Quality Testers Crisis ?

Some of the blogs I've been reading recently seem to have a common theme.
Over on SQABlogs, Peter Nairn was having trouble finding good testers.

Down under in Australia, Dean Cornish seems to be having exactly the same problem

Linda Wilkinson was also getting depressed with the resumes she was reading

Steve Rowe thought we needed a better way to test and in response James Bach thought we needed better testing bloggers ( here I am ! )

On the UK Test Management forums there was a topic posted wondering if there were enough testing resources to cope with the dark side of SOA

Last month I found another blog wondering about the state of the testing industry and thought we needed a better understanding where we came from
I provided him with a link to Lee Copelands Nine Forgettings talk - which as I pointed out in a previous blog is a talk he has been doing for at least the last 2 years

On the other hand, over in Austin there doesn't seem to be the same lack of resources and on TestingReflections Antony Marcano thinks the developer-tester-analyst roles are getting blurred and competency in all three will be required.

From my personal experience as a developer I found it hard to break into the testing industry but persistence paid off.

Interesting times to be a tester for sure

Forgotten the forgettings ?

The agenda for the next BCS SIGIST in September has been announced.

The opening keynote is by Lee Copeland - "The Nine Forgettings"

It's a really good talk, I know because I saw him do it at the SIGIST in September 2006

Does this mean that Lee is short of material ?
I doubt it, I'm sure he could talk for a week and not repeat himself

Could it be that the message is still valid 2 years on and nothing has really changed since then ?

I know which my money is on.
Sigh

If you can't make it to the event then a video of it is here

( or a PowerPoint can be found here )