Homer comes to GR

Snow and a cold biting wind didn't stop a bunch of testers meeting up at the monthly GR Testers Meetup. There was a good mix of people, experienced testers, managers and new people wanting to know more about testing and what 'proper' testing meant.

Matt Heusser was able to make an appearance after a long time away, the meeting was hosted by Pete Walen which meant that this small meeting had two people on the Board of the AST

Pizza, wings and introductions done, it was onto the main topic - Tester Skills. Having people new to testing was useful as we could tease out from them what their perceptions were of what skills a tester should have.
The usual one of 'thorough and pays attention to details' came out so that was drilled into.
Was it a skill or a trait ? What could I do to practice getting better at it ?
What did it really mean ?
I was still chewing this over the day after so started a discussion on the STC

Other skills were raised and discussed. Is being able to stand your ground when under pressure from a PM a trait or a skill ? Communication skills. Empathy with customers. Coding skills. Creativity.
Can you be skillful at seeing the big picture whilst also being good at paying attention to detail ?

Pete Walen brought up the blog by Michael Larsen about The Real Value of a Liberal Education. Matt asked how reading the Iliad would help him be a better tester. Good question and I have yet to see a blog post about The Achilles Heel of Testing or How To Trojan Horse Exploratory Testing Into Your Org

After this discussion we then ran through an exercise Matt Heusser is developing. I wont give details away as it's Matts work and he's still polishing it, but suffice to say it was fun and educational.

Pizza, The Iliad, wings, tester games, good discussions, what more could you want from a meetup ?

Donuts ?

Oh yeh, there were those as well