Your Weekly Testing News - Issue 383

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The unhelpful divide continues.

Last week highlighted there's still some way to go, to better understand the variety of skills and value we have to offer an engineering team. Thanks to two excellent questions from Ben and Samuel — check out tweet 1 and tweet 2 for the illuminating replies. I also reflect that memes that pit testers against developers are unhelpful. Yes, they get the clicks but they don't move our industry forward.

I also see folks have been talking about paying to speak at events. I'm still unable to reconcile why some event organisers don't pay their speakers or cover costs. I’m biased as Ministry of Testing pay for travel, accommodation, expenses, access to the conference and, in most cases, for speaking. paytospeak.org is worth checking out. Speaking at conferences is an excellent way to share your message and spark something in people. The cost to participate and share shouldn't be a blocker.

At the start of last week, I enjoyed collaborating with Trisha Chetani to help set up their facilitation of the 99 Minute Challenge on creating a basic UI automation check. Impressive for someone who started with the MoT Scholarship and is now facilitating events. Very cool indeed. And look out for more challenges appearing across the MoT platform in various ways over the coming months. A great way to learn.

Conversations help us better understand each other. So I'm super happy that Bertold Kolics is going to host the next Thursday Testing Tea in August. Perhaps you could invite someone who doesn't identify as a tester and ask them to bring topics of importance. Or maybe they're keen to see what's currently important in the world of testing yet are unsure where to start. This session might be for them.

What else could you do to better understand colleagues who have a different skill set from you?

Have a good week.

— Simon, CommunityBoss

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