I was sitting back staring into space and thinking random thoughts and these lyrics popped into my head:
So this is christmas
and what have you done
another year over
a new one just begun
And it lead me to take a deeper look at the year gone by and what I've done.
I've had a good year.
The London Tester Gathering is going from strength to strength thanks to the support of the testing community not only in London but UK and world wide. It's helped people learn, meet other testers, discuss situations and problems, helped people find work, raised money for charity, given people an opportunity to talk, to hear talks, I could go on.
In the coming year I'm hoping to organise a Tester Gathering day of workshops, hoping to see other gatherings appearing and hoping the ones already around get the same support the London Tester Gatherings have.
I've been able to attend a number of workshops and courses such as Rapid Software Testing and a BDD Immersion Workshop
Thanks to the generosity of other members of the community I've been able to attend workshops with Michael Bolton and James Bach.
I enjoyed a year at Channel4 and worked with a good team on a couple of projects that turned out quite well.
I've been able to work at improving my testing and my thinking by practicing both and I can see and feel the improvement. I've used new (to me) tools. I've read books and added many more to my list to be read. I've read blog posts. I've made better use of Twitter and Skype. I've coded more.
Update: One of the things I've used to improve my testing and thinking is the Weekend Testing and Weeknight Testing sessions, if you haven't checked one out please do so.
I've hopefully encouraged members of the community in their undertakings and I've appreciated the encouragement I've had.
All in all I've enjoyed my year, I just wish there was more of it! Oh well, I'm in a new one now.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
The first London Tester Gathering of 2011
The first London Tester Gathering of 2011 was last week and seemed to go very well. It was pretty big, too many people for me to be able to meet everybody.
I'd arranged to catch up with some people there to talk about a few things and I didn't actually get a chance to catch up with them. Whoops.
Andy Slight did a great job in filling in for colleagues as the first person from The Test People who was going to talk couldn't and then the second couldn't either, I forget the reasons why.
He filled in by starting a discussion about testing and some of the issues which he had experienced and this lead to more discussion all around.
There were a lot of great conversations all around, I only managed to catch snippets here and there as I was doing a lot of meeting and greeting and catching up but I'm hoping a few of the attendees can add a few comments as to what kind of things were discussed.
I was talking to Nick White about job titles, I don't remember how it came up but I was quite strongly stating that I would not take a job with the title of QA as I believe it's incorrect. I think on reflection though it needs a little bit more thought because it also depends on how the organisation thinks about job titles, might be a blog post there.
The first Northern Tester Gathering was announced which is great news. It's in Nottingham on the 23rd Feburary and should be a great night.
Weeknight Testing was also announced as the next session is next week. Darren McMillan is facilitating this session and it should be a good one as they are all good.
Update: There is a picture of the sponsors details but I should also mention them here. Thanks to the sponsors for the evening:
The Test People
Michael Bolton
Steve Allott
There were a number of people there (myself included) who have attended RST and at least one who will do in April that was kinda cool.
There were a few announcements for people/organisations looking to recruit and hopefully a few responses.
Ese Oduyoye shared a few pictures taken on the night which are here.
All in all a good night which I enjoyed and it seemed like everybody else enjoyed as well.
I'd arranged to catch up with some people there to talk about a few things and I didn't actually get a chance to catch up with them. Whoops.
Andy Slight did a great job in filling in for colleagues as the first person from The Test People who was going to talk couldn't and then the second couldn't either, I forget the reasons why.
He filled in by starting a discussion about testing and some of the issues which he had experienced and this lead to more discussion all around.
There were a lot of great conversations all around, I only managed to catch snippets here and there as I was doing a lot of meeting and greeting and catching up but I'm hoping a few of the attendees can add a few comments as to what kind of things were discussed.
I was talking to Nick White about job titles, I don't remember how it came up but I was quite strongly stating that I would not take a job with the title of QA as I believe it's incorrect. I think on reflection though it needs a little bit more thought because it also depends on how the organisation thinks about job titles, might be a blog post there.
The first Northern Tester Gathering was announced which is great news. It's in Nottingham on the 23rd Feburary and should be a great night.
Weeknight Testing was also announced as the next session is next week. Darren McMillan is facilitating this session and it should be a good one as they are all good.
Update: There is a picture of the sponsors details but I should also mention them here. Thanks to the sponsors for the evening:
The Test People
Michael Bolton
Steve Allott
There were a number of people there (myself included) who have attended RST and at least one who will do in April that was kinda cool.
There were a few announcements for people/organisations looking to recruit and hopefully a few responses.
Ese Oduyoye shared a few pictures taken on the night which are here.
All in all a good night which I enjoyed and it seemed like everybody else enjoyed as well.
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