here was James Bach with dice with Michael Czeisperger and Gabe Wharton. Being the un-shy person I have become, I joined in. It was interesting watching how James handled the interactions and compared the "results analysis" with other folk I have seen do the same "introductory game." It was enlightening in many ways.
Additionally, as the idea of observing and not participating is one I do not particularly care for, I soon had a set of dice as well. So, James deftly handled this newcomer with an interesting variation. I knew something was up when his notebook came out and was written in quickly. It turns out that my initial behavior gave him an idea for a new set of rules. When that was resolved, we compared my definition of the new game with his written note. Close enough to say they matched - a slight change in phrasing was the only difference with no change in meaning.
On a related note, I brought the same game to the first team meeting after the conference. Volunteers only, mind you. Three folks dove in and gleefully experienced the frustration and learning and critical thinking that it takes to solve these types of puzzles. In the end, they each reached the same conclusions by unique methods. That is a topic for another blog post, however.
Gabe was flying out shortly, however, James and Michael were not leaving until the next day. The boss, the lady-wife and I had plans to have dinner with Michael, as James was also unattached for the evening, we invited him as well.
The five of us had one of the most enjoyable nights I can remember with a bunch of testers. The conversation ran from education to schooling to un-schooling to testing to philosophy to learning to heuristics to beliefs back to testing (briefly) to the qualities of various red wines (we were in a steak house for dinner) to boots and the benefits of the various materials boots can be made from to the difference between hats and caps and jackets and coats and how cultural norms and more's can be touched by those definitions and impact what is considered "proper" behavior.
Needless to say, the evening flew by.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Fun and Games at STPCon 2011 - Part 2.
At STPCon in Nashville, Wednesday, the second day of the conference itself, I was rather torn.
My day started with the "Power-up Issues" discussions. I found myself at a table with people passionate about testing and building teams and expanding team roles - the great regret I had was that it ended far too quickly. Another 30 or 45 minutes would have been great from my perspective, but, the breakout sessions were starting.
I knew Lynn McKee was speaking on a topic I was interested in that morning - metrics and how not not get trapped into abusing them. Well, actually her presentation title was "Deception Dangers of the Numbers Game." As it was, I had a conflict. Stuff at the day-job needed attending to and I was also dealing with a developing head cold and laryngitis. (Not a good combination for a conference. Oh, and for the Day-job stuff? I'm tentatively working on a paper called "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Conference.")
So, as much as I would have liked to be there, I did appreciate the tweets (the many tweets) about what she said by Nancy Kelln and others who were present.
Another presentation I would have liked to see was Jim Hazen's on Automated Testing. I have known Jim cyberly for some time. As it was, he was speaking at the same time as Lynn - so again, I had to take a pass.
Selena Delesie's "Thriving as an Agile Test Manager" and Michael Czeisperger's "Wishful Thinking and Poor Planning: Load Testing in the Real World" both looked interesting to me in the next block, yet I was still not in a place to get there. While there were some interesting hallway conversations, I was kinda bummed that these presentations were opposite each other.
Another presentation I really would have liked to see was Catherine Powell's "Agile in a Waterfall World." As it was, I was doing a joint presentation with my boss at the same time. We were speaking on our experiences in creating testing groups for companies where there had not previously been one.
The title "No Box Mixes: Building a Test Group from Scratch" was drawn from that idea. It seems that at every conference I've been at for some time, there is at least one lost soul wandering about looking for ideas or help or something because they were expected to create a test group. The gist of our presentation was that there may not be a single "right" way to go about it, but there were things to keep in mind, like understanding what your mission is and being patient with yourself, your new team and your bosses. Kristin, my boss, and I had each been through this and we quite simply compared our experiences at different companies.
Much of Wednesday afternoon I spent in hallway conversations with a number of people. The one that stands most clearly in my memory was with Karen Johnson. We spoke for nearly an hour - AN HOUR! - on a variety of topics including strategy (one of my favorite topics) and empowering and encouraging people beyond their own norms and expectations and books and silly interfaces with airline registrations on smart phones. Mind you, my phone (like me) was clearly the luddite of the conference and so I relied on my trusty laptop to keep me connected to the world. We also exchanged slide decks and talked about the idea of presentations and presenting and how people perceive our respective, if very different, methods of delivery. What an amazingly enjoyable time for me. I came away from that discussion feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the conference, if not the world.
That evening, the "conference party" was at the Wildhorse Saloon, downtown. This is owned by the same organization that owns the conference center where we were meeting. An interesting buffet selection (unless you were a vegetarion or vegan) with some interesting beverages and line-dancing and mechanical bull riding - Selena Delesie recorded some folks riding the bull and generally having a good time (you can find them on YouTube if you search diligently.)
After a brief foray to find my lady-wife some boots (the store was closed, hence the "brief" part) we settled in to a grand time before heading back to the conference center.
Interesting people I met that day included Neil Fitzgerald, Tonia Williams, Corey Anderson, Bill Bennett, Eric Pugh and Todd Miller. I know there were others, please don't be offended if I've left you out of this list.
Come to think of it, if I have, drop me a note and refresh my memory!
My day started with the "Power-up Issues" discussions. I found myself at a table with people passionate about testing and building teams and expanding team roles - the great regret I had was that it ended far too quickly. Another 30 or 45 minutes would have been great from my perspective, but, the breakout sessions were starting.
I knew Lynn McKee was speaking on a topic I was interested in that morning - metrics and how not not get trapped into abusing them. Well, actually her presentation title was "Deception Dangers of the Numbers Game." As it was, I had a conflict. Stuff at the day-job needed attending to and I was also dealing with a developing head cold and laryngitis. (Not a good combination for a conference. Oh, and for the Day-job stuff? I'm tentatively working on a paper called "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Conference.")
So, as much as I would have liked to be there, I did appreciate the tweets (the many tweets) about what she said by Nancy Kelln and others who were present.
Another presentation I would have liked to see was Jim Hazen's on Automated Testing. I have known Jim cyberly for some time. As it was, he was speaking at the same time as Lynn - so again, I had to take a pass.
Selena Delesie's "Thriving as an Agile Test Manager" and Michael Czeisperger's "Wishful Thinking and Poor Planning: Load Testing in the Real World" both looked interesting to me in the next block, yet I was still not in a place to get there. While there were some interesting hallway conversations, I was kinda bummed that these presentations were opposite each other.
Another presentation I really would have liked to see was Catherine Powell's "Agile in a Waterfall World." As it was, I was doing a joint presentation with my boss at the same time. We were speaking on our experiences in creating testing groups for companies where there had not previously been one.
The title "No Box Mixes: Building a Test Group from Scratch" was drawn from that idea. It seems that at every conference I've been at for some time, there is at least one lost soul wandering about looking for ideas or help or something because they were expected to create a test group. The gist of our presentation was that there may not be a single "right" way to go about it, but there were things to keep in mind, like understanding what your mission is and being patient with yourself, your new team and your bosses. Kristin, my boss, and I had each been through this and we quite simply compared our experiences at different companies.
Much of Wednesday afternoon I spent in hallway conversations with a number of people. The one that stands most clearly in my memory was with Karen Johnson. We spoke for nearly an hour - AN HOUR! - on a variety of topics including strategy (one of my favorite topics) and empowering and encouraging people beyond their own norms and expectations and books and silly interfaces with airline registrations on smart phones. Mind you, my phone (like me) was clearly the luddite of the conference and so I relied on my trusty laptop to keep me connected to the world. We also exchanged slide decks and talked about the idea of presentations and presenting and how people perceive our respective, if very different, methods of delivery. What an amazingly enjoyable time for me. I came away from that discussion feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the conference, if not the world.
That evening, the "conference party" was at the Wildhorse Saloon, downtown. This is owned by the same organization that owns the conference center where we were meeting. An interesting buffet selection (unless you were a vegetarion or vegan) with some interesting beverages and line-dancing and mechanical bull riding - Selena Delesie recorded some folks riding the bull and generally having a good time (you can find them on YouTube if you search diligently.)
After a brief foray to find my lady-wife some boots (the store was closed, hence the "brief" part) we settled in to a grand time before heading back to the conference center.
Interesting people I met that day included Neil Fitzgerald, Tonia Williams, Corey Anderson, Bill Bennett, Eric Pugh and Todd Miller. I know there were others, please don't be offended if I've left you out of this list.
Come to think of it, if I have, drop me a note and refresh my memory!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Fun and Games at STPCon 2011 - Part 1.
I can hardly believe that it has been a month since I wrote a blog entry. It has been a remarkably busy month.
STPCon, the Software Testing Professionals Conference (as it is currently branded) was held in Nashville March 22 through 24. As has become common for many conferences, there were also workshops and tutorials on Monday, March 21. I was fortunate enough to have been selected to speak at the conference, along with my boss. So, we headed down on March 21, driving to Nashville. We are close enough that was a feasible option.
We had some interesting adventures on the drive down, but that will be a different story at another time.
We arrived Monday evening, checked into our rooms and collided with a variety of people we know. Monday evening was a nice relaxed evening with Nancy Kastl and Dan Mish, just chatting and talking about testing and enjoying each other's company.
Tuesday was the day of my first presentation. Before that, however, James Bach gave an astounding presentation on test coaching. I had seen recordings of James speaking, but this was the first time I heard him in person. I was impressed and inspired.
The first breakout session I went to was Karen Johnson's presentation on Strategy. What I thought interesting was her take on Strategy, as opposed to a document called a Test Strategy. It was interesting and, for me, very thought provoking.
This was the two great presentations I heard before I spoke. What an inspirational way to start my day!
My presentation was a session, as opposed to a workshop, on Test Process Improvement. The room was quite full, and most of the folks were interested in the ideas I presented. The gist of these, which I've written about before, focus on improving the skills and abilities of the test team, rather than a fixed process, to realize improvements in testing. It led to conversations that lasted through the week.
In the afternoon, Nancy Kelln gave a great presentation on working with and leading Business Testers. I hate to say it, but I was stopped by a couple of people who asked questions and wanted to chat, so I only caught the last 20 or 30 minutes or so. What I heard, I thought was very good, and I regret being delayed. and missing the start. I then heard Jon Bach's presentation on Threads - He called it "My Crazy Plan For Responding to Change." I had read some blog posts on the idea and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I then had an interesting hallway conversation with Jon and James Bach. It was brief, yet very enjoyable and informative.
The evening was a meet-and-greet where I got to catch up with people I had not seen in some time or had not had a chance to talk with much before in the day. For me, it was a who's-who list: Catherine Powell, Scott Barber, Dan Downing, Dawn Haynes, Jim Hazen, Lynn McKee, Nancy Kelln, Selena Delesie, Kristin Dukic - I know I'm forgetting some folks...
I kept running into during the day incliuded Abbie Caracostas. All in all, it was a great day and a good way to start a week of learning and thinking!
STPCon, the Software Testing Professionals Conference (as it is currently branded) was held in Nashville March 22 through 24. As has become common for many conferences, there were also workshops and tutorials on Monday, March 21. I was fortunate enough to have been selected to speak at the conference, along with my boss. So, we headed down on March 21, driving to Nashville. We are close enough that was a feasible option.
We had some interesting adventures on the drive down, but that will be a different story at another time.
We arrived Monday evening, checked into our rooms and collided with a variety of people we know. Monday evening was a nice relaxed evening with Nancy Kastl and Dan Mish, just chatting and talking about testing and enjoying each other's company.
Tuesday was the day of my first presentation. Before that, however, James Bach gave an astounding presentation on test coaching. I had seen recordings of James speaking, but this was the first time I heard him in person. I was impressed and inspired.
The first breakout session I went to was Karen Johnson's presentation on Strategy. What I thought interesting was her take on Strategy, as opposed to a document called a Test Strategy. It was interesting and, for me, very thought provoking.
This was the two great presentations I heard before I spoke. What an inspirational way to start my day!
My presentation was a session, as opposed to a workshop, on Test Process Improvement. The room was quite full, and most of the folks were interested in the ideas I presented. The gist of these, which I've written about before, focus on improving the skills and abilities of the test team, rather than a fixed process, to realize improvements in testing. It led to conversations that lasted through the week.
In the afternoon, Nancy Kelln gave a great presentation on working with and leading Business Testers. I hate to say it, but I was stopped by a couple of people who asked questions and wanted to chat, so I only caught the last 20 or 30 minutes or so. What I heard, I thought was very good, and I regret being delayed. and missing the start. I then heard Jon Bach's presentation on Threads - He called it "My Crazy Plan For Responding to Change." I had read some blog posts on the idea and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I then had an interesting hallway conversation with Jon and James Bach. It was brief, yet very enjoyable and informative.
The evening was a meet-and-greet where I got to catch up with people I had not seen in some time or had not had a chance to talk with much before in the day. For me, it was a who's-who list: Catherine Powell, Scott Barber, Dan Downing, Dawn Haynes, Jim Hazen, Lynn McKee, Nancy Kelln, Selena Delesie, Kristin Dukic - I know I'm forgetting some folks...
I kept running into during the day incliuded Abbie Caracostas. All in all, it was a great day and a good way to start a week of learning and thinking!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Speaking and CASTing or Presenting Your Ideas In Context
I'm really excited today.
I find test conferences amazingly inspirational. What I find to be the best part of many conferences are the converstions that presentations can inspire.
One way to get a lot of ideas out there is by lightning talks - quick presentations on a topic. Sometimes, that's it. Somebody talks for a few minutes and the next person gets up and talks on a totally different topic.
Some conferences, like CAST, are different. Any time someone presents an idea (gives a talk) there is scheduled time for discussion. If the participants in the discussion want to continue their chat after the alloted period of time they can grab a corner or a hallway and carry on. The next person gets up and gives their presentation and the cycle repeats itself.
Now, the CAST version of "lightning talks" has often been an "emerging trends" session track. This year the take is a little bit different. The idea is that you can check out the conference schedule and see what is being presented, what topics are being discussed. If there is one that you believe should be discussed and you want to present it, you can submit a proposal for the Emerging Topics track.
This track will feature 20 minute time slots which include 5 to 10 minutes of discussion, for the topic that people want to speak on and believe would be important.
Here's the cool part.
Instead of signing up on a paper stuck to a wall, you, the person with the idea, can enter a proposal at a WIKI set up specifically for this. (The good folks at Socialtext are contributing the wiki space, thanks folks!)
If you would like to speak at CAST 2011, you can propose a topic for the Emerging Topics session.
Now, each topic is slated for 20 minutes with at least five minutes for discussion. If you think that you would need more time to "do justice" to the topic, please make your case and reasons clear. The deal is, the more topics that get more time, the fewer the number of people who will have the chance to speak. So, the organizers would really like to make that the exception than the rule.
To propose a session, you need to join the CAST 2011 Socialtext group and create a wiki page using the proposal template.
Once you have created your proposal, other folks will be able to vote and comment on your proposal and others as well. You can read the notes, change your porposal - and evaluators can return and comment repeatedly as well, and change their scores!
Voting will be cut off a little early - right now the plan is July 15th. That way we can create and post a coherent program before the conference so folks can see what may be of interest to them in advance. The idea is to take the feedback from votes in serious consideration, along with conference theme and reputation of the speakers.
Now for the part that I am personally excited about...
In order to apply email either Matt Heusser (matt.heusser@gmail.com) or ME (peterwalen@msn.com) and ask to be invited to the CAST 2011 Emerging Topics Group on Socialtext. One of us will send you an email about the group and a link to follow. From there you can follow the instructions to add a talk or comment on a talk or whatever.
We also may need some help - one or two people to manage the rooms. Depending on how things go, that role might be expanded to include some wiki gardening and possibly help creating the schedule. You could be an ombudsman, sergeant-at-arms, or whatever other title you'd like.
We can not offer any compensation for helping out, nor for giving a talk. If you give a talk or help out, I would be personally in your debt. I can tell you from my previous experience that the conference will have greater value for you in that you can build deeper relationships, be more engaged and generally have a ton of fun while learning.
Matt says "One thing I can promise if you give a talk or help out with emerging topics: At CAST two thousand and eleven, at least ... you'll never have to eat a bagel alone."
My take is "If you give a talk or help out with the emerging topics at CAST2011, I'll think you're way cool."
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!
July 20, 2011 -
The Submission and Voting period is now closed, selections and a schedule have been made. This has been an interesting, thought provoking and fun project to work on. I am looking forward to meeting everyone in person after communicating by email and telephone.
Thanks to all who participated - Pete
I find test conferences amazingly inspirational. What I find to be the best part of many conferences are the converstions that presentations can inspire.
One way to get a lot of ideas out there is by lightning talks - quick presentations on a topic. Sometimes, that's it. Somebody talks for a few minutes and the next person gets up and talks on a totally different topic.
Some conferences, like CAST, are different. Any time someone presents an idea (gives a talk) there is scheduled time for discussion. If the participants in the discussion want to continue their chat after the alloted period of time they can grab a corner or a hallway and carry on. The next person gets up and gives their presentation and the cycle repeats itself.
Now, the CAST version of "lightning talks" has often been an "emerging trends" session track. This year the take is a little bit different. The idea is that you can check out the conference schedule and see what is being presented, what topics are being discussed. If there is one that you believe should be discussed and you want to present it, you can submit a proposal for the Emerging Topics track.
This track will feature 20 minute time slots which include 5 to 10 minutes of discussion, for the topic that people want to speak on and believe would be important.
Here's the cool part.
Instead of signing up on a paper stuck to a wall, you, the person with the idea, can enter a proposal at a WIKI set up specifically for this. (The good folks at Socialtext are contributing the wiki space, thanks folks!)
If you would like to speak at CAST 2011, you can propose a topic for the Emerging Topics session.
Now, each topic is slated for 20 minutes with at least five minutes for discussion. If you think that you would need more time to "do justice" to the topic, please make your case and reasons clear. The deal is, the more topics that get more time, the fewer the number of people who will have the chance to speak. So, the organizers would really like to make that the exception than the rule.
To propose a session, you need to join the CAST 2011 Socialtext group and create a wiki page using the proposal template.
Once you have created your proposal, other folks will be able to vote and comment on your proposal and others as well. You can read the notes, change your porposal - and evaluators can return and comment repeatedly as well, and change their scores!
Voting will be cut off a little early - right now the plan is July 15th. That way we can create and post a coherent program before the conference so folks can see what may be of interest to them in advance. The idea is to take the feedback from votes in serious consideration, along with conference theme and reputation of the speakers.
Now for the part that I am personally excited about...
In order to apply email either Matt Heusser (matt.heusser@gmail.com) or ME (peterwalen@msn.com) and ask to be invited to the CAST 2011 Emerging Topics Group on Socialtext. One of us will send you an email about the group and a link to follow. From there you can follow the instructions to add a talk or comment on a talk or whatever.
We also may need some help - one or two people to manage the rooms. Depending on how things go, that role might be expanded to include some wiki gardening and possibly help creating the schedule. You could be an ombudsman, sergeant-at-arms, or whatever other title you'd like.
We can not offer any compensation for helping out, nor for giving a talk. If you give a talk or help out, I would be personally in your debt. I can tell you from my previous experience that the conference will have greater value for you in that you can build deeper relationships, be more engaged and generally have a ton of fun while learning.
Matt says "One thing I can promise if you give a talk or help out with emerging topics: At CAST two thousand and eleven, at least ... you'll never have to eat a bagel alone."
My take is "If you give a talk or help out with the emerging topics at CAST2011, I'll think you're way cool."
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!
July 20, 2011 -
The Submission and Voting period is now closed, selections and a schedule have been made. This has been an interesting, thought provoking and fun project to work on. I am looking forward to meeting everyone in person after communicating by email and telephone.
Thanks to all who participated - Pete
Friday, November 5, 2010
Conference Attendance 101 or Learning while Conferring
A couple weeks ago I blogged, excitedly, about my experience speaking at the TesTrek conference hosted by QAI in Toronto the week of October 18. I think this consititutes Part 2 of that post.
When I was younger and more "fill the schedule" oriented than I am now, when I went to a conference or user group meeting or seminars or whatever, I tried really, really hard to "get the most for the money spent" by being in a track session or workshop every single minute and moving quickly from one presentation to the next. I made a point of not getting drawn into conversations because I might miss a presentation. Even if there was not a presentation that I was really interested in attending, I made a point of going anyway. I needed to get my (well, my boss' anyway) money's worth!
How foolish of me.
Several years ago, I was sent as a "technical person" to a user group meeting for a software package my empplyer had purchased, installed and was using. I was the senior programmer for supporting the integration and customizations, and since they introduced a "technical track" that year, the software company "hosts" made a big deal about sending "technical experts" to learn about what was coming and what was going on. After a series of presentations with the same people sitting within a few seats of each other with the same "you've got to be kidding" looks on their faces as I'm sure I had, a small number of us began comparing notes. We skipped the next session, grabbed some drinks from the bar in the conference center, got out our pads of paper and did out own "track."
We had a number of people with similar experiences and problems and decided that we knew as much as the sales people who could not answer a single question about the product they were supposed to be giving us "technical information." The next day and a half I had two legal pads full of notes, diagrams and a stack of business cards from the folks sitting around the table. In my memory, we had 8 or 10 people who "snuck out" and "wasted the company's money." Except that all of us had solutions to problems we encountered that the vendor had not been able to address - and each of the solutions had been implemented somewhere and actually worked.
A few years ago at a regional conference, I ran into a couple of people who shared the same "this presenter does not get it" look on their face. The fact that one of them was a speaker I had listened to the day before, and been really really impressed with his information, did reinforce that a bit. We proceeded to have a "hallway conversation" that turned into several people sitting in comfy chairs drinking tea and/or soft drinks talking about the topic for the presentation we had just been in. We compared notes and war stories and annecdotes and experiences - and everyone came away with new ideas they did not have before (and did not get from the presentation we had all attended.)
From that point, every conference I've been to, I intentionally leave holes in my schedule. Lets face it. There may not be a speaker I want to hear or a topic I "really, really want to learn something about."
So, instead, I may seek out other interesting people I've seen during the conference, or heard ask intelligent questions, who are milling about (during that period between sessions) and talk with them - ask questions, SOMETHING. Those have been really enlightening the last couple of years, and lead to some great contacts and insight that I may not have gotten elsewhere.
Now, I know that walking up to someone can be a bit intimidating. So what - do it anyway. If they are speaking at the conference, they may well be open to a good conversation. If not, they may be as equally lost about "what session to go to next..." and maybe the right one is the one that starts in the hallway with the two of you and see what happens. More may join in and it could last and hour, or 10 minutes.
Either way, share conact information - let them know how to get in touch with you and find out how to get in touch with them. Easiest way to do that? Give them your card! Now, don't be like the guys who were talking with me at TesTrek and have a rather sheepish look and say "Our company doesn't give us business cards so I don't have any..."
TOO BAD! Business cards are cheap! A simple black ink on white card ("classic look...") can be made pretty inexpensively at most big-box office supply stores, or any small printing shop can help you. All you need is your name, something to identify what you do (like, in this case "software tester" might be appropriate) email address and phone number. Your address might be nice, but not needed.
So, since folks like lists, here's my list for conference attendees to do or bring for the the conference:
When I was younger and more "fill the schedule" oriented than I am now, when I went to a conference or user group meeting or seminars or whatever, I tried really, really hard to "get the most for the money spent" by being in a track session or workshop every single minute and moving quickly from one presentation to the next. I made a point of not getting drawn into conversations because I might miss a presentation. Even if there was not a presentation that I was really interested in attending, I made a point of going anyway. I needed to get my (well, my boss' anyway) money's worth!
How foolish of me.
Several years ago, I was sent as a "technical person" to a user group meeting for a software package my empplyer had purchased, installed and was using. I was the senior programmer for supporting the integration and customizations, and since they introduced a "technical track" that year, the software company "hosts" made a big deal about sending "technical experts" to learn about what was coming and what was going on. After a series of presentations with the same people sitting within a few seats of each other with the same "you've got to be kidding" looks on their faces as I'm sure I had, a small number of us began comparing notes. We skipped the next session, grabbed some drinks from the bar in the conference center, got out our pads of paper and did out own "track."
We had a number of people with similar experiences and problems and decided that we knew as much as the sales people who could not answer a single question about the product they were supposed to be giving us "technical information." The next day and a half I had two legal pads full of notes, diagrams and a stack of business cards from the folks sitting around the table. In my memory, we had 8 or 10 people who "snuck out" and "wasted the company's money." Except that all of us had solutions to problems we encountered that the vendor had not been able to address - and each of the solutions had been implemented somewhere and actually worked.
A few years ago at a regional conference, I ran into a couple of people who shared the same "this presenter does not get it" look on their face. The fact that one of them was a speaker I had listened to the day before, and been really really impressed with his information, did reinforce that a bit. We proceeded to have a "hallway conversation" that turned into several people sitting in comfy chairs drinking tea and/or soft drinks talking about the topic for the presentation we had just been in. We compared notes and war stories and annecdotes and experiences - and everyone came away with new ideas they did not have before (and did not get from the presentation we had all attended.)
From that point, every conference I've been to, I intentionally leave holes in my schedule. Lets face it. There may not be a speaker I want to hear or a topic I "really, really want to learn something about."
So, instead, I may seek out other interesting people I've seen during the conference, or heard ask intelligent questions, who are milling about (during that period between sessions) and talk with them - ask questions, SOMETHING. Those have been really enlightening the last couple of years, and lead to some great contacts and insight that I may not have gotten elsewhere.
Now, I know that walking up to someone can be a bit intimidating. So what - do it anyway. If they are speaking at the conference, they may well be open to a good conversation. If not, they may be as equally lost about "what session to go to next..." and maybe the right one is the one that starts in the hallway with the two of you and see what happens. More may join in and it could last and hour, or 10 minutes.
Either way, share conact information - let them know how to get in touch with you and find out how to get in touch with them. Easiest way to do that? Give them your card! Now, don't be like the guys who were talking with me at TesTrek and have a rather sheepish look and say "Our company doesn't give us business cards so I don't have any..."
TOO BAD! Business cards are cheap! A simple black ink on white card ("classic look...") can be made pretty inexpensively at most big-box office supply stores, or any small printing shop can help you. All you need is your name, something to identify what you do (like, in this case "software tester" might be appropriate) email address and phone number. Your address might be nice, but not needed.
So, since folks like lists, here's my list for conference attendees to do or bring for the the conference:
- Business cards - lots and lots of business cards. Even if the company doesn't give you some, get some made;
- Laptop or netbook computer or smartphone - great for taking notes (or checking email if you "chose poorly") and tweeting about the good (or bad) points the speaker is making;
- An open mind - You never know what you might learn and how that might relate to your interests, both personal and professional;
- Did I mention business cards?
- Note book / scratch pad. Yeah, I know, many conferences will give out folders or portfolios and a lot of conference centers have little note pads for jotting things down. The problem is I find those note pads too little. The portfolios may be useful for other things - like holding all the papers/CDs/DVDs you may collect;
- An open schedule - Have lists of "must see", "good to see" and "want to see" sessions, but don't feel you need to have every single timeslot open;
- Your favorite mints or hard candy;
- Business cards (did I say that already?);
- Work. Leave the office behind. Your boss sent you there to learn, so learn. Those people who are trying to suck you in now are the same ones who want all of your attention all the time anyway, including on weekends if they think they might get it. They'll be waiting anyway to ruin your day when you get back. You're there to learn. Learn to talk with people you don't know and learn about them. It may help you in your job.
- Work email. Yeah, I know, I mentioned bringing the laptop to check email or whatever. That work email that needs attention yesterday if not sooner can't really be dealt with while your in a conference session, so leave it for a while. Come back to it later - another hour or two won't make that big a difference. (I know. I've broken this rule, but just to be the exception that proves the rule...)
- Extreme self assurance in the "rightness" of your position. Put the ego in "Neuteral" and you may learn something useful.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Conferences and Vacations and Learning
So, my lady-wife and I don't do "anniversaries" - we do "annual honeymoons." We (try to) take a week and go be sweet-hearts. With the schedule at the day-job, getting a week off this summer was "not highly likely" which meant that a day or two here and there was the best one could hope for. However, I was able to schedule a full week off for our "honeymoon." We had planned to return to Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, where we had gone after our wedding. Then, interesting things happened.
A colleague (well, highly regarded tester and speaker on testing and test consultant) asked if I'd be interested if she put my name forward as a possible candidate to fill her spot on the schedule at TesTrek, run by QAI. I was a little surprised, well, a lot surprised, and said I'd be happy, and honored, to be considered. The only drawback was the timing - the week slated to go to Beaver Island. That could be a problem. The week we try and reserve just for us would turn into a little bit of "us time" and a lot of "conference/work" time. Positive side, it was in Toronto.
With a little concern, I approached my Lady Wife and asked what she thought. Her response was "I LOVE Toronto!" So, away we went. As things happened, I found myself in a position to prepare an abstract and submit it to the folks at QAI. It was approved, which meant getting a presentation together that consisted of more than vague ideas.
The topic was one that I suspected may be a big draw - Test Process Improvement. That is one of the "Almost 124.7% certain to be on a Conference Agenda" topics, along with Estimation, Automation and Requirements. Now, this was not the intimidating part. The intimidating part was that there were a stack of people who were going to be there who would very probably disagree with me. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I've gotten quite good at having people disagree with me. I can even be gracious when people can explain why clearly, and with a reasoneid argument. I've been known to get along quite well with people with whom I have a professional disagreement. Mind you, some folks have a harder time with that.
The thing was, I've done lunch and learns and training sessions and presentations for teams I've been on and led and worked with. I've been doing drumming workshops for many years, in addition to the group and private lessons I've done. The thing was, these weren't novices or non-testers I'd be speaking to - they were testers and test managers and consultants and maybe famous testing people. Gulp. Some of them were bound to know the topic better than I did. Then I remembered the Abstract I worked on and the presentation I had worked so hard on. This was sharing what I had learned - not what some expert said was the "right" way to do things. And that was my starting point.
I do not have answers nor do I have a magic wand to reveal the secrets that need to be revealed. But I can talk about what I learned myself. And if some of the people who wrote the things I read and tried some of their ideas were sitting in the room - fine! My hat's off to them and I'll credit them with being the source for ideas.
Now, I had done "practice runs" with the slides and watching myself in mirrors and such - and done a dry run with volunteer co-workers. I had three possible paths planned for the exercise portion, depending on the number of people, the room layout and, frankly, how the lead up to it went. Five minutes before I was to start, I had the projector ready, a bottle of water handy, the way-cool remote clickey thing to advance the slides was hooked up - and the wireless mic was clipped to my belt. No worries.
The "Track Host" walked up to introduce me and... the next 30 seconds were a warning. The "click on" for the wireless mic didn't. The cool remote thingie... didn't. I muttered something about testing software and not hardware and dove in. The next 90 minutes flew by. I asked questions, people answered, people asked questions, I responded - then attendees responded - then all of a sudden things were cruising.
Moral of the story - If you have never tried to present on a topic, ANY topic - try it. It does not need to be at a conference where "major names" are speaking. It could be a local testing group meeting, a company lunch and learn, something. Maybe a "lightning talk" at local meeting or regional conference? It does not need to be a 60 or 90 minute presentation. But make it something, somewhere.
The fact is, you know something that may help someone else. Someone else may likely have the same kind of questions you did. If you ever wondered what you could do to improve yourself - this may be it. Do something that may help someone else and learn about yourself. It may also help you meet some really way cool people.
Oh, we had a great honeymoon, too. Toronto's a great city to visit.
A colleague (well, highly regarded tester and speaker on testing and test consultant) asked if I'd be interested if she put my name forward as a possible candidate to fill her spot on the schedule at TesTrek, run by QAI. I was a little surprised, well, a lot surprised, and said I'd be happy, and honored, to be considered. The only drawback was the timing - the week slated to go to Beaver Island. That could be a problem. The week we try and reserve just for us would turn into a little bit of "us time" and a lot of "conference/work" time. Positive side, it was in Toronto.
With a little concern, I approached my Lady Wife and asked what she thought. Her response was "I LOVE Toronto!" So, away we went. As things happened, I found myself in a position to prepare an abstract and submit it to the folks at QAI. It was approved, which meant getting a presentation together that consisted of more than vague ideas.
The topic was one that I suspected may be a big draw - Test Process Improvement. That is one of the "Almost 124.7% certain to be on a Conference Agenda" topics, along with Estimation, Automation and Requirements. Now, this was not the intimidating part. The intimidating part was that there were a stack of people who were going to be there who would very probably disagree with me. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I've gotten quite good at having people disagree with me. I can even be gracious when people can explain why clearly, and with a reasoneid argument. I've been known to get along quite well with people with whom I have a professional disagreement. Mind you, some folks have a harder time with that.
The thing was, I've done lunch and learns and training sessions and presentations for teams I've been on and led and worked with. I've been doing drumming workshops for many years, in addition to the group and private lessons I've done. The thing was, these weren't novices or non-testers I'd be speaking to - they were testers and test managers and consultants and maybe famous testing people. Gulp. Some of them were bound to know the topic better than I did. Then I remembered the Abstract I worked on and the presentation I had worked so hard on. This was sharing what I had learned - not what some expert said was the "right" way to do things. And that was my starting point.
I do not have answers nor do I have a magic wand to reveal the secrets that need to be revealed. But I can talk about what I learned myself. And if some of the people who wrote the things I read and tried some of their ideas were sitting in the room - fine! My hat's off to them and I'll credit them with being the source for ideas.
Now, I had done "practice runs" with the slides and watching myself in mirrors and such - and done a dry run with volunteer co-workers. I had three possible paths planned for the exercise portion, depending on the number of people, the room layout and, frankly, how the lead up to it went. Five minutes before I was to start, I had the projector ready, a bottle of water handy, the way-cool remote clickey thing to advance the slides was hooked up - and the wireless mic was clipped to my belt. No worries.
The "Track Host" walked up to introduce me and... the next 30 seconds were a warning. The "click on" for the wireless mic didn't. The cool remote thingie... didn't. I muttered something about testing software and not hardware and dove in. The next 90 minutes flew by. I asked questions, people answered, people asked questions, I responded - then attendees responded - then all of a sudden things were cruising.
Moral of the story - If you have never tried to present on a topic, ANY topic - try it. It does not need to be at a conference where "major names" are speaking. It could be a local testing group meeting, a company lunch and learn, something. Maybe a "lightning talk" at local meeting or regional conference? It does not need to be a 60 or 90 minute presentation. But make it something, somewhere.
The fact is, you know something that may help someone else. Someone else may likely have the same kind of questions you did. If you ever wondered what you could do to improve yourself - this may be it. Do something that may help someone else and learn about yourself. It may also help you meet some really way cool people.
Oh, we had a great honeymoon, too. Toronto's a great city to visit.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Cast Curtain Call - Part 2 - Conversations
I was very fortunate this last week to have had extended conversations with several people, some "movers and shakers" and some "well respected testers" and some "regular folks." Rather than sort out which is which, I'm going to focus on some of the great conversations I had, starting Sunday evening, through Thursday.
The hard part is picking out the bestest ones. So, I'm going to summarize some and the mental meanderings that resulted.
Monday, chatting with Griffin Jones, he asked bout the mission and charter for the group I work with. We had been talking about techniques and some of the on-line forum conversations around exploratory/ad-hoc/fully-scripted testing in light of Michael Bolton's blog entry on Testers: Get Out of the QA Business. He asked about this after what I thought was a tangent that was around the question of "what works best for what kind of environment?"
His simple question got me to wondering, other than the slogan on the company's internal wiki about the QA/Testing group, what is it that we are about? For some time, we have been working toward getting more people involved in the idea of tangible requirements, of QA helping define requirements and acting as a bridge in the design process. But that begged the question - What is our mission?
I wonder how many testing groups (or whatever each group calls itself) have a "slogan" but no "mission" or "purpose" statement that can be pointed to, where everyone knows about it. If you don't know about it, is it reasonable for people to act towards that - its a goal, right? How do you achieve a goal if you don't know what it is (I feel another blog post coming on, but not right now!)
I had several brilliant little chats with Scott Barber. It helps when you're sitting next to each other at the Registration table. We talked about a bunch of stuff - For those who have read his stuff or have read his articles or postings in various online forums for that matter, he really is as smart as he seems - Holy Cow!
We got onto the "mission" of testing groups and "doing things right" vs "doing things well enough." What most theory-centric folks sometimes forget is that there is a cost to "doing things 'right.'" If the product will be shipped for 2 weeks late because you want to run a 4 week duration system load test, costing approximately $1M, what will the company gain? What are the risks? If you're extremely likely to see significant problems within the first 8 to 12 hours and the likelihood decreases over time, what will that extra two or even three weeks going to get you - other than a delay to delivery and a dissatisfied customer? That, in itself, is one reason why testers should inform and advise but not make the final go/no-go decision.
Yeah - there's another blog post on that in detail.
Other people I met included Jeff Fry, where DOES he get all that energy? Then Selenia Delesie was holding court on lightning talks in the lobby. WHOA! Crazy-smart and the nice as the day is long. Selena gave two really good presentations - unfortunately, while I read the abstract and supporting paper, there were not enough of me to get to all the presentations that I wanted to get to. I think that's a sign of a fantastic conference - too many good simultaneous presentations.
Other folks I met included Michael Hunter, the Braidy Tester - What a guy, although he's now braidless. Paul Kam from DornerWorks is another really smart guy. DornerWorks was one of the sponsors of the conference. They did a lot to make this happen.
Tuesday night the "Rebel Alliance / CASTAway Social" was a hoot. Tester games and chicken-wings and varied and sundry edibles and drinkables - Thanks to Matt Heusser for making that happen. He's another one who is just crazy-smart and really friendly. If you have not seen his TWIST podcasts, check them out.
After the social, a bunch of folks went to dinner and had a fantastic time. If I recall correctly, there were 15 or 16 of us. I scored a major triumph by having Michael Bolton sit across from me at the end of the table. What an amazing time. Melisa Bugai was sitting with us as we discussed the likely causes of why the lights on the deck of the restaurant kept going out. Yes, we tested the theory when Melissa unplugged the rope light going around the railing. They all stayed on after that. WHOO-HOO!
The conversation, as any conversation with Michael, took many twists and turns. We talked on language and literacy and music and education and mental discipline and CBC radio shows and how each touched on testing. What a mind-bendingly enjoyable night.
Wednesday I had the great pleasure of dining with Lynn Mckee and Nancy Kelln - and my boss. Best part is, the boss picked up the tab! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Another night of fantastic conversation on testing and wine and great food. Did I mention we talked about testing?
There were so many other great conversations - How can I give a recap of all of them? As it is, there is much to think on.
The hard part is picking out the bestest ones. So, I'm going to summarize some and the mental meanderings that resulted.
Monday, chatting with Griffin Jones, he asked bout the mission and charter for the group I work with. We had been talking about techniques and some of the on-line forum conversations around exploratory/ad-hoc/fully-scripted testing in light of Michael Bolton's blog entry on Testers: Get Out of the QA Business. He asked about this after what I thought was a tangent that was around the question of "what works best for what kind of environment?"
His simple question got me to wondering, other than the slogan on the company's internal wiki about the QA/Testing group, what is it that we are about? For some time, we have been working toward getting more people involved in the idea of tangible requirements, of QA helping define requirements and acting as a bridge in the design process. But that begged the question - What is our mission?
I wonder how many testing groups (or whatever each group calls itself) have a "slogan" but no "mission" or "purpose" statement that can be pointed to, where everyone knows about it. If you don't know about it, is it reasonable for people to act towards that - its a goal, right? How do you achieve a goal if you don't know what it is (I feel another blog post coming on, but not right now!)
I had several brilliant little chats with Scott Barber. It helps when you're sitting next to each other at the Registration table. We talked about a bunch of stuff - For those who have read his stuff or have read his articles or postings in various online forums for that matter, he really is as smart as he seems - Holy Cow!
We got onto the "mission" of testing groups and "doing things right" vs "doing things well enough." What most theory-centric folks sometimes forget is that there is a cost to "doing things 'right.'" If the product will be shipped for 2 weeks late because you want to run a 4 week duration system load test, costing approximately $1M, what will the company gain? What are the risks? If you're extremely likely to see significant problems within the first 8 to 12 hours and the likelihood decreases over time, what will that extra two or even three weeks going to get you - other than a delay to delivery and a dissatisfied customer? That, in itself, is one reason why testers should inform and advise but not make the final go/no-go decision.
Yeah - there's another blog post on that in detail.
Other people I met included Jeff Fry, where DOES he get all that energy? Then Selenia Delesie was holding court on lightning talks in the lobby. WHOA! Crazy-smart and the nice as the day is long. Selena gave two really good presentations - unfortunately, while I read the abstract and supporting paper, there were not enough of me to get to all the presentations that I wanted to get to. I think that's a sign of a fantastic conference - too many good simultaneous presentations.
Other folks I met included Michael Hunter, the Braidy Tester - What a guy, although he's now braidless. Paul Kam from DornerWorks is another really smart guy. DornerWorks was one of the sponsors of the conference. They did a lot to make this happen.
Tuesday night the "Rebel Alliance / CASTAway Social" was a hoot. Tester games and chicken-wings and varied and sundry edibles and drinkables - Thanks to Matt Heusser for making that happen. He's another one who is just crazy-smart and really friendly. If you have not seen his TWIST podcasts, check them out.
After the social, a bunch of folks went to dinner and had a fantastic time. If I recall correctly, there were 15 or 16 of us. I scored a major triumph by having Michael Bolton sit across from me at the end of the table. What an amazing time. Melisa Bugai was sitting with us as we discussed the likely causes of why the lights on the deck of the restaurant kept going out. Yes, we tested the theory when Melissa unplugged the rope light going around the railing. They all stayed on after that. WHOO-HOO!
The conversation, as any conversation with Michael, took many twists and turns. We talked on language and literacy and music and education and mental discipline and CBC radio shows and how each touched on testing. What a mind-bendingly enjoyable night.
Wednesday I had the great pleasure of dining with Lynn Mckee and Nancy Kelln - and my boss. Best part is, the boss picked up the tab! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Another night of fantastic conversation on testing and wine and great food. Did I mention we talked about testing?
There were so many other great conversations - How can I give a recap of all of them? As it is, there is much to think on.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
CAST Curtain Call (Well, Review) - Part 1
I'm in the process (still) of recovering from an incredible experience at CAST 2010. As good fortune would have it, this year CAST was held 15 minutes from my house and about 50 minutes from my office.
CAST - the Conference for the Association of Software Testing - is an incredible experience. I had been told flat out by several people that I needed to go. As luck, and project status and work schedule and finances, would have it, at the last minute, I could.
It was very strange. I got an email from friend/colleague/fellow-tester Matt Heusser asking if I was available to help out. Now, I had previously told him that I may be able to help with some of the running around stuff, but probably would not be able to attend because of the state of the project. Matt sounded like a bit of help was needed. I checked with the project team on the state of things, checked with the boss, and determined that since it was so close, I could "work from conference" (as opposed to work from home) thus learning as much as possible, keeping the project rolling and helping folks with their conference as much as possible.
Long story even longer, I'm in as a volunteer, helping to lug stuff and helping to make and post signs at appropriate times and generally lending a hand at the registration table and being cheerful.
Sunday, before the conference officially began and while the AST Board was meeting, I went to the conference center (Prince Conference Center at Calvin College - lovely facilities) to pick up some boxes of books that were delivered Friday.
While there, I met Dorothy Graham, a fellow native of Grand Rapids, who was looking for someone who promised to meet her there. We introduced ourselves and I made my first uncontrolled reaction of the week "Oh yes! I have your book!" She laughed graciously. (If you have not read her book, I suggest you do so.
I then ran into Fiona Charles, who introduced me to Giffin Jones and a legion of other folks whose writings I had read for some time, but I had never met in person, including Cem Kaner.
Fiona, Griffin and I went to dinner, with my lady-wife joining us. We talked about anything and everything. A couple of bottles of a very drinkable red wine, plates mounded with pasta and a lovely terraza made for an evening that was the perfect introduction to the week.
Monday I was at the office most of the day, but swung by the conference in time to catch up with some people and meet Scott Barber and another flock of people leaving me in awe to be walking among the mighty of our craft.
Tuesday morning, I was there bright and early, laptop, headphones and powercord in hand. Jumped in with posting sign updates and then helping out with participants arriving, meeting people and sipping coffee. About the time the keynote speaker (Tim Lister) began, I was at the table dealing with work emails and helping the odd person coming in late.
Note - if you ever find yourself in a position to help at a conference, DO IT. You get to meet an amazing number of people and usually it gets you in the conference at no (financial) charge.
One poor lady came in just at lunch time - her flight from India had been delayed, getting her in Tuesday morning instead of Monday evening. She registered with the conference, checked in for her room at the registration desk and came back to ask if the conference required formal attire. I assued her it did not, and made the observation that the fellow who came in a few minutes after her was dressed very casually and he (Michael Bolton) was speaking. She was relieved went to her room, then came down to get lunch as I went to a conference call for work.
I was able to attend a couple of sessions Tuesday. One - Nancy Kelln's presentation on "Cutting the Mustard - Lessons Learned in Striving to be a Superstar Tester" was extremely good. Nancy is a bright, articulate, up-and-comer who stands out among a flock of other bright, articulate, up-and-comers. Solid questions were raised and addressed both by Nancy and by other participants.
If you have not been to CAST, that last bit "by other participants," is one of the things that sets CAST apart from other conferences. In a 60 minute time slot, 20 minutes are reserved for what others would call "Questions" but at CAST is "Open Season." There are colour coded cards distributed to each participant - Green is a "new thread" on the presentation, Yellow or light green is a comment on the current thread or previous comments - there are others, but those two are the most commonly used. A facilitator keeps the sessions in order and calls people in turn to speak. It truely is "open season" and anyone, not just the speaker, who has something to say had better be able to defend what they say.
Both of the presentations I was able to attend on Wednesday were extremely good. Karen Johnson gave a brilliant presentation (Reporting Skills and Software Testing) on approaching testing, and meeting with business experts, the same way a "newspaper reporter" might. This went beyond the fairly obvious "communication models" one might expect. She touched on several ideas that I know I, at least, had not considered.
Karen hit one idea around fact and opinion that struck me as a brilliant observation. "When do you cross the line between fact and opinion? Emotion." That is probably worth a blog entry in itself. As it is, suffice to say that when one is attempting to sift through what is "fact" and what is "believed to be fact" you can do a reality check with yourself, or with the person you are working with by checking the level of emotion. "I found something that did not match what I expected to see, is this right?" "Of COURSE it is! I checked it myself - its RIGHT!" Ones facts may be challenged, but expect a strong response if ones emotions or beliefs are challenged. Most importantly, when there is a strong response, recognize it as a reaction to the opinion being challenged and don't take it personally.
Finally, I rounded out my day with a presentation by Lynn McKee. Lynn, another bright, up-and-comer, gave a solid presentation on assessing your value as a tester. That she sparked a lively debate during open season is, in my mind, an indicator that she touched on something that many testers are looking for - how does one define value when value itself is subjective?
CAST - the Conference for the Association of Software Testing - is an incredible experience. I had been told flat out by several people that I needed to go. As luck, and project status and work schedule and finances, would have it, at the last minute, I could.
It was very strange. I got an email from friend/colleague/fellow-tester Matt Heusser asking if I was available to help out. Now, I had previously told him that I may be able to help with some of the running around stuff, but probably would not be able to attend because of the state of the project. Matt sounded like a bit of help was needed. I checked with the project team on the state of things, checked with the boss, and determined that since it was so close, I could "work from conference" (as opposed to work from home) thus learning as much as possible, keeping the project rolling and helping folks with their conference as much as possible.
Long story even longer, I'm in as a volunteer, helping to lug stuff and helping to make and post signs at appropriate times and generally lending a hand at the registration table and being cheerful.
Sunday, before the conference officially began and while the AST Board was meeting, I went to the conference center (Prince Conference Center at Calvin College - lovely facilities) to pick up some boxes of books that were delivered Friday.
While there, I met Dorothy Graham, a fellow native of Grand Rapids, who was looking for someone who promised to meet her there. We introduced ourselves and I made my first uncontrolled reaction of the week "Oh yes! I have your book!" She laughed graciously. (If you have not read her book, I suggest you do so.
I then ran into Fiona Charles, who introduced me to Giffin Jones and a legion of other folks whose writings I had read for some time, but I had never met in person, including Cem Kaner.
Fiona, Griffin and I went to dinner, with my lady-wife joining us. We talked about anything and everything. A couple of bottles of a very drinkable red wine, plates mounded with pasta and a lovely terraza made for an evening that was the perfect introduction to the week.
Monday I was at the office most of the day, but swung by the conference in time to catch up with some people and meet Scott Barber and another flock of people leaving me in awe to be walking among the mighty of our craft.
Tuesday morning, I was there bright and early, laptop, headphones and powercord in hand. Jumped in with posting sign updates and then helping out with participants arriving, meeting people and sipping coffee. About the time the keynote speaker (Tim Lister) began, I was at the table dealing with work emails and helping the odd person coming in late.
Note - if you ever find yourself in a position to help at a conference, DO IT. You get to meet an amazing number of people and usually it gets you in the conference at no (financial) charge.
One poor lady came in just at lunch time - her flight from India had been delayed, getting her in Tuesday morning instead of Monday evening. She registered with the conference, checked in for her room at the registration desk and came back to ask if the conference required formal attire. I assued her it did not, and made the observation that the fellow who came in a few minutes after her was dressed very casually and he (Michael Bolton) was speaking. She was relieved went to her room, then came down to get lunch as I went to a conference call for work.
I was able to attend a couple of sessions Tuesday. One - Nancy Kelln's presentation on "Cutting the Mustard - Lessons Learned in Striving to be a Superstar Tester" was extremely good. Nancy is a bright, articulate, up-and-comer who stands out among a flock of other bright, articulate, up-and-comers. Solid questions were raised and addressed both by Nancy and by other participants.
If you have not been to CAST, that last bit "by other participants," is one of the things that sets CAST apart from other conferences. In a 60 minute time slot, 20 minutes are reserved for what others would call "Questions" but at CAST is "Open Season." There are colour coded cards distributed to each participant - Green is a "new thread" on the presentation, Yellow or light green is a comment on the current thread or previous comments - there are others, but those two are the most commonly used. A facilitator keeps the sessions in order and calls people in turn to speak. It truely is "open season" and anyone, not just the speaker, who has something to say had better be able to defend what they say.
Both of the presentations I was able to attend on Wednesday were extremely good. Karen Johnson gave a brilliant presentation (Reporting Skills and Software Testing) on approaching testing, and meeting with business experts, the same way a "newspaper reporter" might. This went beyond the fairly obvious "communication models" one might expect. She touched on several ideas that I know I, at least, had not considered.
Karen hit one idea around fact and opinion that struck me as a brilliant observation. "When do you cross the line between fact and opinion? Emotion." That is probably worth a blog entry in itself. As it is, suffice to say that when one is attempting to sift through what is "fact" and what is "believed to be fact" you can do a reality check with yourself, or with the person you are working with by checking the level of emotion. "I found something that did not match what I expected to see, is this right?" "Of COURSE it is! I checked it myself - its RIGHT!" Ones facts may be challenged, but expect a strong response if ones emotions or beliefs are challenged. Most importantly, when there is a strong response, recognize it as a reaction to the opinion being challenged and don't take it personally.
Finally, I rounded out my day with a presentation by Lynn McKee. Lynn, another bright, up-and-comer, gave a solid presentation on assessing your value as a tester. That she sparked a lively debate during open season is, in my mind, an indicator that she touched on something that many testers are looking for - how does one define value when value itself is subjective?
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Requirements and Listening
At the QUEST conference in Dallas, there were many presentations, exercises and discussions around testers and requirements. Along with stressing the importance of requirements to project success, a regular theme was getting testers involved early in the project to help get the requirements “right.”
What was not often discussed was how the testers were to actually help get the requirements “right.” The problem, as I see it, is that there is not a clearly defined argument that can explain to me how being a good “tester” automatically makes a person a good “requirements definer.”
There were a couple of points made that people may have missed. One was part of a hall conversation -unfortunately I don’t recall who made it. This fellow's point was that the testers needed to do more than simply insist on “testable” requirements. Without being able to bring something to the discussion – without being able to help define the requirements, what purpose does a tester really serve at the discussion?
Nancy Kelln gave a presentation on testing in an Agile environment. It was interesting watching some of the attendees grappling with some of the basic premises found in a variety of Agile methodologies. While talking about Stand-ups, she answered the above question very succinctly. She said, in essence, the role of the tester in an Agile Stand-up, is to listen.
Simple, no? Its what all of us are supposed to do anyway, but usually find ourselves thinking about other things for at least part of the time.
By listening – by hearing what is being said, the tester can gain insight into some of the reasoning or logic or problems that are being encountered. If a tester is listening critically, and thinking like a tester, they can hear not only what is being said, but can hear what is not being said.
The thing is, most people who do not work in an Agile environment would argue something like "Well, that's Agile. We don't do Agile." You don't need to work in an Agile environment to do this. At Requirements reviews, or better yet, Requirements gathering/discovery meetings - the same technique can work: listen.
Listen critically, then, don't be afraid to ask questions. These questions can sometimes be straightforward. For example “We’ve talked about regulations changing around Y. Are there any regulations we need to consider for X?"
How many times have you been in a conversation and asked a question because you were looking for insight, and the person you asked it of had an "Ah-HA!" moment because of it? They realized that something was missing and there was an unconsidered possibility or gap.
By asking questions of the experts, the tester can clarify their own thoughts and maybe trigger others to also ask questions. Sometimes, the strength of not knowing things is asking questions and listening carefully to the answers.
What was not often discussed was how the testers were to actually help get the requirements “right.” The problem, as I see it, is that there is not a clearly defined argument that can explain to me how being a good “tester” automatically makes a person a good “requirements definer.”
There were a couple of points made that people may have missed. One was part of a hall conversation -unfortunately I don’t recall who made it. This fellow's point was that the testers needed to do more than simply insist on “testable” requirements. Without being able to bring something to the discussion – without being able to help define the requirements, what purpose does a tester really serve at the discussion?
Nancy Kelln gave a presentation on testing in an Agile environment. It was interesting watching some of the attendees grappling with some of the basic premises found in a variety of Agile methodologies. While talking about Stand-ups, she answered the above question very succinctly. She said, in essence, the role of the tester in an Agile Stand-up, is to listen.
Simple, no? Its what all of us are supposed to do anyway, but usually find ourselves thinking about other things for at least part of the time.
By listening – by hearing what is being said, the tester can gain insight into some of the reasoning or logic or problems that are being encountered. If a tester is listening critically, and thinking like a tester, they can hear not only what is being said, but can hear what is not being said.
The thing is, most people who do not work in an Agile environment would argue something like "Well, that's Agile. We don't do Agile." You don't need to work in an Agile environment to do this. At Requirements reviews, or better yet, Requirements gathering/discovery meetings - the same technique can work: listen.
Listen critically, then, don't be afraid to ask questions. These questions can sometimes be straightforward. For example “We’ve talked about regulations changing around Y. Are there any regulations we need to consider for X?"
How many times have you been in a conversation and asked a question because you were looking for insight, and the person you asked it of had an "Ah-HA!" moment because of it? They realized that something was missing and there was an unconsidered possibility or gap.
By asking questions of the experts, the tester can clarify their own thoughts and maybe trigger others to also ask questions. Sometimes, the strength of not knowing things is asking questions and listening carefully to the answers.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Conference Mode
I recently returned from a week in Dallas for QAI's QUEST (Quality Engineering and Software Testing) conference. The first two days consisted of either tutorials or a "Managers Solutions Workshop." The next three days were track sessions, presentations, keynote addresses, meals, snacks, coffee, tea, juice and all the trimmings that most people associate with "large" conferences. Its natural, I suppose, to compare it to other experiences.
Last October I was at TesTrek in Toronto, also hosted by QAI. There, I had the distinct and exciting opportunity to meet in real-life two people whose articles, books, blogs, etc., I had read and learned a great deal from. When it dawned on my that the "Fiona" sitting next to me at breakfast was Fiona Charles, I was, well, excited. A few minutes later, Michael Bolton sat down at the same table and struck up a lively conversation (as always!) This was 8:00 Monday morning - the first day of the conference! What a way to start the week!
Later in the week, Michael grabbed me for a round of "testing games" - yes, his case of dice came out and we went to it. In the course of the game, conversation touched on many, many topics, as these things tend to do. Soon, there was a table full of people engaged in ideas on metrics, measurement, performance, general testing. The dice were set aside and introductions made round.
That is when I met Lynn McKee and Nancy Kelln, from Calgary. They were also presenting at TesTrek - and struck me as smart, well spoken, up-and-coming testing and agile practitioners and speakers. We had a wonderful conversation then, and touched base the rest of the week. When the opportunity came to attend QUEST came up, I was excited to hear Lynn and Nancy give their presentations.
My boss/immediate supervisor went with me. We met Lynn and Nancy early on in the week and agreed to meet again for dinner and more testing games over the course of the week.
On Thursday morning, as my boss and I were having breakfast, we compared notes on our impressions thus far. I thought it was interesting how similar our own views were.
In short, it bore out my belief that the most important part of conferences is meeting people and building relationships with colleagues, and maybe developing those relationships into friendships. Don't tell conference planners this, but I find some conference presentations to be less about sharing information and experiences, than they are about the "sales pitch" for their product. (I make a habit of not sticking around for those presentations.)
Don't get me wrong - I like the "roundtable" format of the Managers Workshops at TesTrek and Quest. It allows peers to compare notes on problems that are confronting them right then. I like the presentations that describe "real world" problems and experiences.
Mostly though, I like sitting down with people who do what I do and compare notes:
"Conference Mode" absolutely rocks.
Last October I was at TesTrek in Toronto, also hosted by QAI. There, I had the distinct and exciting opportunity to meet in real-life two people whose articles, books, blogs, etc., I had read and learned a great deal from. When it dawned on my that the "Fiona" sitting next to me at breakfast was Fiona Charles, I was, well, excited. A few minutes later, Michael Bolton sat down at the same table and struck up a lively conversation (as always!) This was 8:00 Monday morning - the first day of the conference! What a way to start the week!
Later in the week, Michael grabbed me for a round of "testing games" - yes, his case of dice came out and we went to it. In the course of the game, conversation touched on many, many topics, as these things tend to do. Soon, there was a table full of people engaged in ideas on metrics, measurement, performance, general testing. The dice were set aside and introductions made round.
That is when I met Lynn McKee and Nancy Kelln, from Calgary. They were also presenting at TesTrek - and struck me as smart, well spoken, up-and-coming testing and agile practitioners and speakers. We had a wonderful conversation then, and touched base the rest of the week. When the opportunity came to attend QUEST came up, I was excited to hear Lynn and Nancy give their presentations.
My boss/immediate supervisor went with me. We met Lynn and Nancy early on in the week and agreed to meet again for dinner and more testing games over the course of the week.
On Thursday morning, as my boss and I were having breakfast, we compared notes on our impressions thus far. I thought it was interesting how similar our own views were.
In short, it bore out my belief that the most important part of conferences is meeting people and building relationships with colleagues, and maybe developing those relationships into friendships. Don't tell conference planners this, but I find some conference presentations to be less about sharing information and experiences, than they are about the "sales pitch" for their product. (I make a habit of not sticking around for those presentations.)
Don't get me wrong - I like the "roundtable" format of the Managers Workshops at TesTrek and Quest. It allows peers to compare notes on problems that are confronting them right then. I like the presentations that describe "real world" problems and experiences.
Mostly though, I like sitting down with people who do what I do and compare notes:
- How do you help people break away from this approach and introduce other, alternative ideas to them?
- When you were working on the transition to Scrum what did you encounter with folks whose experience was more rigid and less nimble?
- When you were trying to develop metrics that mean something to developers and testers, how did you implement that in a way them so they saw them as a tool for their improvement and not a threat to them or their position?
"Conference Mode" absolutely rocks.
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