Bish Bash Bosh

Friday March 23 was The Test Bash, the first conference organised by the Software Testing Club. Quite a momentous day for those of us involved in the site - 4 years after starting the STC it has its own regular newspaper, The Testing Planet, and has now organised and held its own mini-conference.

Rob Lambert has already done an excellent write up of his thoughts about the day, I'll try not to repeat him.

It was a nervous start to my day when I opened the curtains to find mist but the travel was fine and I arrived at the venue in good time to find Ministry of Testing Test Bash logos outside.

An international attendance - Markus from Germany, Huib Schoots from the Netherlands and Brindusa Gabur from Barcelona

It was a great day. Excellent speakers - see Markus Gartners site for blog posts.

Will Amazon see a spike in orders for 'The Art of Seduction' after the Evil ( Eeeevil ) Tester recommended seducing people into letting ET be used rather than selling it to them ?

Will managers and executives get a better picture of the quality of the product after testers implement some of the Visualising Quality ideas from David Evans ?

Quote of the day from Steve Green explaining that exploratory testing had a plan and structure - "Stanley and Livingstone didn't just pack sandwiches and charge into the jungle"

Thanks to Ranjit for being my first ever testing pair, something I need more practice at

Great to be able to meet so many people that I'd only known through Twitter.

Really great to finally meet Rosie Sherry 4 years after getting involved with the site.

Awesome to read the tweets from people enjoying the conference - and hearing the feedback afterwards that it had been an enjoyable day.

Cambridge seems a beautiful place, I'll have to try and get back there for a walk around

Lots to think about and a great day to look back on.

Being active

A few posts ago I wrote about how people were doing testing practise after I started a thread on the STC

Today I found that Rob Lambert had turned a conversation I'd had into a No Test Case No Bug blog post which contains a great little video.
If you haven't see it, go there straight after you've finished reading this.

And after finding out that Markus Gartner was reading The Lean Startup book I asked if he would do a review when he'd finished - which he now has and has posted his thoughts

This week I'm going to be trying out Pomodairo after reading this post from TESTHEAD If I don't like it then I can try out the Procastinator tool from @alanpage

and I'll be trying to get through my book pile which grows ever higher thanks to recommendations I get from the community.

Of course if you're reading this then I'm preaching to the converted.
There's a lot to be gained from being an active part of the community

One Thread Can Make A Suit

I noticed on Twitter last night that there was going to be a 'Tester Mega Gathering'. Wanting to know more, I followed the link and found it was going to be part of the Let's Test event.

The blurb for the Mega Gathering says:

"We at Let’s Test are very proud to announce that Tony Bruce, the organizer of London Tester Gathering, will be the head of the Tester Mega Gathering at the conference. He comes with his expertise and experience in arranging these kind of networking events and hopefully this event will inspire more people to arrange Tester Gatherings in their home towns"

Sounds great and Tester Gatherings seem to be happening more often and in more places. Reading this, and knowing Tony Bruce for a while, got me searching through some old threads and I dug up this one from SQA Forums from July 2008.

In it, Tony was proposing a pint and chat in London for 1st August 2008. On the night itself I think there were around 6 of us. Mark Crowther was also part of the thread discussion but he didn't make it on the night. I've still yet to actually meet him in person but I am still connecting with him online and helping him with Ruby.

I don't think that when we had those pints just 3 1/2 years ago that Tony thought he would go on to become known as Mr Gathering. Full credit to him for taking this idea and making it happen.

Nor did I think that a few years later I'd be attending Tester Gatherings in Grand Rapids, MI, USA

Neither of which might not have happened if Tony hadn't started that thread and I hadn't replied. Which reminds me of another blog post I recently read The Work of Being Lucky