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Taking a break from a community you advocate for is hard.
Yet what’s so great about the Ministry of Testing community is a sense of constant movement. There are always interesting conversations happening. I got back to work last week and immediately caught COVID (for the 2nd time!) so it's been a tricky one getting back into things.
I chatted with a couple of community members who just have too much on to get involved with the community. And I’m reminded you can step away and come back whenever, and that is one of the special powers of a strong community.
So if you dip out know you're welcome back whenever it works for you. No fuss. Just a bunch of people who are pleased to see you again. Thanks to Mark and Áine for taking care of this newsletter over the past two weeks.
I’m gutted I missed TestBash Leadership. It seems it was a huge success. Fortunately, all the videos are now available. Every talk sounds interesting and thought-provoking. Time to plan out watch times! I’m a fan of Ted Lasso and of Leigh Rathbone’s storytelling so I first had to watch his talk. "All people are different people" resonated when it comes to appreciating this community. The 10 leadership lessons Leigh describes (via Ted) translate well to our role as community members.
It's been great to see Heather Reid launch her new blog. It’s available with hundreds of other community blog posts on the MoT blog feed – TIP you can subscribe via RSS. This post got me thinking about the importance of naming a team activity. Like why call it a bug bash when you're not just looking to discover bugs.
Stepping back it reminded me of the importance of wording when we talk about testing, thanks to Nicola Lindgren's recent tweet. Writing is an underrated skill of testing. And I had a good chat with Nicola about experimenting with Bloggers Club again. She'll set the next three challenges and I'm keen to see who is inspired to write as the first challenge is live.
Viv Richards received useful feedback on his Chrome Devtools course. What I like about this is that someone was willing to take the time to share their thoughts. And Viv did the same too and encouraged that person to start a conversation with the community about it. Like a 1-2-1 chat can become a 1-2-many. Every learning and feedback opportunity can start more conversations about important topics related to testing. Who might you share feedback with today?
Ministry of Testing Sarajevo host Mirza Sisic led another helpful session exploring the role of QA in software development. And if you happen to be curious about meeting some people behind popular tools that support software development, feel free to meet the team behind Xray.
I'm also very curious to read more comments on the topic of "we don't need or have testers". Thank you to Matt Colley for starting this conversation on The Club. I think there's something about testing advocacy in here that I'm keen to explore this week. Fortunately, I plan to chat with Karen Todd, whose video on the topic is worth checking out.
One way to advocate for the testing role is by supporting your fellow testing professionals. And right now there's a whole tonne of amazing TestBash abstracts to read and be inspired by. Learn something new and share your feedback – it's a double-whammy of community feel-good. 🙌🏻
Have a good week.
— Simon, CommunityBoss
Useful business posts
- Have your priorities shifted? Interesting read from Saucelabs CPO, Martha Jensen
- Well, that's a handy update from Xray
- There is so much potential for AI in automation, check out the latest episode from Ranorex
- Do you need some guidance on where to start with your automation? mabl have some guidance to help you along.
- Ah the joy of having control over test case versioning. Find out more about it and how it can help you with this post from TestRail
Events
- Wed 23 Mar Building - and Scaling - a Functional Test Automation Strategy
- Wed 23 Mar How To Test Serverless Applications In AWS,
- Mon 28–Wed 30 Mar Automation in Testing - Brighton
- Wed Mar 30 MoT Sfax: Good Exploratory Testing Tactics for Taking Over Testing
- Thu 31 Mar TestBashX Brighton
- Wed 6 Apr API Automation Challenge
- Wed 13 Apr Express Yourself More Effectively In Writing
- Thu 21 Apr TestBash Mobile
- Mon 25–Wed 27 Apr Automation in Testing - Edinburgh
- Thu 28 Apr TestBashX Edinburgh.
- Thu 26 May TestBash Careers
💬 Keep the conversation going on The Club (our forum) and the MoT Slack (our chat client). And keep in the loop via the Ministry of Testing Community Timeline.
